A personal injury can arise from many different situations and leave you dealing with a host of new problems: medical bills, pain, missed time at work, property damage, and more. If you don’t know all the options for seeking compensation, you may find yourself absorbing these costs alone.
Unfortunately, many people also run into difficulties when making an insurance claim. Despite what they might say about wanting to help, an insurance adjuster’s primary job is to save the insurance company money.
To this end, they have a number of tactics to reduce your settlement or deny your claim entirely.
How Can a Clayton County Personal Injury Attorney Help With Your Personal Injury Case?
Many people wonder what to do after suffering a severe injury. They may be unsure if they have a personal injury case or unclear about fault.
Others might incorrectly blame themselves for the accident or injury. Those who make an insurance claim and receive an offer could wonder if it’s fair, and some accept an offer that should be higher.
An experienced personal injury lawyer can offer you guidance on all these issues. At the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm, we offer free consultations so you can find answers to these questions and learn your options with no obligation.
If we do take your case, you won’t owe us anything until we win or settle your claim, so please contact us today to find out more.
How Much Money Is a Personal Injury Claim Worth?
Clients are often concerned about the value of their recovery, and rightfully so. An injury can be a significant financial setback. Many people can’t afford to miss weeks at work, and that’s without adding medical bills into the mix.
Your attorney will help you determine the value of your claim by reviewing the following damages:
- Medical bills. Even with health insurance, medical costs have risen in recent years, with much of the increase attributed to out-of-pocket costs for patients. You should be able to recover your current and future medical bills associated with your injury, so your attorney will probably wait until you’ve completed treatment to settle your case. This ensures that no additional bills are missed. However, if you require long-term care due to a severe injury, we can estimate your future medical expenditures instead.
- Lost income. No one wants to use up their PTO recovering from a painful injury, but sometimes it’s necessary. When you run out of PTO or don’t have any to begin with, you may end up taking unpaid time away. Your attorney can seek compensation for both paid and unpaid time off.
- Reduced earning potential. In more serious cases, an injury could result in a permanent disability that prevents the injured person from returning to work. Even if you are forced to reduce your hours or take a less strenuous job, you may still suffer a loss of earning potential. Your lawyer will calculate how much income you will potentially lose.
- Permanent disability. With or without income loss, a permanent disability can cause many challenges and lower your quality of life.
- Pain and suffering. This includes both physical pain and mental or emotional distress brought on by your injury. Typically, insurance companies use a formula to calculate pain and suffering since it doesn’t come with a specific receipt. The most common formula involves multiplying the injured person’s economic losses by a number between 1.5 and 5. The insurance adjuster should choose this number based on the severity of the injuries, but your attorney will check their work. If we feel a larger multiplier should be used, we’ll negotiate with the insurance adjuster for a better estimate.
- Property damage. Sometimes, injuries are accompanied by property damage, especially in accidents involving cars, boats, golf carts, recreational vehicles, etc. You can seek compensation for your repair or replacement costs, plus the diminished value of your vehicle.
- Wrongful death. The most severe personal injury cases lead to a loss of life. A spouse has the right to file a wrongful death claim, and in some circumstances, other relatives or an estate representative can do the same. While you can never replace your lost loved one, a wrongful death suit may give you the financial freedom to honor their life in whatever way you choose. It will also allow you to pay final medical and funeral expenses, care for your children, and handle other expenses so you can focus on your family in this difficult time.
Your attorney will ask you questions so they can accurately estimate your losses in each of these categories, if applicable. Once we’ve accounted for all your damages, we can calculate a ballpark figure of what your claim might be worth. Other factors may affect the size of your settlement, but an accurate claim valuation gives you a good starting point.
What if the Insurance Company Doesn’t Offer You Enough Money?
This is a crucial question, one we wish everyone would ask before considering an insurance company’s settlement offer. It’s essential to know how much your claim is worth before you consider an offer, and this can be difficult for the average person who is not an insurance expert.
Engaging the assistance of an attorney helps in two ways: We can properly value your claim and help you review any offers you receive. If an offer is lacking, we’ll point out what isn’t covered or what is undervalued, and we can then negotiate with the insurance company on your behalf.
How Does Distribution of Fault Affect the Value of Your Claim?
Sometimes, an insurance company reduces the value of your claim based on your assumed fault. It’s important to understand that more than one party can be at fault in an accident or injury.
Under Georgia law, an injured party can collect damages if they are less than 50 percent at fault but will lose their percentage of responsibility.
