Problem: Your car is beat. But the open road is calling.
Solution: Go virtual. Pull up Google Maps, set it on “street view” and off you go! The joys a road trip without spending $ on gas, food, or tolls… all without leaving your computer. Or go old school, and use a fold-able map.
As a Venice Wrongful Death Attorney with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar or larger settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Venice, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, bike, truck, pedestrian, bicycle, or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Venice, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Venice.
As a Lompoc Auto Accident Lawyer with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar or larger settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Lompoc, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, bike, truck, pedestrian, bicycle or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Lompoc, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Lompoc.
Eid al-Adha, the cheery Festival of Sacrifice, is upon us here. This is not the jolly Eid that marks the end of Ramadan, this is the one that commemorates Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son, Ismael, as an act of obedience to God. Ismael may have survived that particular request but the sheep of Tripoli (much like the turkeys of Norfolk) continue to get it in the neck – quite literally – many years later. Prior to the festival empty pick-ups can be seen desperately criss-crossing the city in search of live sheep. Wild-eyed, tethered sheep totter around the back of careering, battered trucks and vans as their drivers then go in search of knives and charcoal. The plaintiff bleating of livestock, held in high walled concrete yards, hangs in the still evening air throughout the city. Little Leafy spied Moftah’s, the landlord, five sheep (“no daddy they are goats”) through a hole in the wall and formed an instant attachment with the wretched creatures. We forced our way into the yard and stood, at a safe distance of course, for what seemed an age examining the finer details of their anatomies. We were, in turn, examined in as much detail by the silent horde of Moftah’s doe-eyed grandchildren; was this, I wondered, a Libyan Stand-off? The ‘goats’ were later introduced to Mrs L. and were the subject of many engrossing conversations throughout the day; “Why is Moftah keeping goats in his garden?”, “You be a goat daddy, and I will be Moftah.” and “Could we have one on the balcony?”
The following morning I observe, from the balcony that Little L. had earmarked for rearing livestock, a small pit being dug in the yard directly below by a large sweaty man. Five imbecilic sheep stare at the activity with interest. “Daddy what is that man digging for?” My voyeurism was abruptly interrupted. Later in the day each of the sheep was led to the pit, tipped over and pinned to the dusty ground by a pile of squirming grandchildren. Moftah’s eldest brother wielded the largest knife I have ever seen and with a flick of his wrist, as if it were an envelope, opened the sheep’s neck. Blood poured into the large pit. “Daddy is that goat asleep?” Good-grief, where can a man watch a butchering in peace and quiet these days?
Soon afterwards billowing clouds of smoke replaced the bleating sounds as barbecues are fired up and the smell of roasting meat is, for a while, stronger than the smell of offal. As the day drew to an end West African immigrants emerged from side-streets with blow-torches and the heads of the butchered sheep and proceeded to burn the hair from the skull before they become useful. How a hairless sheep’s head is used I have yet to discover, but am currently quite comfortable with my ignorance.
Weight loss
The battered car stopped beside me and the window was wound down. “Could you help me sir?” came the request from the driver within. I bent down to see who needed my help. A man wearing glasses that were so thick it would probably be safest if he was not driving. He patted his large stomach. “I am 140 lbs, I want to be 80. What should I do?”
“Well, what about swimming?” I ventured, not sure what elaborate trap, cunningly disguised as a benign question, was being set for me. Would I be bundled into the back of the car with a blanket over my head to the screaming newspaper headlines Another falls victim to the weight question!
“No, I cannot swim. Am I eating too much?”
“Possibly. What about running or cycling?” I continued tentatively.
“I don’t have a bicycle, but I can run. What else?”
“Football is something I play,” I meekly offered.
“Football? How long should I run for? One hour?”
“Well perhaps not straight away. Try fifteen minutes to begin with and build up to an hour over time.”
“Fifteen minutes? How many times a day?”
“Just the once to begin with I think.”
“Excellent and what should I eat?”
Was there no end to this? “Fruit and vegetables are good.”
“I don’t like apples though.”
“OK. What about other fruit?” I asked in an increasingly exasperated tone.
“Yes I can eat other fruit. What is your name?” I told him my name. “Can I give you a lift anywhere?” I convinced him I was happier walking. “You have been very helpful my friend. Have a good evening.” And with that he sped off in a cloud of dust clattering into every pothole his poor eyesight could not see.
