When you're badly injured, the last thing you want to think about is filling out paperwork, searching for an attorney, or trying to gather evidence. Yet, these steps are necessary if you want to collect the compensation you deserve due to someone else's negligence. The more you know about personal injury cases and hiring an attorney, the less stressful this time will be.
We've created this website to offer basic personal injury law advice for anyone who has been injured or who may become injured in the future. Keep in mind that if you've been injured in a car accident, due to medical neglect, or even by slipping in someone else's parking lot, your case qualifies a personal injury case — and thus you'll find our collection of articles relevant.
While it may be desired, auto accident and personal injury claims are hardly ever resolved quickly. Often, there are delays in these cases. Some of these delays are completely unavoidable. However, in other instances, insurance companies like to create intentional delays in an attempt to get injury victims to agree to a settlement that is less than their claim is truly worth. This is why it is good to have a lawyer by your side the entire way. Keep reading to learn a couple of reasons why your auto accident and personal injury claim could potentially be delayed and what steps you can take to fight back.
Length of Medical Treatment
Depending on how severe your injuries are from the accident, your medical treatment plan could last days, weeks, or even months. Your lawyer will wait until your treatment has finished completely before trying to resolve your personal injury claim. This allows your lawyer to fully review your medical bills, medical records, and receive official word from your physicians regarding the extent of the injuries and the cost of future treatment, if any.
While waiting for medical treatment can in fact delay resolving your claim, it is vital that you remain patient throughout this part of the claims process. You want to ensure that the monetary demand from your attorney is high enough to cover the full value of injuries and damages.
Dispute of Liability
A common reason that your claim may be delayed is that there is a liability dispute regarding the auto accident. In some cases, delays like this are inevitable due to the circumstances surrounding the accident and the length of the investigation into the cause of the collision. However, insurance companies usually deny liability, which forces you and your lawyer to dig for additional evidence that proves that the negligence of the other driver directly caused your injuries. This can mean gathering additional evidence from the accident scene like surveillance footage, tracking down witnesses, hiring accident reconstruction experts, and more.
While providing liability can definitely take additional time and effort, it may result in obtaining irrefutable evidence that the insurance company is indeed responsible for covering your injuries and damage. Ultimately, the insurance company is disputing the liability in the hope that you and your attorney will run out of time due to the statute of limitations. After all, if you fail to file a lawsuit within your state's statute of limitations, you will be unable to pursue damages.
Insurance companies have many tactics to delay the claims process, which is why you need to ensure you hire a professional auto accident attorney to assist you throughout the process.