In this article, I'm going to answer the question “How long will it take for the insurance company to make me an offer in my injury case”. This is a common question. There's a myth that people who get hurt at work, in a car crash, a fall down or however they get hurt it is because that they're all money hungry. They're tend to lie just to get more money and they can't wait to go to the court because it's like a lawsuit lottery. They're earning money off of it.
The truth is that the vast majority of all people who call me up with an injury case didn't want to have to call a lawyer. They're nice people and they're not trying to get rich. They have reasonable expectations and they're just getting treated terribly by the insurance company. Whether it's the workers company, insurance company, a car insurance company or even worse that the insurance company is being nice to them. Butters them up, makes them lower their guard and then they'll deny the claim, cut off benefits. They'll stop calling you back or when you call them and when you look for a doctor it needs a pre-approval and then they'll delay you. They do it because they know that in an injury case, the longer you delay seeing a doctor the harder it is to prove in front of a jury.
You Need To Go To A Doctor
Most people, judges, and juries want you to go to a doctor and if you won't do it, they will be assumed you weren't hurt and that is hard. I guarantee at least half of the people are going to the doctor is like the last thing in the world you want to do. When you're very sick and injured before and you put off going to the doctor just because it's a disruption. You're busy and you want to see if it'll just go away you don't want to get stuck in treatment. You're interrupting your life just to get therapy. It's just the way people are.
If the question is, do you have a perfect case and did you do everything perfect? No one does everything perfect. Everybody screws something up here and there. If we judge each other harshly because everything's not storybook perfect, we're going to do a lot of judging. The point is these sorts of things are not always perfect. They go sideways sometimes and am I talking about medical treatment so much because when is your case going to settle, it is going to settle.
What Your Insurance Company Needs To Know
Usually when you have reached Maximum Medical Improvement or (MMI) in a worker's company case or in a third-party case, they don't really use the term MMI or maximum medical improvement in a car accident or fall down. They would just release you like you're as good as you can get and you can return as needed if you have problems in the future. When you're released or you still have an injury that doesn't get completely better. Your injury plateaus are a special time in an injury case because when your treatment wraps up or you are not getting any better that's a signal to your lawyer to order all of the medical records, summarize them and to do a demand letter.
A lot of lawyers don't summarize the records. They just write a one-page demand letter and settle your case. In my circumstances, we write a very detailed demand letter like some of my demand letters are almost 20 pages long because we spoon feed and break down your injuries in a way that very few injury law firms do and it gets us great results.
My point is, usually an insurance company will contact you at the very beginning and offer you garbage money or they know what the injury is once you settle your case or the case is over.
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Talk To A Lawyer First
I always tell people, don't take that money immediately. Talk to a lawyer first. The second time is when you're done going to the doctor or right after a surgery, that is a good time to reach out to the insurance company and attempt to settle it. Why? Because you're aware of what the injury is you've had your surgery. If you recovered your treatment's plateaued meaning, we know what your medical outcome is.
Maybe you're completely better, or you're not ever going to be better or maybe you're going to have a permanent limp. As long as we know what your permanent outcome is, we can start negotiating. The reason for that is let's say you break your leg; you don't have surgery. After the bone heals, you're awesome, you're running a marathon. You're squatting 300 pounds on your back or you're doing your job where you have to squat down and crawl around all day.
The Outcome Of You Injury
That's one outcome. Same fracture, a different guy gets surgery and now he's got a limp, he can't crawl around and he can't run. Walking is painful. Same injury, completely different outcomes. One is worth a heck of a lot more money than the other one.
That's why we need to know what your medical outcome is before we settle your case. Don't ever let anybody settle your case until you know what you're going to be left with right. When your treatment plateaus, when is another right time to settle a case, when insurance companies settle right after you file a lawsuit.
Why? Because in most insurance companies, they have a different insurance adjuster handling your claim before you file a lawsuit. It gets transferred to another insurance adjuster after you file a lawsuit. And what will happen, a lot of times is I'll be trying to settle a case for somebody with an insurance adjuster who's like completely unreasonable and I'm like “All right, forget it. I'm filing a lawsuit”. After I file the lawsuit, it gets reassigned to the new adjuster and looks at my demand and ask why is the case not settled. And I will agree and then we can settle the case.