Indignant
We took Mrs L. to have her hair done recently. Little L. and I dropped her and Baby L. off and then went to our favourite cafe. From the terrace, if you keep your head tilted at 45 degrees upwards, all you can see is the deep blue of the Mediterranean, and not the derelict seafront behind the large white constructor’s fence. Luxurious leather seats, cool jazz and delicious fruit juices have us beating a path towards it most weeks at some time or another. Little L. and I sat talking about goats and Lego, listening to Herb Alpert whilst sharing a strawberry juice and slice of cheesecake. The cafe is not cheap, but I was confident that I had picked up enough cash even for a place like this. I was wrong. I explained to our waiter that I was embarrassingly short, by one Dinar, and would not be able to settle the entire bill. As is always the way here my embarrassment was waved away. “No problem, no problem. Next time.” I thanked him and the proprietor, who was sitting behind the till, for their generosity and made to leave. Our mustachioed waiter caught us at the steps down to the street. Tapping his wallet pocket in a conspiratorial manner, he said “Sir, if you are short of money I have plenty and would be happy to give you some.” Being suddenly exposed like this, on an emotional landscape that was not at all familiar, was unsettling. Feeling both touched and indignant I said, probably too loudly, “No, no! I have plenty of money at home! I just came out with too little. That’s all. Many thanks all the same!” I grabbed Little L’s hand and hurried off. In all likelyhood too quickly.
Tiger Woods, billionaire golf master – to even say that is an attocity, got into a car accident near his home at 2:25am this morning but he is not seriously injured. Seems that Woosey Woods could not get out of his monstrosity of a vehicle and his “wife” had to use one of his golf clubs to smash the back window and pull him out.
So – now we know that Elin wears the pants in that family and it must be true that Swedish girls can impregnant themselves several times??? LOFLMAO – what a proofta. No alcohol was found but he had all the classic symptoms of a cheating spouse who was high on drugs. (My assessment)
What is yours?
—Bonju Patten
Ever since the national press devoured the story of a fellow in California whose Lexus accelerated off a roadway, triggering the recall of millions of Toyotas, I have expressed doubt about the risk of stuck accelerators in Toyotas. I see parallels between this recall and the unfounded claims of unintended acceleration by the Audi 5000 in the 1980s.
First, let’s put some information out there that has been overlooked by the national press, who is eager for a doomsday story affecting millions of cars. That Lexus that crashed in California was a dealership loaner car. I did not know this until I did some further reading – the national press has never mentioned this. The driver was likely unfamiliar with the car, and therefore panicked when the car exhibited odd behaviour. Another thing that has gone unmentioned by the national press is that the dealership had the wrong floormats in the car. Incorrectly-sized floormats from a different Lexus model were in place, which increased the risk of the floormat interfering with pedal operation. And lastly, why wouldn’t a highway patrol officer know to shift into neutral to keep the engine from driving the wheels and accelerating? I point to unfamiliarity with the loaner vehicle. Perhaps the driver, in the fog of confusion and panic, could not find or operate the shifter. As for turning off the car, confusion/unfamiliarity may have played a role there as well. The crashed vehicle may have had the push-button start system, but I don’t know for sure. The driver may not have known to hold the button down to turn the engine off.
This crash is what set the ball rolling with this madness, which is why I have taken the time to address it. I think the fault of the crash rests more with the driver and a poor understanding of how to handle the situation than it does with a design problem. So why do I think this recall is pure bunk? Let me explain, from a Prius owner’s perspective.
First, you need to have some really jacked-up floormats for them to trap the accelerator. In my 2007 Prius, there is a ton of room between the bottom of the accelerator and the floor.
I saw a video where a gas pedal was fully depressed and then it became stuck under the floormat. I don’t know how this is possible. I would expect the spring in the accelerator to offer more than enough force for the pedal to push back past the floormat, unless the floormat managed to cover up half the accelerator or the floormat was really heavy. But again, how would this happen? Who would have such heavy floormats, and who would be so sloppy as to allow their floormat to slide forward over the pedal? For years, I have checked the position of the driver’s side floormat before driving. It’s not out of concern about the accelerator, it’s a concern for cleanliness. I want to make sure the floormat is properly positioned so I don’t get the carpet dirty. Additionally, if the factory mats are used with the hooks, you have nothing to worry about. The mats won’t move. If you look at the above photos of my mats, you will notice I am using aftermarket Wal-Mart all-weather floormats that don’t connect to the hooks. If they are out of position, I just give the mats a little tug and move them back. They are never out of position by more than an inch.
