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Published by Allen Brown
Whether you’re involved in a slip fall (premise liability) accident, motor vehicle accident, or any other type of accident, you’ve got a legal right to seek compensation incurred for your injuries. Understand that in such instances, there’s an insurance policy that can cover your losses. While this is the case, most insurance providers prefer Out-of-Court settlement to avoid pursuing the case in court.
While it saves them the cost of defending the case, you also don’t have the burden of going through a process that can sometimes take months or years. If you opt to take your case to trial, you risk not getting compensated if you lose the case. So, when solving your injury-related case settlement, it’s a compromise between you and the party liable for your accident-related injuries.
Regardless of your plan to settle your injury-related case, this guide explores the best approaches to ensure that your concerns are handled amicably.
1. Seek Out Witnesses
If you’re not planning to settle your case in court, witness statements are crucial to boosting your allegation in a personal injury case. Witness accounts can strengthen your side of the story while at the same time offering first-hand information of who may be at fault. If you’ve got a witness who wasn’t there at the time of the accident and might have spotted you in the aftermath, they can attest that you were hurt.
In most cases, witness testimony consists of lay and expert witness testimony. The expert witness in a case has specialized knowledge, experience, and training regarding the different aspects of your case. Such witnesses include medical experts, economists, or rehabilitation professionals. Lay witnesses are those who testify in a case based on their observation.
2. Collect Substantial Evidence
Evidence produced in court can help convince the juries and judges of the fact in a particular case. You can produce different types of evidence in court, but the most common in large personal injury cases is physical evidence. These are tangible materials, including broken lights or shreds of clothing. Other accepted forms of proof include documentation, pictures, and video.
To gather such materials, you’ll need to take notes immediately after an incident. Also, don’t forget to include the injuries you sustained. Besides taking notes, you’ll need to get medical records or obtain a police report from the nearest police station.
3. Learn to Manage Your Expectations
When negotiating damage associated with your injuries, there isn’t an objective way to measure “pain and suffering”. In most instances, calculating the value of an injury claim will take into consideration documented hard costs like lost wages and medical bills. In case of severe injuries, these cost claims can be up to six times the total hard costs.
It’s also worth noting that insurance claim adjusters are sometimes suspicious of whiplash or other soft-tissue injuries. It can sometimes prove challenging to make them pay hard costs relating to soft-tissue claims.
4. Get To Know What Includes Pain And Suffering
If you’re negotiating a car accident injury claim, you should know what counts as pain and suffering. This is important because an adjuster will know that they’re dealing with an individual familiar with the settlement negotiation process. Remember that “pain and suffering” refers to the emotional distress and physical pain you endured due to the insured’s negligence.
For instance, if you had no issues with your back and now it hurts every day following an accident, the pain and suffering compensation will cover the pain you suffer every day. Still, suffering covers psychological torture such as terror, helplessness, and fear. An excellent example is feeling embarrassed because you need help to bathe.
5. Have Justification For Low Offers
In case an adjuster chooses to make a low offer, which is a tact they use to check whether your claim is worth it, don’t rush to lower the amount set in your demand letter. It would help if you asked the adjuster to justify the low offer then take notes of the reason they provide. Based on the strengths of the reasons provided, you should lower your demand slightly.
The adjuster will most definitely make a counteroffer that you can bargain and reach a fair settlement offer. You need to understand that even larger personal injury cases settle at some point; it’s just a matter of patience.
The law always has a way of punishing individuals whose reckless actions result in injuries or death. If an individual’s careless action leads to your injuries, you’ve got the option to gather witnesses and hire an attorney to have the case rules against you. In your quest to get compensation, the few ideas highlighted in this guide will help resolve your case quickly.