Home›California›How long a settlement takes
Nobody can give you a date. But the reasons a case sits still are knowable, and almost all of them are one of six things. Here is where the months really go — including the stretch after you have already agreed on a number, which is the part that surprises people most.
A straightforward California claim that settles without a lawsuit can resolve in months. A claim that gets filed, litigated and tried is measured in years. Most cases land somewhere in between, and the single biggest variable is not the court — it is how long your medical treatment takes to stabilise. Anyone who quotes you a specific timeline for your case without reading the file is guessing.
We are a funding company. We are not your lawyer, and nothing here is legal advice or medical advice — it is a general description of how these cases tend to move, and every point below is a question for the attorney handling your file. We publish it because "why is this taking so long" is the most common thing people ask us, and the honest answer is more useful than a reassurance.
Your attorney generally will not send a demand until your treatment has stabilised — the point clinicians often call maximum medical improvement, where your condition has levelled off enough that a doctor can describe what you are left with.
This is not delay. It is the whole case. Until someone can say whether you will need future care, whether you can return to the work you did before, and what permanent effects remain, the claim cannot be valued. A demand sent before that point is a demand that undervalues you, and it cannot be taken back.
This phase is why two apparently similar collisions resolve a year apart. Soft-tissue injuries that resolve with a course of physical therapy move quickly. Anything involving surgery, a recommended-but-not-yet-scheduled procedure, or a condition that keeps changing will hold the file until it settles down.
Gaps in treatment hurt cases. If you stop going — because of cost, transport, work, or because you started feeling better and then worse — the record shows a gap, and insurers read gaps as evidence that you were not really hurt. If something is stopping you from getting to appointments, tell your attorney rather than just missing them.
Once treatment stabilises, your attorney assembles the file: every provider's records and itemised billing, the police or incident report, wage-loss documentation, photographs, and whatever else supports the claim. Then a demand package goes to the insurer.
The unglamorous truth is that this phase often stalls on records requests. Hospital release-of-information departments and third-party record vendors move at their own pace, and a single slow provider can hold a complete package for weeks. Your attorney's office is chasing them; there is usually not much else to do.
Insurers do not respond to demands immediately, and the first response is rarely the last one. Expect a cycle of offer and counter. Two California-specific things frequently extend this phase:
If the case settles here, you never see a courtroom. Most do.
A complaint may be filed because negotiations stalled, or simply because the limitations period is running — most California personal injury actions run on the two-year period in Code of Civil Procedure section 335.1, and filing preserves the claim while talks continue. Filing does not mean the case is going to trial. Cases settle at every stage after filing, and many settle shortly before one.
For scale, the California Rules of Court set disposition goals for the trial courts. Under rule 3.714(b)(1), the goal for unlimited civil cases is that 75 percent are disposed of within 12 months of filing, 85 percent within 18 months, and 100 percent within 24 months. Limited civil cases carry tighter goals.
Read those as targets rather than predictions. They describe what the court system aims at across all civil cases, not what your case will do, and busy courts do not always hit them. The genuine outer boundary is different: Code of Civil Procedure section 583.310 generally requires an action to be brought to trial within five years of filing.
If your case is in Los Angeles, which courthouse hears it and which judge manages it both affect the schedule — we cover that in where a Los Angeles injury case gets filed.
This is the phase nobody explains, and it is the reason people search for why a settlement check is taking so long after being told the case is over. Agreeing on a number is not the same as being paid. Between the two:
Step four is where the weeks disappear. Hospital liens, health-plan reimbursement claims, government-payer claims and medical providers who treated on a lien all have to be identified, verified and often negotiated down before anything can be paid out. California law caps some of these — a hospital lien under Civil Code section 3045.4, for example, is limited to a share of the judgment or settlement rather than being open-ended — but a cap is not a resolution. Somebody still has to do the negotiating, and each lienholder moves at its own speed.
Your attorney is not sitting on your money. They are, in most cases, trying to reduce what comes out of it before they hand you the rest.
Everything above is the reason pre-settlement funding exists. Rent does not pause because a hospital records department is slow or because an adjuster has not returned a call. The pressure to accept a low early offer comes almost entirely from the gap between when the bills arrive and when the case resolves — and people reach for what they think of as a lawsuit loan at exactly that point.
A pre-settlement advance is money now against a portion of what your claim may eventually pay. It is a non-recourse purchase, not a loan: no credit check, no monthly payments, and nothing owed if the case recovers nothing. You need an attorney handling the case on contingency, and approval, amount and timing all depend on the specifics — we cannot promise any of them in advance.
If your case is in the stretch between settling and being paid, that is a different product — see post-settlement funding.
When liability is resolved but the money has not arrived, the product is different.
Post-settlement fundingFiled where the incident arose — and why the Spring Street answer is out of date.
LA venue guideDeadlines, pure comparative fault, and the rules that decide what you actually net.
California fundingApply in about two minutes. We contact your attorney, review the case, and if you're approved you can have funds the same day. No credit check, no monthly payments, and if you lose, you owe us nothing.