Insurance Injury Settlement

1) I can deal with an insurance company. My agent is a real sweetie.

 

2) My insurance company will act fairly with me. Their commercials on TV say they do.

 

3) I’m a Republican.

 

4) I’m a Democrat

 

5) The insurance company will tell me what my rights are.

 

6) If I say something wrong, the insurance company won’t hold it against me.

 

7) Insurance companies pay claims fast, don’t they?

 

My insurance company won’t try to take advantage of an elderly/young/female/person.

 

9) I pay my premiums on time.

 

10) The insurance company will get all the evidence, photos, witness statements, medical records and give me copies, won’t they?

 

Here are ten useful tips of advice from a personal injury lawyer to follow if you have been in an accident. You can also learn more about how to handle a personal injury in Long Beach, or any city, by calling the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson at any of the numbers which can be found on our website at http://www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com  and learning how we can assist you.

 

Obviously, if you have had an accident, and you are reading all of this advice, it may have been a few hours since the accident. However, if you ever have another accident, or if it’s only been a few hours since you were hurt, here’s what you should do from the start.

 

First, take a look around and determine if you or anyone, are hurt. If so, taking steps like trying to prevent further injury or loss of blood are the most important thing you can do. Even if some other driver caused you to be injured, it’s just good manners to help the other driver if they are hurt. They may even be so thankful that they admit their fault to you. The worst thing you can do is get angry or start a fight.

 

Second, make sure everyone is safe from being injured further. If you are in the middle of traffic, and you are dizzy, sit down away from traffic. If your vehicle is a traffic hazard and you have accident warning devices like flares or triangles, put them out on the road to warn other drivers and get away from the car. Let the police an other emergency personnel investigate the scene with the vehicles in place and move them more safely at a later point.

 

Third, call the police. Accident reports are extremely helpful if the police will do such a report. Let the police know you are injured immediately. Answer the police questions honestly. But if you are dazed or confused, let them know you need medical treatment and answer only what you feel sure about. Remember, your statements can and will be used against you if you admit fault, and it will be too late and too fishy to later say you didn’t know what you were saying at the scene. Police know that your best recollection is immediately after an accident.

 

Fourth, get the other driver’s information including their names, addresses, driver’s license numbers, make and model of their vehicles, license plate numbers, and their insurance company name and policy number. If there are witnesses, get their names, addresses and telephone numbers as well. If the other driver makes any admissions of fault, write those down as well.

 

Fifth, if you have a camera on your cell phone or in the car and you aren’t too injured, take some photos of the vehicles and the scene. If you can’t do it right away, do it after you are released from the hospital.

Sixth, if you are hurt, obtain medical treatment. Don’t decline the ambulance or hospital examination to save your insurance company money or to be stoic. Take your valuables out of your car if you can and get checked out at the hospital. If you are not hurt, don’t get treatment you don’t need. However, remember, after an accident, you may feel a rush of adrenaline that causes you to only start feeling symptoms of pain a few hours later. If you have a health plan that requires you to obtain permission first, call them and find out where you are allowed to seek treatment.

 

Seventh, call a good personal injury attorney as soon as you have had your initial treatment, so the attorney can gather other important evidence and prevent the insurance company from taking advantage of you and obtaining such things as recorded statements that you feel fine, when many of your symptoms have yet to manifest themselves. A good personal injury lawyer can save you from making a great deal of mistakes and can shoulder much of the hassle of knowing what to do about car repairs, car rentals, medical treatment, witness statements and the like. If you think you will save money by not having an attorney, think again. A good personal injury lawyer can almost always obtain much higher settlements, obtain reductions of medical bills and insurance liens and prevent you from making costly mistakes. Also, most personal injury attorneys advance costs of obtaining police reports, medical records and the like and are paid and reimbursed for these costs only out of any settlement.

 

Eight, you will need to report the accident to your insurance company, but since they will want to take a recorded statement from you, just like any other driver’s insurance company, it’s good advice to retain an attorney first. And if the other driver did not have insurance, remember that it is your own insurance company that will be your adversary. You will also need to report the accident to the Department of Motor Vehicles and your lawyer can give you the form for this.