I pushed the accelerator all the way to the floor to see if it could get caught on my floormat. My accelerator ended up pushing down onto the floormat. Absolutely positively no way the pedal could get stuck under the mat since it was pushing down on the mat. Could it get wedged against the mat? Maybe, but not likely. Even less likely considering it is rare to floor the throttle.
I took the factory floormat out of my trunk and installed it correctly, using the floor hooks. I was dumbfounded that this recall is even taking place. The floormat came nowhere near the gas pedal, and the floormat was securely anchored. Below are pics of the factory floormat correctly installed, and how the pedal is positioned relative to the floormat when it is fully floored. Apologies for flipping you the bird in one pic.
So to summarize point number one, I think it is really unlikely that your Toyota will get stuck accelerating unless you were silly enough to install the wrong-sized floormat or stacked your floormats.
Point number two – why don’t people know to put their car into neutral when it gets stuck accelerating? It’s just common sense. The [D]rive gear position means motive force is being sent to the wheels. Put it in [N]eutral, and the engine will just rev. The engine computer has a rev limiter and will not allow the engine to rev to the point of blowing up. With the engine still on, you will have full power steering and power braking, essential for getting your car safely to a stop on the side of the road. If you turn the engine off, steering and braking will be more difficult since you no longer have the power assist.
Point number three – people need to be educated about their car. Related to point number one, people should be aware of proper care and placement of floormats. The main jist of point three is that there is some unfamiliarity with the push-start buttons on newer cars. The Prius is the most widespread push-button car, but some Nissan Altimas, Lexuses, and the new Buick LaCrosse also have start buttons. There are probably more cars I am not aware of. I knew that simply hitting the power button on my Prius wouldn’t turn the engine off while driving. I knew I had to hold it down, but I didn’t know for how long. I’ll fess up to that. For the record, in a Prius you hold the button down for three seconds.
I don’t think there is a problem with these cars. It is more of a driver education issue. Make sure your floormats are installed properly, know how to put your car into neutral while it’s in motion, and know how to turn the car off if necessary.
Toyota is addressing the (unlikely, in my opinion) issue of floormats trapping the accelerator by trimming the bottom of the pedal to make it shorter. This will give more clearance between the pedal and the floor, but I think there is already sufficient clearance and this modification is therefore unnecessary.
On some cars, Toyota is reprogramming the computer so the brake supersedes the accelerator. If the brake is applied at the same time as the accelerator, the throttle will be cut off so the brake has maximum effect and doesn’t have to compete with simultaneous acceleration. That makes total sense to me, and the cars should have been programmed this way to begin with. However, the Prius is not among the cars getting this reprogramming. In reading up about this recall, I found this video in a PriusChat forum topic:
Amazing. With a floored accelerator, the Prius’ engine cut back to idle and the brakes brought the car to a stop. With the car at a stop, brake and accelerator pedals depressed, the driver let off the brake and the car lurched forward toward the end of the video. This confirmed the brakes were overriding the accelerator. Is this evidence that the Prius’ computer is already programmed to override the throttle when the brake is depressed? I don’t know, but it certainly looks that way. I would like to try this exercise myself sometime.
It would be nice if Toyota would explain why the Prius is lumped in with all these cars for the recall, but is only getting the shortened (eventually replaced) pedal but not getting the computer update or the modified carpeting. Does this mean the Prius’ engine computer is already smart enough to handle a stuck gas pedal? Do the Prius owners only need to keep an eye on their floormats?
In that case, it is not necessary for a full-blown recall. The drivers only need to be educated about their cars. Properly install and maintain your floormats to eliminate the slim possibility of the accelerator getting trapped. Know how to put your car into neutral while driving. And lastly, know how to turn off your car. In fact, Luscious Garage, the folks who made that earlier video, made two more videos about how to put a Prius into neutral and how to turn it off while driving.
Putting Prius in Neutral
Turning Prius Off
These are all driver education issues. The Camry, Avalon, and Lexus ES/IS models should have their computers reprogrammed under the recall, but the Prius seems to already handle simultaneous gas/brake pedal action correctly. Just have all the Prius owners watch the above videos, and tell us to check our floormats. We’re big boys and girls, we can do this. There is no need to trim or replace our accelerator pedals.
