How the vaccine court decides cases
The single most important fact in the VICP record is that compensation rates track the legal proof standard, not the severity of the injury. There are two paths to compensation:
1. Table claims. The Vaccine Injury Table lists specific injury-vaccine pairs with onset windows (SIRVA, GBS after influenza, anaphylaxis, and others). A claim matching the Table receives a presumption of causation — the petitioner doesn't have to prove the vaccine caused the injury, and the government must prove an alternative cause to defeat the claim. These claims mostly resolve by stipulation.
2. Off-Table (Althen) claims. Everything else must be proven case-by-case under Althen v. Secretary of HHS (Fed. Cir. 2005): a reliable medical theory, a logical sequence of cause and effect, and a medically appropriate time interval. The government's experts typically contest all three prongs.
The gap between the two paths is visible across the entire record:
| Claim type | Compensation rate |
|---|---|
| SIRVA (shoulder injury related to vaccine administration) (Table) | 89% |
| Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) (largely Table) | 82% |
| Brachial neuritis (Table) | 82% |
| Transverse myelitis (off-Table) | 72% |
| Encephalitis / encephalopathy (mixed) | 50% |
| Seizure disorder (mostly off-Table) | 27% |
| Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) (off-Table; omnibus test cases denied 2009–2010) | 7% |
| Dysautonomia / POTS (off-Table) | 6% |
Two clinically similar petitions can have very different outcomes depending on whether the condition is on the Table. This is a feature of the program's legal design, visible in the adjudication data — the registry reports it without taking a position on what the Table should contain.
About this data. Computed from every published VICP decision indexed by this registry (12,882 cases as of 2026-07-11), from the public dockets of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. Median figures exclude a small number of records with unusable award data. Most compensated cases resolve by stipulation or proffer (negotiated settlement) rather than a litigated finding; an award is the court's resolution of an individual legal claim, not a medical or scientific finding about vaccines generally. Past awards do not predict any individual outcome.