Glossary · Legal Concept
Payment Probability
The likelihood, expressed as a percentage, that a medical malpractice case with a given profile results in any payment; the first of the Hooper Engine's three core outputs and the signal for whether a claim is worth pursuing.
Also known as: payment likelihood, probability of payment, likelihood of payment
What it is
Payment probability is the share of comparable historical cases that resulted in any payment to the plaintiff, expressed as a percentage. It is the first of the three core outputs of the Hooper Engine, alongside payout range and outcome severity distribution.
How to read it
Payment probability answers the threshold question: is this case worth pursuing? A probability of 20 percent does not mean a case cannot be won. It means that, historically, four out of five cases with similar characteristics did not result in a payment. That base rate is the context a plaintiff attorney needs before taking a case on contingency, and the context a defense attorney or adjuster needs when weighing how likely a payment is.
Why it matters
Payment probability separates whether a case pays from how much it pays. Read alongside expected value, which multiplies the two together, it keeps a rare-but-large case and a frequent-but-modest case on the same honest footing.
See Also
- Payout Range — The Hooper Engine's low, expected, and high estimate of what a medical malpractice case will pay if it results in payment, adjusted to current dollars.
- Expected Value — The probability-weighted worth of a case before its outcome is known, found by multiplying payment probability by expected payout; the right figure for ranking cases at intake.
- Outcome Severity Distribution — The spread showing how comparable medical malpractice cases divide across small, significant, and large payments, used to gauge how volatile a case profile is; distinct from insurance "severity," which is average cost per claim.
- Hooper Engine — MedMalPredict's proprietary AI prediction system, trained on more than 270,000 historical medical malpractice cases, that produces jurisdiction-aware predictions for payment probability, payout range, and outcome severity.