Personally, I will decline to have this recall work done on my Prius. My car works fine. I can maintain it and the floormats fine. I don’t want the pedal feel of my car to be changed. I know what to do in the highly unlikely event the accelerator gets stuck. Of course, I’ll get the work done when it is time to sell the car. If I trade it in, it’s the dealer’s job to make sure it has all recall work done.
In the end, I think Toyota will be vindicated like Audi. In Audi’s case, it was found that the cars did not randomly accelerate on their own. They simply had closely-positioned pedals. Drivers were hitting the gas instead of the brake before shifting, and were basically doing neutral drops when putting the car into drive or reverse. The press went to town digging up reports and interviewing people, and almost put Audi out of business. Fast forward two decades and now we’re hearing stories from people who think their Toyota accelerated by itself. All of these supposed cases of Toyota unintended acceleration are probably the result of driver negligence (improperly placed floormats) or driver ignorance (not knowing about neutral or shutting off the car). I wonder if Toyota is including the Prius in the recall as a CYA kind of thing, to show they are doing something for their halo car.
Sold
A luxury BMW 7 Series previously owned by music phenomenon George Michael is for sale on Auto Trader. Former Wham! singer and solo artist George Michael was the first owner of this top-of-the-range BMW 750i, which he bought in 1998.
And while George Michael’s BMW 750i cost £90,000 new, you can get your hands on the luxury motor for just £6,495. Inside, the George Michael’s old BMW features white leather seats, a sat-nav, phone, ten speaker sound system and THREE TVs.
View our slide show of George Michael’s old BMW
Sold
A BMW 7-Series owned by the original Material Girl Madonna is for sale on Auto Trader. Madge is the only owner of this 2002 BMW 745 Li, which boasts a range of luxury features.
Powered by a 4.4-litre V8, the Beemer produces 333bhp and 332lb/ft of pulling power. This enables the 2.5-ton monster to rocket from 0-62mph (100kph) in 6.3 seconds before running out of puff at an electronically limited 155mph.
Inside, the saloon – which cost £61,000 new – is fitted with sat-nav, TV, air-con, Nappa leather seats and all-round electrics
However, Madge’s BMW isn’t the greenest vehicle. Its large V8 engine manages a combined fuel economy of 24.4mpg and emits 280g/km of carbon dioxide meaning an annual tax bill of £300 per year.
Jimmy Greaves’ BMW for sale
Sold
Fancy getting your hands on an England legend’s luxury BMW? Auto Trader has one for sale.
We’ve got a fully loaded BMW 745i owned by the prolific striker Jimmy Greaves, who was a member of England’s victorious 1966 World Cup-winning squad.
The 2003 Beemer features extras such as sat-nav, a TV and DVD player, fridge and a telephone, along with parking sensors and climate control.
Celebrity Cars – The Complete Guide
Find more about New and Used BMW Cars of Auto Trader UK
Image : http://www.flickr.com
Ihr Traumauto ist nicht die beste Auto, wenn es ohne Auto Zubehör. Autozubehör sind Schönheit Booster, die verwendet werden, das gesamte Erscheinungsbild eines Autos erneuern kann. Sie können ein normales Auto in etwas Turn-Geist weht. Wenn Sie haben, dass mehr Geld auszugeben, ist es wirklich wert, Ihr Auto mit einigen eleganten und stilvollen Accessoires schmücken.
Attraktive runde Verpackungen für Lenkräder und bequemen Sitzbezüge machen können IhreFreunde drool vor Neid. Sie können auch beeindruckende Grill Aufstockung der externen Aussehen der Wagen noch eindrucksvoller zu machen. Denken Sie daran, Ihre bevorzugte Farbe so zu wählen, wie Sie mit Ihrem Fahrzeug Ihre Vorlieben anpassen.
Andere als interne Änderung, können Sie auch Reifen Zubehör, das Rollen der Räder machen Sie Ihre Reifen kann mehr Auge catchy und beeindruckend. Die Felgen des Autos spielen ebenfalls eine wichtige Rolle zu neidisch-Bälle zu gewinnen. Wählen Sie die richtige Größe der Felge passend zumallgemeine Aussehen Ihres Fahrzeugs. Sie können auch LED-Leuchten, Ihr Auto hinzufügen, um es flashier. Mit diesen Lichtern wird Ihr kann erstaunlich bemerkbar, wenn Sie unterwegs sind sie auf der Straße. Andere, als sein Auto sieht schrill, können diese Lichter einfach den Weg ebnen für Sie während nebligen Tag.
