Although most automobile accident victims feel that the at-fault party’s insurer owes them something, the opposite is actually true, at least until liability is proven. In many cases, a claims adjuster’s job is to save their insurance company money by doing what they can to delay, deny, or diminish the damages recoverable.
Delay
Many insurance companies delay claims in the hopes that hoping claimants will simply give up. If there was any delay between the accident and when the insurance company was notified of the claim, an insurance adjuster might try to tell you you waited too long and that the delay might now disqualify your claim. But other than your state’s statute of limitations, there is no time limit within which you must file a notice of third party claim.
Deny
To establish liability in an injury claim, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant was negligent and his negligence caused the injury. One of the elements of negligence is establishing that the defendant owed a duty of care to the plaintiff, so one common tactic insurance companies use to argue that the defendant owed no such duty to the plaintiff by saying that the victim assumed the risk of injury or contributed to it.
Diminish
Insurance companies make money by collecting premiums and denying claims, so they naturally try to limit the amount of money paid to injured claimants. They do this by gathering evidence that depicts the accident as not serious, or at least not serious enough to cause the types of injuries the plaintiff claims.
Although these tactics are used to intimidate accident victims into jumping at any settlement offer, no matter how small, a plaintiffs’ attorney knows all the tricks and how to deal with an insurance company after an accident – so injured people don’t have to.
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3 Comments
Robert
actually, in represented cases, the opposite is true and plaintiff lawyers drag the cases out trying to create damages.
Nathaniel Fick
Robert ... with no last name. Your comment s 100% false. Whoever you are behind the closed door, if there is truth in anything you wish to say, come into the light for all to see.
Mark Adamski
It's unfortunate that some insurer's are cast in that light; but not all of them subscribe to that theory of claims handling. As an adjuster, we see a lot of claims that are either fabricated, or embellished to make it seem worse than what it actually is. Their is always a happy medium; it's just sometimes difficult to achieve it when the expectations of the plaintiff is unreasonable. And you really can't blame the insurer's for their attempts to diminish payment. After all, the plaintiff is asking for money as a result of that tort, and they still have the burden of proof in establishing those damages. On non-litigated files, we don't have the luxury of deposing doctors or the plaintiff, so we have to rely on the documents submitted that substantiate their claims. If all cards were placed on the table. the insurer wouldn't have to resort to those tactics ascribed above.
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