If you guessed that it’s in the insurance adjuster’s best interests to look for evidence you might be partially at fault, you’re right. It also follows that they might overestimate how much fault you have, if any.
When they conclude you were more than 50 percent responsible, they can justify rejecting the claim entirely. When they estimate a lower percentage of fault, they can still reduce your settlement by that amount.
Either way, they save money—and you lose.
How Do You Know if the Insurance Adjuster’s Assignment of Fault Is Accurate?
Determining fault after an accident or injury is a complex process, and having only one perspective on the accident—your own—adds to the difficulty. For this reason, we recommend speaking with a personal injury lawyer who can investigate the accident, gather additional evidence, and analyze it to learn more about the breakdown of fault.
If we find the insurance adjuster embellished your contributions or even assigned you some percentage of fault when you had none, we’ll work to demonstrate that the other party was all or primarily at fault.
Depending on the overall value of your claim, even a small exaggeration of your culpability can cost you significantly. For instance, if you have $100,000 in damages, and the adjuster decides you are 10 percent at fault, you would lose $10,000.
But what if you were only 5 percent at fault or did not contribute? You might lose $5,000 or $10,000 from your final settlement unnecessarily.
A person who deals directly with the insurance company may never even know if their fault was overestimated or if they lost money they deserved to recover—but your personal injury lawyer will know and fight for your rights.
What Other Factors Might Reduce Your Final Settlement?
Sometimes, severe accidents or injuries result in a high dollar amount of damages, but the other party’s insurance policy has a much lower limit. This is very common with car accidents because the minimum requirement for liability insurance in Georgia is $25,000 in bodily injury liability per person ($50,000 total) and $25,000 in property damage liability.
Fortunately, many people buy larger policies, so you won’t always have to deal with these limits, but you also can’t control who crashes into your car. If the at-fault driver does have minimal insurance and you are severely injured, you might have six figures or more in damages, but they still have only $25,000 in bodily injury liability insurance.
Before you give up on collecting the rest of your damages, please speak with a personal injury attorney. We will consider other options for recovering the rest of your damages, including:
Suing the At-Fault Party
Liability insurance is meant to protect the policyholder from personal liability if they cause an accident or injury. If the policy doesn’t cover all the injured person’s damages, they can sue the at-fault party directly.
However, in many cases, this is not a practical option, and we will advise the client against it. The main factor we consider is whether the responsible party can afford to pay a judgment if we win.
When they have no assets we can seize, it’s generally not worth the client’s time and stress to file a lawsuit only to collect nothing.
Suing a Third Party
This option is limited to certain situations where a third party contributed to the accident or injury or made it worse in some way. For example, a car component like a defective seatbelt or airbag might make your injuries more severe regardless of who caused the accident.
In this case, we may be able to pursue a claim against the manufacturer of the faulty component.
Using Your Own Insurance
If you’re in a car accident and the other driver’s liability insurance is insufficient to cover all your damages, we’ll examine your own car insurance policy to see what kind of coverage you have.
Uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance (UM/UI) is not required in Georgia, but you will be very glad you have it if an uninsured or underinsured driver hits you. In some cases, we may be able to collect up to the policy limit on both the at-fault driver’s liability insurance and the injured person’s UM/UI insurance.
UM/UI is the most dependable option for recovering additional damages after a car accident with an uninsured or underinsured driver, so we recommend choosing a policy limit that is as high as you can afford.
What About Other Types of Personal Injury Cases?
Homeowner’s and business liability insurance are often relevant if you are injured on another party’s property, hurt by a defective product, etc. These policies typically have limits of six or seven figures, so it’s less common to encounter a problematic limit.
However, in cases of very severe injuries, it is possible. If this happens, we will consider a lawsuit against the responsible party.
If you suffered an injury in a hospital due to a doctor’s negligence, they will likely have medical malpractice insurance of at least $1 million. If the hospital is negligent rather than the physician, they will usually have a similarly robust business liability policy.
Contact a Clayton County Personal Injury Law Firm for More Information Today
A seasoned attorney specializing in personal injury matters can provide invaluable assistance with your personal injury case.
If you or a loved one has a potential personal injury matter, please contact the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free consultation to learn more about your options. Our experienced legal team is always available to review your case and respond to your questions or concerns.
Attorney Ali Awad founded the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm and, within a few short years, transformed it into one of the fastest-growing law firms in the country. He and his team have over twenty years of combined experience in personal injury law and have recovered millions of dollars in compensation for injured people and their families.
In his spare time, he posts about legal topics for over a million followers on social media. You, too, can work with him and his team when you call (833) 254-2923.
