Questions about what to expect in an Injury Case

Some people have their insurance start the damage claim but often they delay, propose inadequate repairs or inadequate amounts of payment for total losses. Many times the tow yard or repair shop will want money from you for storage that they will not pay. Your company should treat you well and take care of all of this and your insurance rates should not be affected for an injury that is not your fault.

During your medical treatment, as long as your doctor writes notes that confirm that you are unable to work, you can claim lost income during that timeframe. We can ask for reimbursement of sick/vacation/pto days that you should not have to use for your injury. Keep us updated on your missed days so we can seek reimbursement when the case is resolved.

They may tell you to get treatment and have the treaters get the bills to them but they will hold the bills and the providers will be asking you for the money. Have medical treatment go through your health insurance. Find out if you have medical payment coverage with your own auto insurance and if there is money left you can use that to pay or reimburse you for any co-pays or deductible balances.

You may have the auto insurance medical payment coverage that will pay bills up to your policy limit. Also many medical providers will wait for payment until the case is completed and will submit a lien on the case.

When there is any gap in time where you could have received medical treatment and did not, the at-fault insurance company can argue that your injury is not as bad as claimed since you did not need treatment. Also, they can claim you suffered a new injury in that timeframe that they would not have to pay for. It is best to promptly pursue all treatment and we will do our best to counter the arguments above.

Usually to get the best offer for a case your medical treatment has to be completed and then it is an average of 5 weeks to get the records and bills. Then the liability insurance carrier takes on average 5 weeks after that to make the top offer. If their offer is too low the court case can take three years or more because they get to spend time ordering records and taking depositions and the courts allow a lot of time for them to do that. Once they get everything they want and they still do not make a fair offer the case gets set for trial and the first available trial date could be 9 months or more from that point. We are working every step of the way to shorten all of the timeframes to get the best settlement or award possible.

We want to tell you what money you can get and when asap and there are many factors that go into that. It takes a thorough review of the entire set of records to know what a jury would award for the case which is how we determine the value. We also need to know what medical bill payments have been made and what bills are still due so you know the net payout to you after paying all liens and bills.

When we are first hired we tell the client to keep us updated on treatment progress and to get us any medical records, bills, liens and explanations of benefits you may get (including items you can get on internet portals). Any delays in getting us treatment information and/or documents will ultimately delay the resolution of the case and can result in less money for the case—may times because there are bills that you received or can get that we do not have and are not added to the value of the case.

Some people do not pursue a claim when the other person has no insurance (or when they have already received the policy limit from the liability carrier) but most car insurance policies that injured people have include uninsured and underinsured coverage. We will pursue those claims and you are eligible for the full amount of your policy limit up to the value of your case and less the amount of insurance they have (For example, if the at fault insurance is $25,000 and you have $250,000 in underinsured coverage, you can be eligible for an additional $225,000 as the $25,000 already received is reduced from the amount your carrier may have to pay).