One of the reasons why specialists recommend that you hire a car accident lawyer whenever you file a personal injury lawsuit, even if this is not required by law, is that insurance companies are very good at finding ways to pay less than they should. One of the tactics is to stall negotiations by delaying their actions. This is often done to frustrate injured people, which in turn would lead to them accepting lower settlement deals.
When you are injured in an accident, there are many things that go on in your life. You have to focus on your recovery instead of handling the injury claim. You have a family, might miss work, and have to deal with several other obligations. To also go to meetings with insurance companies to negotiate settlements just makes stress levels higher than they should be.
To help you make the best possible choice, it is important to understand the tactics used by insurance companies. Obviously, a car accident lawyer would help you a lot with this but some knowledge will make it easier for you to understand what happens.
Asking For Prior Medical Records
Insurance firms do this when they claim your injury existed before the crash. In this case, it is common for the insurance adjuster to ask for medical records covering around 5 years or more. Unfortunately, this can lead to the insurance claim being delayed even for months. The counter to this is to have specialists who would instantly prove that the injury could not have existed before the crash. A car accident attorney can easily find you this if it is needed. In fact, insurance adjusters rarely try this delay tactic if you have an attorney hired since they know it wouldn’t work.
Insurance Adjusters Avoiding Victims
It sometimes happens that you try to call the insurance firm when you are on break as you are at work and you only get a voice mail to respond to you. Also, it is common to see that insurance adjusters only return phone calls after weeks. They leave a message and the cycle starts again. With such delays, it is easy to understand how an injured individual would be so frustrated that they accept a much lower offer only to finally move on.
Claims Getting Reassigned
This happens less often but it is still a tactic you should be aware of. The insurance company will reassign the claim and the new insurance adjuster will ask for time to get up to date with the case. Such a maneuver would cause a substantial delay, especially after the new insurance adjuster will then ask for extra documents in order to evaluate the injury claim.
Final Thoughts
As you can see, insurance companies can use several tactics to delay giving you the money you deserve after being injured in a car accident. The best way to protect yourself is to hire an experienced attorney. You would be able to continue your life normally while it is the attorney that would pressure insurance firms to not delay claims.