 

Ninth, do not agree to settle your claim privately with the person at fault for the accident. This almost never works out to your advantage. Don’t agree not to call the police. Police reports that determine the fault for an accident are golden. Your agreement to not involve the police only affords an opportunity for the other driver to change his story and blame you when the police will no longer investigate the accident.

 

Tenth, don’t pay a traffic ticket without a fight if you weren’t at fault or agree to accept a small payment for your vehicle repairs without knowing that the amount will in fact cover the cost of all the repairs.

 

If you’ve had a personal injury in Long Beach, Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Oxnard, Cambria or San Luis Obispo, or anywhere in Southern California, we have the knowledge and resources to be your Long Beach Personal Injury Lawyer and your Santa Monica Personal Injury Attorney. Be sure to hire a California law firm with auto, motorcycle, truck, bicycle, pedestrian, car, bus, train, boat and airplane accident experience, wrongful death experience and insurance law expertise who can ensure you are properly represented and get the compensation you deserve.

 

If you have a personal injury legal matter, a dog bite or if you’ve lost a loved one in a wrongful death accident, call the Law Offices of R. Sebastian Gibson, or visit our website at http://www.SebastianGibsonLaw.com  and learn how we can assist you.

If you have been seriously injured in a car accident, motorcycle accident, tractor-trailer crash, dog bite, slip and fall or some other type of unfortunate event which was not your fault, then you very likely will need an experienced personal injury lawyer to fight the insurance company you will be facing.

Of course, the adversarial insurance company will not tell that you need a lawyer (as detailed below, they will probably try to discourage you from hiring one) and will want you to sign all sorts of forms and provide them with a statement about the event in which you were injured. However, the insurance company will not give you anything in return-except a hard time!

In fact, one question you can you can count on hearing from the opposing insurance adjuster is:

“Have you retained a lawyer?”

If you have not, then you will very likely hear something like this (because these adjusters are so well trained, you probably won’t hear the big sigh of relief on the other end of the phone):

“Well, that is good news. Just so you know, having a lawyer does not increase the value of your claim. In fact, if you get a lawyer, then you will lose one-third of your settlement, plus have to pay their costs. I am glad that you and I will be working this out without lawyers involved.”

The fact of the matter is that insurance companies hate it when you get lawyer to protect your rights throughout the claims process because these professional adjusters know that they will have to deal with someone who has equal or greater knowledge of the personal injury system.

They know that the lawyer will not let their client be taken advantage of.

They know that the injured person’s lawyer will not accept a “low ball” settlement offer.

They know that they will not be able to dupe the lawyer into settling the claim quickly and cheaply before the true nature and extent of the injuries are known.

They know that they will have to pay fair value for the claim or else risk having to go to Court.

Over the last several years, data has been compiled, which demonstrates that injured people with lawyers obtain vastly greater settlement amounts than unrepresented persons.

Additionally, by involving a lawyer early on in the claims process, many of the “pitfalls” or “traps” used by the insurance adjusters can be successfully avoided.

Finally, experienced personal injury lawyers can ensure the client that all available resources for recovery are utilized to their maximum extent, which means that the insurance companies will be forced to treat the injured person’s claim more seriously and ultimately offer to settle at a higher value than without such an experienced attorney involved on behalf of the claimant.

In addition to the reasons why insurance companies hate it when you retain a lawyer, which were outlined in the last section, these companies REALLY get anxious when they learn that you have hired an attorney who has done insurance work.

This type of scenario (that is, facing a former insurance lawyer) is so unsettling for insurance companies because it is very much like a professional sports team having to go up against one of its former coaches who already knows and has well-crafted reactions for all of his prior team’s strategies, tricks and plays!

When the insurance adjusters handling your claim discover that they are going up against a lawyer with an insurance background, they are forced to throw away their normal “playbook” because they understand that the lawyer facing them understands all of their tricks and tactics.

They further realize that they are facing a lawyer who will not commit many of the errors that lots of typical personal injury lawyers (without experience on both side of the process) routinely make.

So remember, if you have been hurt due to the fault of another, then you should speak with an attorney who used to represent insurance companies. The insurance company opposing you will hate it and you will be protected from the insurance tricks which result in injured people being taken advantage of!