A very common question people wonder about is how does their own insurance apply in the event of an auto accident.  Most people correctly assume that the at fault driver’s insurance should immediately start paying for the damage to the car, the towing cost, storage costs, rental car costs and medical bills, but the cruel reality is that most insurance companies in those positions do NOT start advancing payments to the injured person or for their property damage issues.  Does that make you mad?  Of course!   But what can you do?  Should you immediately call a lawyer?  Not necessarily!

     Let’s assume you have been in an accident, that is not your fault, and that your car has been damaged, there is a towing charge and you are  incurring medical bills.  The first thing you do after you call the police to the scene and get medical treatment, is to call your own insurance agent and report the accident.  Provide your agent with all the information they ask for.  At the same time, ask your agent again about your  own policy coverage information because it is often difficult to find a copy of your policy that you  haven’t looked at for several years.  The agent will most likely also give you the name of a separate person from  your company  that will work on your claim, and will give you their toll free number and claim number.  SAVE THAT INFORMATION!!

     Almost all auto insurance policies have the same types of coverages, although not everyone buys the same coverages.  Most people when they buy their auto insurance get the following coverages: Liability; Medical Payments; Uninsured and Under-Insured.  Some people also get collision or comprehensive, but let’s leave those coverage discussions for a separate day.  Here is how the liabilty, ”med-pay” and UM/UIM work.

     Liability protects YOU if you get sued because of the accident.  Your insurance company will hire a lawyer at their expense to defend you and they will cover you for the lawsuit or claim up to the amount of insurance you bought.  When the insurance company gets the claim or lawsuit settled, they will also get a document signed by the other side that will protect you from that person suing you again for the same accident.

     Medical payments coverage protects YOU and will pay your medical bills as a result of the accident that you incur usually within 2 years of the accident, up to the amount of protection you bought.  Most people buy $5-10,000 of medical payments protection, which seems like a lot until you start incurring medical bills. Hospital and doctor costs are very expensive, and many standard tests run on a person after an accident, like x-rays and MRI’s and CT-Scans are very expensive.  Talk to your agent and buy as much of medical payments coverage you can afford.  It is in your best interest.

     Uninsured motorists coverage protects YOU if the person that hit you doesn’t have any insurance, or their insurance lapsed because they stopped paying premiums, etc.  Uninsured motorist claims are usually very difficult for a person to do on their own without a skilled personal injury lawyer on your side fighting for you.  Underinsured coverage provides you with extra insurance if the at fault party has low levels of coverage and the value of your claim obviously exceeds those limits. Like uninsured coverage, getting money from your own insurance company for underinsured coverage is a trap for the unwary and unskilled.   Do yourself a big favor, and contact a lawyer specializing in injury cases and get the help you need.  A future posting will be a real eye-opener about who gets paid back after a settlement of your case.  

   Getting your car fixed after the accident can be difficult if you did not buy some type of collision or comprehensive insurance.  Sometimes, the at fault driver’s insurance company will pay for the damage to your car, but you drive to their facility for them to look at it.  They will usually offer you a certain amount to get it fixed.   Ask them to provide you with the name of a mechanic who will fix it for the amount they are offering.  Ask them to provide you a rental car as well.  If your car is totalled, look up its value on the internet and argue with the insurance company about its value.  Often, people who  financed their car find out that the total damage value doesn’t give them enough money to pay off the finance company.  That is a sad day indeed.  Call a lawyer you trust.    

     Did something go seriously wrong with your surgery?  Or, was the outcome not expected, yet something that was a known possible risk of the procedure?  It is not easy to know whether a doctor, hospital or other health professional made a mistake that amounts to malpractice or whether the bad outcome was a known possible risk.  One thing that is clear, however, is that many doctors make mistakes every day that shouldn’t have been made.

     Every year, over 90,000 people die in hospitals because of mistakes that amount to malpractice.  That is a figure that comes from the Institue of Medicine.  That figure also does not include people seriously injured in hospitals because of malpractice, or people dying or being seriously injured in doctor’s offices or at home because of malpractice. 

     If you or a loved one believe that the result of your care and treatment is possible malpractice, you should contact a lawyer that can competently help you figure out whether malpractice really did occur, and what can be done about it.  Often, when doctors make mistakes, they don’t want to admit that fact to their paitent or their patient’s family.  But if what happened to you or your loved one was not something that was discussed ahead of time as a known possible complication of the procedure, then you should get in touch with a lawyer that can help as soon as possible. 