Nachdem Sie das Äußere Ihres Autos eingerichtet haben, ist es Zeit, an die Innendekoration zu denken. Mit Hilfe von kundenspezifischen Kfz-Zubehör können Sie schaffen dieperfekte Ambiente, daß, wer im Auto sitzt, machen sich zu Hause fühlt. Sie sollten erwägen, High-Tech-Luftfilter und Klimaanlagen Ton bis zu einer Temperatur von Ihrem Auto. Dies wird jemand in Ihrem Auto den perfekten Komfort Ebene erforderlich.
Andere als Polster Sitze und High-Tech-Luftfilter, kann man das lösen bis Wi-Fi Music Systeme zusammen mit Tieftöner können Sie sicherstellen, dass Ihre Freunde und genießen Sie die beste Qualität der Musik auf Reisen. Wenn Sie ein techyPerson, können Sie sogar einen Schritt weiter gehen als diese. Sie können Video-System zu installieren, um mehr Spaß und Unterhaltung im Auto zu ermöglichen. Einige der Top-Marken zu prüfen, ob Sie beabsichtigen, Audio-und Video-Systemen zu installieren sind Kenwood und Alpine. Allerdings wird diese System-Anlagen, die nicht ganz billig. So stellen Sie sicher, dass Sie über genügend Mittel, damit Sie es eingestellt haben.
Mit modernsten Breitband-Technologie können Sie jetzt für Autozubehör leicht aus dem Internet suchen. Gehen Sie einfach aufGoogle und geben Sie den Suchbegriff "Auto Zubehör", und es sollten Sie mit vielen Seiten zurückzugeben, die Ihnen alle Arten von Zubehör für Ihr Traumauto. Diese Online-Inserate in der Regel mit Rabatten, die Sie um etwas Geld zu sparen und gleichzeitig immer noch Spaß Gebäude Ihr Traumauto kommen lassen.
My Links : http://astore.amazon.com/tw-madison-20 http://astore.amazon.de/shop-9-21 http://university-blog.co.cc/ http://diamond.getblogeasy.com/ http://lee-ji-woo.co.cc/blog/
As a Lake Elsinore Auto Accident Attorney with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar or larger settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Lake Elsinore, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, bike, truck, pedestrian, bicycle or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Lake Elsinore, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Lake Elsinore.
As a Laguna Hills Accident Insurance Attorney with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar or larger settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Laguna Hills, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, bike, truck, pedestrian, bicycle or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Laguna Hills, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Laguna Hills.
As a Chino Wrongful Death Insurance Attorney with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar or larger settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Chino, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, bike, truck, pedestrian, bicycle, or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Chino, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Chino.
As a Moreno Valley Motorcycle Accident Insurance Attorney with millions of dollars in settlements and multiple million dollar plus settlements from over thirty years of experience in or around Moreno Valley, other nearby cities and internationally, I know many of you are attempting to settle your own personal injury, dog bite and wrongful death cases by yourselves for the maximum and the biggest settlement you can to save the cost of an attorney.
In this article I’ll tell you the secrets of how attorneys negotiate for top dollar and I’ll also tell you why insurance companies lick their chops and rub their hands together with glee when individuals try to settle their claims without an attorney and why, in most cases, you’ll receive a larger, much greater amount in your pocket or in the trust fund you set up for any children injured in the accident, even after an attorney’s fee and costs if you hire a reputable and experienced personal injury attorney.
If you’ve been the victim of a car, motorcycle, truck, pedestrian, bicycle, or auto accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been the victim of a dog bite or animal attack, you can visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com for more information and call us at any of the numbers easily found on our website.
First, you need to know that insurance companies evaluate cases two ways. As soon as you begin negotiating with the insurance company yourself, they evaluate your case, unfortunately, in terms of a nuisance value matter. They’ve settled tens or hundreds of thousands of cases with individuals before for paltry amounts and they will expect they can settle your case for a measly amount as well.