The Plaintiff's Deposition
Another hot time to settle cases after a plaintiff's deposition. Usually you don't have depositions in workers company cases but in other kinds of cases like car accidents, a ripe time to settle a case is after a plane of step position. The reason and a deposition are like a statement in Illinois that they can ask you three hours’ worth of questions and ask you background questions like how does the accident happened and some medical questions.
They're discovering the facts of the case but they're also seeing how good of a witness you are. How good is your memory and being truthful appearing you are in these sorts of things. If you do a great job at your deposition many times the defense lawyer will report to the insurance company that you're a really good witness and that they should get out of the case they should settle the case
Sometimes that works, I usually call the defense lawyer or the adjuster and just say that my client did a great job. Resolve this thing after the plane of Step. Honestly once a trial date is set or a trial date is coming up, that's a hot time to settle an injury case. If your case is set for trial and a lot of these cases settle on the day of trial like on the morning. It's set to go to trial and part of that is because judges look at these cases and they know most of them should be settling. They know most of them shouldn't be going to trial but it's because the offer stinks or maybe the injured person or their lawyer is having like an inflated sense of what the case value is or you know from the judge's perspective obviously.
The Judges usually try to settle the cases if they can and if they can't settle them then they go to trial but when you have a judge or somebody like that pushing to resolve the case then it is what it is. It's a good time to settle your case. The one thing you should be aware of is that there's no way to make somebody settle a case. There's no way to make an insurance company make an offer.
Talk To Your Adjuster
Now in my office, we're very aggressive pre-suit to try and get cases settled so we do an excellent summary. Do an excellent demand letter on almost all of our cases and then we call and call squeaky wheel gets the grease at the insurance company. We want them to look at the letter, to read the file, to look at the medical, to pay attention to the parts that we've highlighted and shown them that we want them within 30 days to give us an offer.
If they're not willing to do it within 30 days then we want to know who would be willing to do it. To get a different adjust or even call your supervisor. Whoever we need to look at it just to accurately evaluate it. I settled the case a couple months ago where that exact thing happened. The adjuster was a young guy. I could tell that he was young and he just wasn't getting it and I said some free advice to him that if we can't settle this case within the next 30 days, I'm filing a lawsuit and this is a million-dollar case.
My advice to you is talk to your adjuster. Let your adjuster know it's such and such kind of case and he should he or she should probably call me. Well they called me and I got the entire insurance policy for the client. It's not just the demand letters, it's the experience in finesse and negotiating that really makes a difference but you can't force Readers Digest.
The summary of this is you that can't force anyone to settle a case or can't force anyone to make an offer. They can sit on your demand and never make an offer. You can call them a hundred times and it's not going to matter. They can show you a crummy offer and they can decide not to come up from it and listen many times it has nothing to do with your lawyer.
Your Lawyer Will Fight With You
Your lawyer's reputation, professionalism. It's literally you're either dealing with a crummy insurance company or you're dealing with an insurance company where the company itself is a reputable one but you just got an adjuster with. A “B” in their Bonnet or something in other part of their body where they're like crabby mean no we're not going to pay. Whatever it is, you get people like that even at the good insurance companies and then from there, our only option is to surrender or fight and I don't like to forfeit. If they need your money, the good news for you.
I do all the fighting. You mainly have a harder kind of job in its own way but you have to wait and waiting is very frustrating. That's kind of how that works. No way to force demand but those are the times when you can settle a case. Sometimes you'll get a crap crummy offer right away before you even talk to a lawyer. I don't think you should ever take it then after your treatment plateaus after you file a lawsuit after the plaintiff's deposition and then when a trial date gets set. Those are the hot times to settle a case. It doesn't mean that you can't pick up the phone and settle a case at other times but those are the hot times.
All of them means that the insurance company has more information than they had before and sometimes it flips the light switch for them to get them to settle the case. That's how all that works. I hope that information helps you and your family. If you need a lawyer or somebody who needs a lawyer, please send them my way 312-500-4500.
