Accident victims that do not have experience with the task of dealing with an insurance company could end up accepting some less-than-fair settlement terms.
General rules for such victims
Document all of your losses
—Save all the bills from doctors and medical facilities
—Save all the parking stubs that came from a parking lot at a building where a doctor’s office was located, or a lot at a medical facility
Anticipate a call from the adjuster at the opposing party’s insurance company
—Get the name and contact number of that same caller
—Be polite; do not demonstrate feelings of anger
How to work with a lawyer
With a lawyer’s help, compose a demand letter and send it to the adjuster; do this after arriving at the point of maximum medical improvement (MMI)
After studying your losses, fix in your mind a number that represents the lowest acceptable offer. Victims that have such a figure in their minds are better prepared for taking part in the negotiation process. Ask your injury lawyer in Mississauga to review any documents that the insurance company has asked you to sign.
No accident victim should exaggerate or under represent his or her medical condition.
Insurance companies view an exaggeration or an under representation as a warning. To them it suggests that the claimant might be trying to get a bigger settlement.
Do not think that the need to avoid an exaggeration or an under representation only applies to cases where the victim hopes to get compensated for an injury. The need to avoid such false or unverified claims also applies to any claimant that seeks no more than reimbursement for money spent on repairs to a damaged vehicle.
—Someone that is focused on damage to the vehicle many have assumed that no one in the impacted vehicle got injured.
—The insurance company might suspect that the claimant has underrepresented the extent of his or her damages. As a result, the adjuster might look for a reason to suggest that the claimant/driver was partly to blame for a certain type of damage. If multiple vehicles had been involved, it could be an injury to someone in a 3rd or 4th vehicle.
—The best way to prevent the creation of a hint of under representation is to have the driver and all of the vehicle’s occupants examined by a medical professional during the 24-hour period that followed the accident.
A note on the above advice
Notice that all of a hit vehicle’s occupants should pay a visit to a doctor’s office, a hospital or a clinic. That includes any children or teenagers. If necessary, take a minor to a pediatrician’s office, so that the same doctor can know about the accident’s occurrence.