Why do they look at you as if you’re chopped meat? As soon as you tell them you are negotiating your own settlement, they know you’re trying to save money. To them, that means you may even be desperate. They also know you won’t be as knowledgeable about their tricks and tactics and like those tens or hundreds of thousands of people before you, they know how they can play you until you either become so frustrated you settle for their bad offer or become panicked that your time is running out.
The second way they evaluate a case, namely one presented by a lawyer, is an analysis of what the case’s true settlement value is based on the attorney’s skill and experience, how prepared the case is for litigation in the event it doesn’t settle, and the actual value of the injuries and associated pain and suffering, wage loss and other out of pocket expenses.
To settle your case for the largest amount possible, which may be the policy limits of the insurance policy, depending upon the severity of your injuries, you need to get the insurance adjuster to evaluate your case in the same manner they would as if an attorney were negotiating with them. While most insurance companies, unfortunately, simply won’t do that, here’s what you need to do to try to obtain the maximum settlement value.
First, you need to obtain all of your medical records and bills. You can’t rely on the insurance company to do this. As soon as you tell the insurance company you want them to do this or agree to having them do it and tell you how much your medical bills come to and what your medical records say, you are giving up control of the situation. I can’t stress this enough.
You will need to sign authorization forms to obtain your medical records and bills and pay the cost of obtaining those medical records and bills (the cost of which can range from $15 to hundreds of dollars) from each hospital, ambulance company, doctor, chiropractor, radiologist, emergency room billing service, etc. Some medical providers require you to use their authorization forms. Some require you to agree to their using a photocopy service to copy your records at a higher cost. Some medical providers require one fee for your bills and another fee for your medical records.
Just obtaining all of your medical records and bills is one of the most time consuming aspects of handling personal injury cases. And, to make matters worse, you’re still not through with your medical providers. When your treatment is complete and you have all of your medical records and bills and the first settlement offer is made to you, you’ll need to call each of your medical providers or their billing offices again to learn if you have any balance owing (and you can expect to be on the phone repeatedly and for long periods of time to learn this information) and in many cases you will need to send them another authorization form before they’ll tell you this information.
You will need to obtain a copy of the police report. This is a much simpler process. Some police departments charge between $10 to $40 for a copy, while other departments provide them to you for free. You can pick it up at the police or CHP office yourself or request one by mail with an authorization form and a check for the proper fee.
You’ll also need to obtain your wage loss information on a wage loss form from your employer if you suffered any wage losses or had to use up valuable sick time, personal time, or vacation days.
You should obtain witness statements if there is any issue as to the liability of the other driver for the accident and you should take photos of the scene if there was something wrong with the road conditions or other unusual circumstances.
You will also need to obtain a number of good photographs of your car damage, copies of the vehicle repair bills and estimates and receipts for any items damaged in your vehicle.
Here’s a secret. In California you are entitled to the cost of a replacement child seat if one was in the accident. It’s automatic. Just tell the insurance company the make and model or find out the cost for the make and model child seat and the insurance company will send you a check for a new one, even if the old one wasn’t broken. Why? It’s in the California insurance code. The insurance companies, however, don’t volunteer this information. Why? They’re in business to make money, not pay it out.
Finally, when all your treatment is done, you will need to put together a demand package with a demand letter reviewing the facts of the accident and the negligence of the other driver that made him or her at fault, a summary of your injuries and medical treatment (from your medical records), an itemization of your medical bills, a discussion of your pain and suffering and how the injuries impacted your life, a discussion of your wage loss and how you determined the amount, and finally the amount of your demand and a time limit (40 days – the time allotted under the insurance code) for the insurance company to respond with their offer. The demand letter should be a minimum of four pages in length. Some of ours have been close to twenty pages. Accompanying the demand letter should be copies of all of your medical records and bills, color copies of the car damage photos, copies of the repair bills and estimates, any wage loss documentation and any other relevant items such as witness statements, etc.
If all of this is too much work for you to accomplish (and it is a lot when you are just trying to get better, get on with your life, raise a family and still go to work to put food on the table) you may want to hire our law firm to represent you.
The reason why, in most cases you will receive more, even after an attorney’s fees and costs are taken out, is that insurance companies offer much more to an attorney handling your case than when you are attempting to settle it yourself. In addition, an experienced and reputable lawyer can also obtain reductions from your health insurance company and from any medical providers with a balance with regards to what amount has to be paid back to them out of any settlement.
