After sustaining a personal injury, an insurance company may reach out with a settlement amount. When facing an ocean of hospital bills and the prospect of a lengthy personal injury suit, it’s very tempted to accept the insurance settlement. Before accepting any settlement, you must understand the extent of the injury, length and costs of treatments, and how the injury will affect your life going forward.
Isn’t an Insurance Settlement a Good Thing?
Insurance companies don’t care about a client’s future needs. Their main concern is collecting premiums and paying out less than they collect. Often, insurance companies will say, “let me pay you for your medical bills. Oh, you missed a couple days of work? We’ll give you that and we’ll give you maybe 5, 6, 7…we normally pay $5,000 but you’ve been so pleasant to deal with, we’ll give you $7,500 for your pain and suffering. Altogether, we’ll send you a check for 12 grand, you sign this release and that’ll be it.” It appears to be great compensation for your injury and troubles, so you want to accept this insurance settlement.
What they won’t ask is, “does the doctor think you need future treatment?” Or, “Well, how is that broken arm going to affect what you do for a living? You do a lot of typing on your computer, don’t you? Will it affect your ability to type in the future? It hurts to hold your arm up for long periods of time. Do you have to make adjustments?” They will not ask you all these questions. They won’t consider future treatments, lost wages, or other important costs. Insurance companies are counting on clients not knowing what to consider and just accepting their offer.
Questions to ask before hiring a lawyer
The two most important questions to ask are: How often do you go to trial? Have you done this type of Personal Injury work before?
For example; during the last economic downturn, many lawyers represented themselves as Personal Injury lawyers because the real estate field was so slow. Nobody was buying or selling property, so the real estate lawyers started to do Personal Injury work. Except they didn’t understand the intricacies of personal injury, and they quickly settled their clients for cheap. The lawyers got a third of the settlement quickly and their clients did not know the settlement should have been more. All they know is that they had a lawyer represent them.
When hiring a Personal Injury lawyer, find out how many of their clients have had this type of case before. Has the lawyer been successful in previous cases? How many cases has the lawyer done? What percentage of their practice is Personal Injury law? How long have they been practicing Personal Injury law?
If I’ve been working with the insurance company and I’m not happy, is it too late to hire an attorney?
Absolutely not. It is never too late. Also, be wary of a fast offer. In Connecticut, it’s against the law for the insurance company to make you an offer to settle your car accident case within a certain number of days from the accident. If your insurance company is pushing you to accept an offer and you are uncomfortable with it, please contact a personal injury lawyer near you.
When to pay a Personal Injury lawyer for an Insurance Settlement
When you are paid, the lawyer is paid. The average case from the day a client comes in to the day the case is over is usually 2½ to 4 years. We get paid when monies have been awarded. We generally charge a third of the recovery we make on a client’s behalf.
Some lawyers will make the client pay money up front to cover doctor reports, court filing fees, sheriff’s fees, etc. That is not the way we handle personal Injury cases. We cover expenses of our own pocket and then we get paid back at the end of the case.