You have been injured in an accident, and now the insurance company for the at fault driver is calling you and wanting to take a recorded statement from you. What should you do? Should you talk to them? If you don’t, will they still accept responsibility for the accident and reimburse you for out of pocket expenses and settle your case? If you give the statement, will they send you a copy of it? These and many other questions face injured people trying to handle their claim without the help of a skilled personal injury attorney.

Every respected personal injury lawyer will tell you that you can try and deal with the insurance company on your own, but what is it about your background or experience that leads you to believe that you are operating on the same skill level as a professional claims adjustor whose job every day is to try and cheaply resolve claims and close files paying the least amount of money possible? In other words, you may be a professional in your own chosen field or occupation, but no matter what that job is, if it isn’t related to resolving personal injury and property claims, you will not be working from the same level as a claims adjustor and the lawyers protecting the insurance company’s money.

But getting back to the question at hand, why does the insurance company want take your statement in the first place? It may seem a harmless inquiry on their part, but do NOT be mistaken or mislead. The only reason they want your recorded statement is to lock your testimony in place before you realize you need the help of a lawyer. They will ask you questions about how the accident happened, the speeds of the cars, the distances involved and however you answer those questions, questions you may not even have thought about, those answers will haunt you for the rest of the claim.

Claims adjustors asking injured people for statements are very skilled at getting you to agree with a version of events that may not be accurate, but that you end up agreeing to and that miraculously later seem to help the insurance company. You may ask how that could happen if you are just telling the truth. The answer is that the facts of the event as you saw it happen, all happen very quickly, and as most people do, we don’t spend much time analyzing every second of the event from every different angle. We believe the other person is at fault and believe if we tell the insurance company that, then they will agree with us and pay the claim. The reality is that very rarely if ever happens. Here is why.

Claims adjustors are trained professionals at asking questions in an open ended and general way, and then they restate all of your answers in a way that skews the answers in their favor and get you to agree to it. Later, they deny your claim and state that based on your voluntary recorded statement, that you agreed was under oath, they don’t believe they are responsible for your accident and deny your claim. Or they tell you that the way you explained what happened, you are also at fault or partially so and then they try and reduce how much they will pay you because of your own fault.

So, should you give a statement to the insurance company? Let’s run a simple test: Do you know how many feet per second a car moves when it is going 35 miles per hour? Do you know how much the average human head weighs? Do you know the average amount of time it takes to react to an accident about to happen and hit your brakes? Do you know how long it takes your car to stop if you slam on your brakes when you are going 30 miles per hour? Or how far it will travel? Do you know how much force your bumper can absorb? Do you know if any of the force the bumper absorbs is transferred to you in the car? And if it does, how much? Probably every claims adjustor knows the exact answers to those questions and all the similar varieties of those questions, all which focus on how an accident happens and who is at fault and what the injuries may be. If you can’t answer each of those questions correctly without researching answers to them, then NO, YOU SHOULD NOT GIVE A STATEMENT TO THE INSURANCE COMPANY!!!

Well, what should you do when they ask you for a recorded under oath statement? Play it smart and leave it to a professional to help you. Call, immediately, for a personal injury attorney you trust or you learn of from a trusted advisor and call right away. Tell the insurance company you don’t have time to talk and put them off until you talk to a good personal injury lawer. Remember, the golden rule to never forget is that the insurance company for the person that caused the accident IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE!!! Good luck!

You or a loved one have been in an accident, and the insurance company is now calling or writing to you and trying to settle your case. How do you know if the amount the insurance company is offering is fair? Will the money they offer pay all of your unpaid medical bills? What about liens from your own insurance company? What about the damage to your car?
Car accidents or accidents at work often have devastating effects on your day to day life. You work hard in your own job, and suddenly you’ve been drawn into a battle with an insurance company. The insurance companies have vast resources and lawyers behind them advising them every step of the way. Who is helping YOU? How do you know if the amount of money the insurance company is offering is fair, and what about unpaid bills, out of pocket expenses, fixing your car, or medical care and bills for furture problems because of thei accident? Most people hurt in accidents don’t really have the experience to fairly evaluate what the insurance company is doing. You may be very experienced in your own job and in many other matters, but when dealing with an insurance company after an accident, it is usually best to contact an attorney that specializes in cases involving personal injury. And if you do contact a lawyer, make sure that the lawyer is actually helping accident victims regularly. The lawyer you used when you bought your house, or needed a divorce or a will may not be the best choice to help you out in an accident. Don’t be afraid to ask questions!!
But, to answer the question of what your case is worth, you need to focus on a number of factors that apply. First, you have to know exactly what the injury is and what impact it may have on the rest of your life. Permanent injuries, or wrongful death, are very serious cases that are usually very difficult for the average person without training to try and evaluate. You need to keep in mind the amount of your medical bills and whether they have been paid and by who. You also need to know how much it is going to cost to fix your car. You can go to many online sites that will give you values for used vehicles. On the other hand if you were in a “fender bender”, and have an emergency room bill and a couple follow up appointments with your family doctor, and maybe a prescription cost, and you feel all better, you may feel inclined to try and settle your case on your own. When the insurance company offers you $500 or $1,000, what should you say? In the final analysis, if the amount offered to you makes you happy, then it is probably ok to settle. Just make sure that if you do agree on an amount, make the insurance company commit in writing what is going to happen with unpaid medical bills or insurance liens. The last thing you want to happen is to accept an amount, get the check, and then find out there is nothing left after paying unpaid medical bills. Also, if your own insurance company paid some of your bills, watch out from the other insurance company because they will write the check to you, but it will also have your insurance companies name on it. Then what do you do? While you can certainly settle your own case, how do you know if the insurance company is really looking after your interests? Most likely they are not. Why not hire a lawyer whose only job is to protect you? Call a personal injury lawyer. Almost all work on a contingent fee which means you do not have to pay any money to the lawyer until your case settles. The insurance companies have professional claim people and lawyers working for them–shouldn’t you?