When you rely on the insurance company to pay your medical bills, and then simply pay you a skimpy amount on top, you are giving them the right to determine what bills they think were “reasonable” and to obtain any reductions in the bills to save themselves money. When an attorney obtains a reduction in your bills or your health insurance company lien, the amount the attorney saves increases the amount of your net settlement.
Keep in mind that as soon as you start negotiating your claim by yourself, it’s almost impossible for an attorney to persuade the insurance company to evaluate your case in the higher category type of claim. At our law firm, while we’ll take on a case that may be months old where the injured victim has simply been receiving medical treatment, we won’t take on the case in most cases if the victim has already received a bad offer from the insurance company. At that stage it’s usually too late for an attorney to make much of a difference.
Hopefully, this article has provided you with some insights as to how to obtain the maximum settlement from an insurance company for an auto, car, motorcycle, bicycle, pedestrian, truck, dog bite, or wrongful death claim. There is much more that an experienced attorney does, especially in the negotiation stage to maximize the settlement and this is where an attorney’s experience kicks in.
An attorney such as Sebastian Gibson who has been negotiating these cases with many of the same adjusters for decades, knows the tactics and negotiating style of them and their companies and knows how refute the talking points their insurance companies train their adjusters to use in negotiations.
What causes many attorneys to be unable to settle their cases and who then find themselves with no alternative but to file a lawsuit in court and face two to five years of litigation before the matter settles or goes to jury, is to get angry (some even scream and yell) with the adjuster, box themselves into a corner and tell the adjuster something along the lines of, “If that’s the best you can do, we’re filing suit.” The adjuster’s response to this is naturally, “go ahead.”
An insurance company doesn’t really care if they have to dump your case onto the case load of their attorneys who are already handling tens of thousands of such cases. One more case, makes no difference to them at all. They also know, you may give up or settle for even less when you learn from an attorney how much just the court costs will be. Just to file a lawsuit in most courts alone incurs a $350.00 or larger filing fee. Depositions can cost over a thousand dollars if they are lengthy. And all such court costs come out of your settlement, even if you have a contingency fee attorney handling your case.
Sadly, many of these same lawyers take this step or let their improperly trained staff members (secretaries and clerks) force the matter to such an impasse and then file suit without properly informing the client of the negotiations that took place and led them to that point.
If you are negotiating with an insurance company yourself, there’s no need to be unpleasant. Yes, you are probably going to hear that the insurance adjuster has evaluated your case to be worth much less than you think it’s worth. But you’re forgetting that, that’s just their first offer. Communicate with the adjuster. Tell them how the injuries affected your life and tell them what you still go through today with the pain you still have. You’ll be surprised how many adjusters will actually relate to what you tell them.
Unfortunately, just as there are bad attorneys out there, there are also some lousy insurance adjusters and insurance companies to deal with as well. They’re supposed to get back to you in 40 days with an offer after you present them with your demand package. Some take longer. Some will sound unpleasant, even snotty. And once they make their first offer, it can take weeks sometimes to reach the adjuster again to make your counter-offer. Sometimes the negotiations can take months. If you want to get the most you can for your case, you need to be patient. Your job, just as it is the job of your attorney, is to get these unpleasant insurance adjusters to warm up. I ask them how the weather is, how they’re doing, if their busy, anything to get them to open up to me. You’d be surprised how far a little kindness goes.
We wish you good luck and a speedy recovery from your injuries. You’ll find that your health, in many cases, will drastically improve, once you remove yourself from the stress of handling your case and resolve it either yourself or with the assistance of our law firm by way of settlement. If on the other hand, your case goes into litigation, as do the cases of many lawyers who don’t have the settlement experience or negotiating tools to settle their cases advantageously for their clients, your stress level will almost certainly rise.
The law firm of Sebastian Gibson handles personal injury cases in Moreno Valley, and throughout Southern and Central California and handle wrongful death cases throughout the state. To learn more about Sebastian Gibson and the other areas of law handled by the law firm, visit the Sebastian Gibson website.
We invite you to visit our website at http://www.sebastiangibsonlaw.com and call us if you’ve been seriously injured in a personal injury auto, motorcycle, car, truck, pedestrian, or bicycle accident, lost a loved one in a wrongful death or been injured in a dog bite or animal attack in Moreno Valley.
