Hiring a Personal Injury Lawyer
If you have hired a lawyer for your personal injury claim, the attorney will make contact with the liability insurance carrier and let them know that he/she is representing you for your injury claim. You will need to continue seeking medical help to tend to your injuries. You will need to keep your attorney updated with the status of your injuries, your recovery process and where you received, and where you are seeking, medical treatment. When your treatment comes to an end, your attorney will order your official medical records and medical bills. He/she will review those and decide as to whether he/she needs to seek a meeting with your treating physician or surgeon. Those meetings can take weeks to set up due to the physician’s schedule and can be very costly. We have paid up to $1500 for a 30-minute meeting. The attorney will advance the cost of that on your behalf, and it should only be set up if there are some questions as to whether your injuries or surgery are related to the crash (or incident if not a crash), or if there is some question as to future medical care requirements or permanent physical impairment.
Submitting the Demand to the Insurance Carrier on Your Behalf
Once that determination is made, that attorney will draft a demand letter and submit that to the insurance company. The demand letter will contain your medical records and bills, photographs of the vehicles or crash location, information as to underlying charges if applicable and your injuries. Depending on the severity of your injuries it may also contain radiological images showing your broken bones, any hardware for the fractures and/or opinion letters from physicians and/or calculations for future medical treatment. It may contain medical illustrations demonstrating the treatment that you have received for your injuries or treatment that you will need in the future.
The adjuster will review the package, which usually takes 2-4 weeks. Some adjusters are responsible for many files which can cause delays, and in some cases the adjusters no matter their experience, have to see management approval of their case valuations, even for very small cases. Other larger cases require approval of case valuations from home office. We have seen this home office approval requirement even for some major insurance companies even when the amount was as little as $100,000.
Negotiating to Get the Maximum Amount of Compensation for Your Case
At some point, the parties will reach their limits. Either the plaintiff will name a figure he/she will take no less than, or the insurance carrier will reach its offer limit. Your attorney should be letting you know what the net amount of the offer will be. The offer is subject to a reduction for attorney fees, the costs advanced by the attorney, any liens (medical provider or health insurance), and then the remaining net amount that goes to the client.
Advice on Accepting a Settlement or Going to Court
Your attorney will then weigh the options with you, the odds of obtaining a better result through litigation in court, as well as going over the costs of litigation, and any problems with your case. Problems could be pre-existing conditions, comments by medical providers in your records, etc. Even if the attorney is insisting that the insurance company offer is too low, the decision as to whether to settle or go to trial remains yours!
The Thomson Law Firm has handled hundreds of personal injury cases resulting from car accidents, dog bites, slip and falls and trucking accidents in Virginia and West Virginia. Curious about our results? Be sure to check them out here.
