If you’ve been involved in an accident, and it’s not your fault, it is very easy to assume that the other person’s insurance company should start paying your bills for the damage to your car as well as your medical bills. Sometimes, they do.  But, more times than not, it seems that they don’t.  You get frustrated (rightfully so) and you call a lawyer (hopefully one that concentrates in handling injury cases!!) and your lawyer seems to be doing all the right things, and yet days turn into weeks, into months and sometimes over a year, and yet no settlement!   What is going on?

     If I had a dime for each time one of my clients asked me when their cases were going to settle, I would be a very happy lawyer.  That is not to say that my clients don’t have a RIGHT to ask me that, and in fact I think it is a very valid question.  It is just an acknowledgment that most victims are wondering why it is seemingly taking so long to get their case settled.  In fact, most cases settle in reasonably short periods of time to the lawyers involved and relative to the individual facts of each  of those cases.   But what accounts for the seeming delay?  Let’s take a look at some of the factors that seemingly delay settlements, or actually do.

     First and foremost, make sure your lawyer is the type of lawyer that only handles injury cases, or in some parts of the country, do that on a regular basis.  In the Chicago-land area, there are many lawyers, like us, that ONLY HANDLE INJURY AND DEATH cases.  If your lawyer only handles an injury case once in a while, they may not be comfortable pushing the case for you because they may be unsure of what they are doing.  Or they lack the confidence due to lack of experience to stay on top of the insurance company to try and get the case settled.  Or if you did hire a good injury lawyer, make sure it’s not one that signs up every case they can get and then let them stagnate in their credenza drawer!!  If your lawyer is not working hard for you, call them and find out why!

     One of the major reasons it takes some time to settle a case is if you are still treating with your doctors, or your medical prognosis is uncertain.  No competent injury lawyer can settle your case unless they know what is medically wrong with you and what the future may hold for you  medically.  It would be disastrous for your lawyer to try and settle your case not knowing that you may need more surgery in a year.  We tell our clients that until they are finished treating, or until we know to a reasonable certainty what their medical prognosis is, it is premature to try and settle the case.  If our client’s need more  medical help in the future, that fact impacts the settlement value of their case. and our goal is to MAXIMIZE our client’s recovery.  To do that, we don’t need for them to be completely better, just along the path enough that we can find out from their doctor what the future will hold for them.  So, if you are still in physical therapy and have follow up appointments scheduled, that may be part of the delay in settling the case.

     Another clog in the wheel of settlement is dealing with recalcitrant insurance companies.  If you unfortunately are dealing with a crummy insurance company, they routinely seem to deny, delay and delay some more.  There is not too much your lawyer can do in those situations.  What we do, is send a letter demanding meaningful settlement discussions within a certain window of time, and if we are ignored, we file suit for our client.   At that point, you get the case away from the insurance company and at least into some defense lawyer’s office. 

     If a lawsuit is filed, delays seem an inevitable part of the process.  Defense lawyers get paid on billable hours, so they want to spend time sending out discovery requests, even though your lawyer already sent their insurance client all your records and bills.  They will want to take depositions of you and all the witnesses, in order to make some money.  None of these tasks in isolation take that much time, but it takes more than you would think because each deposition for instance, requires the coordinated scheduling of each of the lawyers involved, as well as the witness.  In these cases, once our client has been deposed, and we have deposed key witnesses we need, and we have our doctors and other experts lined up, we write to the defense about settlement, and if we are ignore, we file a motion with the court to set the case for trial.  At a minimum, on that court date, the judge will usually force the defense lawyer to articulate what else they need to do and will usually set a trial date, which puts pressure on them to reevaluate their settlement posture.

     Other things that can seem to delay your case is if it is one of those types of cases that usually get tried (see prior blog on this!), then depending on how many cases get filed in your jurisdiction can account for some of it.  In our area, if a case is going to be tried, it is not unusual for it to be pending for 2-4 years depending on the type of case, its complexity, number of witnesses, etc.  Other factors impacting delay is illness and vacation schedules of people involved, other trial commitments of all the lawyers involved, etc.

     Although it just seems to make sense that a case should settle quickly, and although some do, the reality is that the system has delay inherently in place for any number of reasons.  Your lawyers job is to tirelessly push your file to its earliest possible settlement date or earliest possible trial date.  As I tell our clients, we don’t make any money with their file collecting dust in our file cabinets! We push the insurance company pre-suit with demands to settle both by phone call and letter.  If we are ignored or put off, we file suit.  At that point, we broach settlement with the defense lawyer at all appropriate moments.   Defense lawyers rarely on their own call to discuss settlement;  rather, it is usually in response to your lawyer calling or writing to them.  Make sure your lawyer stays on top of your case.  Good luck!