If you’ve been in an accident, it is extremely important that you receive prompt medical care. In some cases, your injury will be obvious, and very painful, and you will be taken by ambulance to the hospital. But what about those situations where you think that, although you are shaken up a little, that you believe you are ok? Should you see a doctor? Go to the emergency room? See a chiropractor?

Some accidents appear to be little more than mere fender benders, and although you are shaken up or frightened, most people think that they are ok and don’t ask the police to call an ambulance. Later that day, you start to feel tightness or soreness in your neck or lower back, or tingling down the arms or backs of your legs. Is that pain caused by the accident? Should you get medical attention? The answer is almost always YES!

The truth is that even in accidents that most people call “fender benders” where there appears to be little or no property damage, you can still have been injured in that accident. It is important to remember that many features on your car, SUV or truck are designed to protect the vehicle from damage, not necessarily you. Take for example bumpers. Bumpers are designed to absorb the impact of most low speed collisions. So after the accident, it doesn’t look like there is any property damage and some would say that you could not have been injured in that crash. In reality, as the bumper absorbs the energy from the crash, that energy is redistributed to the people in the car! Remember, bumpers protect cars, not people. So when you got hit from behind, as the bumper absorbed the energy, it in turn was directed to you. Your head, which weighs about 7-8 pounds, would have snapped back, then forward, then back again before you could regain muscular control of your head. That pain, from the sudden stretching of the muscles and ligaments, and movement of the spinal components among each other, may result in pain that shows up later in the day. The question now becomes, what should you do?

While there is no one correct answer, the best thing is to be safe than sorry. If you are in severe pain, go to the emergency room and tell them you were in the accident earlier in the day and tell them all of your pain complaints. If you think a hot shower and bed rest will help, do that. But, don’t forget to call your primary care physician and get an appointment. If you decide to pursue a claim for money damages because of the accident, it is extremely important that you get immediate or very prompt medical attention to document your pain complaints and treatment. Big insurance companies seem to always take the position that injured people go to the doctor–those that delay going must not have been hurt, or their pain must have been caused by some intervening event. Getting money for injury claims from insurance companies is a tough busines, and good injury lawyers on your side can really help.

What about going to the chiropractor instead? As injury lawyers fighting for you, we believe everyone is entitled to go to whatever type of medical provider gives them relief from their pain. When a case goes to trial, sometimes defense lawyers hired by insurance companies try to argue that going to the chiropractor is only to trump up your claim, and that if you were really hurt, you would have gone to a medical specialist. We believe that whatever type of provider you see, the most important thing is to have continuity in your medical care. Don’t miss appointments, don’t let weeks or months go by between appointments unless that is what your doctor ordered. Be candid when you see your doctor and remind them that you never had these pain complaints before the accident, assuming that is true. If you have a pre-accident history of back pain or neck pain, be truthful with your doctor and let them know that fact too. Often, prior neck or back pain and the pain you feel after an accident can be separately analyzed and distinguished for claim purposes. A skilled injury lawyer on your side is of immense benefit in these situations.

So the short answer to the question is YES! Go to the doctor if you think you are injured. Let a medical professional examine you and determine your course of treatement. Don’t delay in getting this treatement. The more tiime that goes by from the accident until your medical treatment, the more the insurance companies will look disapprovingly on your claim.