Car Accident Settlement

Negotiating your car accident insurance settlement

After a car accident, if you have made a claim with the negligent driver’s insurance company for either property damage to your vehicle, bodily injury, or both, at some point, after providing the adjuster with all of the requested documentation, you will need to negotiate a settlement of your claim.

Often, the adjuster will be the one to make the first move and offer you a settlement amount. If you have a definite opinion on the value of your claim, however, you don’t have to wait for his or her offer. You can write a demand letter with the figure you believe your claim is worth.

Suppose, however, that the adjuster makes an offer much lower than you counted on. Note that adjusters have a settlement range and will typically begin at the lowest figure.

Their job is to settle the claim for the least possible amount of money. You may venture into back-and-forth negotiations for a while, but no matter how long you have been negotiating, when he gets to the top of his range, there will be no further offers. (See Settling Your Car Insurance Claim: How Long Should It Take.) What happens if you reach an impasse?

Here are some options to bring your claim closer to settlement, even if you have reached an impasse:

* Seek advice from an car accident lawyer to determine if the settlement amount you have in mind is a reasonable amount based on the facts and documentation.

* If you want to continue negotiating on your own without an attorney, write a letter to the insurance company to support the value you have placed on your claim. You may want to include any additional documentation and/or information not previously provided.

* Go up the chain of command and speak to the adjuster’s supervisor or manager. Adjusters get their dollar authority to settle from their higher-ups and may not have convinced them the claim is worth more than what is being offered. Perhaps you can convince them.

* Request alternative dispute resolution (mediation or arbitration).

* File a Complaint with your state’s Department of Insurance.

* Hire an attorney to continue the negotiations for you; most people are not born negotiators.

If your car accident attorney reaches an impasse and is convinced your case has greater value than the insurance company is assigning it, that’s when you file a lawsuit against the negligent driver to have the court decide.

Note that if you are having trouble resolving a claim with your own insurance company, for example, an uninsured motorist claim or a collision claim where your vehicle was deemed a total loss, you also have options. You may not only file a complaint with the Department of Insurance, but you may sue your insurance company for Bad Faith. Be sure to hire an attorney who is well versed in insurance bad faith cases.

Unfortunately, auto accidents occur all too frequently in today’s fast paced society. While the majority of auto accidents are minor property damage claims, some car accidents result in substantial property damage, serious personal injury or death.

In the immediate aftermath of serious auto accident, most car accident victims are simply overwhelmed by the bombardment of telephone calls, insurance paperwork, accident reports, treatment costs, medical bills, paperwork and other correspondence that is received immediately after an auto accident.

While this mass of paperwork, procedures, and deadlines are difficult and time consuming even for the most vigilant individual, it can be overwhelming and almost unworkable for someone who has suffered a serious head or brain injury, is recovering, is medicated or debilitated due to serious personal injury. Moreover, as victims are trying to treat their injuries, the insurance companies are trying to mitigate their damages in the form of a personal injury payout, or auto accident settlement.

All too often, as a result of the combination of these events, car accident victims do not receive the compensation to which they are rightfully entitled.

Immediately after a serious car accident, (while auto accident victims are attempting to recover from their injuries) the negligent parties’ insurance company usually launches an thorough investigation aimed at limiting their monetary liability.

Every insurance company has a team of adjusters, investigators and attorneys whose primary responsibility is to limit the liability of the insurance company and minimize the amount of money to be paid to injured parties. This is true whether the claim is made against the negligent parties’ insurance company, or the victims own insurance company.

 

Back Injury Settlements and Other Insurance Settlements
Accident Victims: Is The Insurance Company Cheating You?

People who have a personal injury claim usually want to know what kind of back injury settlement or other car accident insurance settlement amounts they can expect to get. I have been doing these types of cases for over 14 years, and have settled or argued nearly one thousand personal injury cases. I can tell you that there is no one amount you can get for a certain type of case and that you can not use a simple formula to find out how much your claim is worth.

How much the case is worth is most often determined when the insurance company adjuster and the attorney try to predict what an imaginary jury would award the client.

The attorney and the adjuster do this after all the evidence is in and they have determined what kind of witness the client might make in court. The two then come to some agreement, with the permission of the client, as to what the settlement amount will be. Without an attorney, the insurance company will try to convince the accident victim that their claim isn't worth much and will often give a "take it or leave it" offer.

A personal injury attorney knows from a lot of experience how much a case is worth. The attorney also has negotiating skills and the threat of a lawsuit. The lawyer has it in their interest to get the highest amount since they will earn more if they get more for you. For example, we have had people call us after settling a case with the insurance company on their own.

They got $500 for pain and suffering, a common initial lowball offer by the insurance companies. Say, for example, I estimated that I would have gotten a low total settlement of $5000 for pain and suffering for the same claim. I would have gotten a third for fees or $1666 and about $60 for costs, but the client would have gotten $3273 or $2773 more than what they got handling the case themselves. Each case will vary, of course.

How much a client will receive for a back injury settlement depends upon many factors such as the severity of the injury, how bad the impact of the car crash was, the length of treatment for the injury, the amount of permanent tissue damage done, how much work was missed, how much pay was lost, how it affected the lifestyle and the ability to work of the individual, and what kind of job they had if it was permanently lost due to the injuries. I have had back injury settlements for pain and suffering between the range of $900 to $115,000. Again these amounts are tied to the above factors and their interplay.

Other factors such as who was at fault in the accident can be important in determining the settlement amount sometimes. For example: a person who was not wearing a seat belt is considered partly negligent in some states even if they were rear ended.

The highest injury settlement I have ever heard of was in England for a woman who got fibromyalgia and won 1.25 million pounds, or roughly 3 million dollars in 1996. This is the world record, as far as I know, and is a very unusual case.

Other kinds of settlements can be much larger, and I have had car accident insurance and homeowners insurance injury settlements overall that settled for much higher than the back injury settlements mentioned above, including a number of wrongful death cases. Other kinds of car accident insurance settlements depend on the same factors that apply to back injury settlements, where there is only soft tissue damage.

These more serious accident settlements also depend on the amount of insurance available. Sometimes issues such as how a person's appearance is affected, if there is scarring or disfigurement, can affect the final pain and suffering settlement or judgment received. These settlement amounts may also be reliant on whether or not future surgery is recommended by the victim's doctor.