Typical Mistakes Made by Injured People Dealing with Insurance Companies
Trying to settle while still treating – The value of your claim for personal or bodily injuries is not readily apparent as soon as the accident is over – sometimes it takes time for injuries to develop. In addition, depending on your symptoms, it is common for physicians to treat injuries as if they are minor injuries until those treatments do not work, then they will explore other causes for your symptoms. The value of your claim for bodily injuries is a function of a number of factors including what it takes to resolve your injuries and how long you treat. Trying to settle your bodily injury claim before you have finished treating for your injuries requires you to make guesses about your injuries and recovery and is generally something attorneys will advise you not to do. In addition, some insurance adjusters have very convenient memories and will interpret what you are saying in a way you do not intend making settling the claim that much more difficult later.
In general, there are things you should talk to the insurance carrier about and things that you should not talk to the carrier about, especially without having consulted with an attorney. Most injured parties do not appreciate how an insurance adjuster will interpret what they say. For example, it is common for people to tell the insurance carrier that they did not see the other vehicle until the moment of the collision. Such a statement will make any insurance adjuster worth their salt investigate whether or not they can blame part of the accident on you. A lot of injured parties do not realize that under North Carolina law, if you are at fault at all for the accident you are entitled to recover nothing. For example, if the other party is 99.99% responsible for the accident, but the insurance company concludes you are 0.01% responsible, they will deny your claim and pay you nothing without you going to trial and winning.
Making a specific demand to settle – Without knowing what claims like yours typically settle for or are worth at trial, you are negotiating blindly. In addition, once you make an offer to settle your claim the insurance carrier can and will become uncooperative if you later try to increase your demand to settle. This is true even when you place conditions on your demand such as “I’ll settle today for $3,000 but if I have to hire a lawyer or you don’t want to settle now, then I will want more money.” Such tactics make it more difficult to resolve your claim once you involve a lawyer and/or finish treating.
In the same vein, some insurance carriers will try to get you to agree to a settlement offer very early in your case, sometimes even the same day as your accident. Again, settling your claim without having made a full recovery can be a very bad idea. Once you sign a release with an insurance carrier, regardless of what they told you they would do, they only have to do what they promised to do in the release.
Avoiding or delaying treatment – one of the most common errors injured people make in personal injury claims is delaying or avoiding treatment. As the injured party, you have the duty of proving your damages, either to the satisfaction of the insurance company or to the satisfaction of a judge and jury. You do this by going to a licensed physician and being examined and treated. Compliance with treatment is essential and if the physician orders you to take medication, perform a home exercise program or see another physician, you should consider doing so and documenting your compliance. For example, lots of injured parties decide not to attend physical therapy sessions giving rise to the argument that they must not have been hurt that badly if they were not motivated enough to treat.
Over treating – another, less common problem, is over treating. If you spend enough time on the internet you will find one or more websites passing around bad information about what your claim is worth leading some people to conclude that if they go to the emergency room a bunch of times and ask for expensive tests that they will receive more money when their claims settle. Insurance adjusters are experts at identifying this type of behavior. Those injured parties that treat just to generate medical bills will usually wind up with less money in pocket rather than more.
Refusing to use health insurance – several years ago a law went into effect that effectively requires you to present information to a jury regarding whether or not your health insurance made adjustments on your medical bills. Some insurance carriers go so far as to claim you have a duty to provide health insurance information to your medical providers and ask them to bill your health insurance as part of your duty to “mitigate” or minimize your damages – a duty that every potential plaintiff has. If your medical provider refuses to bill your health insurance, you should ask them to document in writing that they have done so.
Hopefully, this article has shed a little light on whatever problem caused you to read it. Should you need assistance with your claim, feel free to contact the firm and schedule a consultation to discuss the individual facts of your case.