Disclaimer: The information contained here and throughout our website, and in our printed or other materials, are for general informational purposes only as this information should not be considered to be legal advice concerning your specific case. You should consult an experienced and knowledgeable attorney in this area of law to determine whether the information given in our videos, website, and other materials applies to your specific case as the failure to do so could do significant harm to your case. Please realize there are many more mistakes than those listed here, but we have listed some of the more common mistakes we’ve seen here. Our firm does not represent you unless or until we enter into a written fee agreement signed by both you and our firm. Click here for additional disclaimer information.
Mistake #1: Believing the insurance company when they say they cannot process or settle your claim unless you give them a recorded statement or unless you sign their medical release form allowing them to get your medical records.
Insurance adjusters—even those working for your own insurance company—are highly trained to gather information they can use against you so that they can limit the value of your case. The better insurance adjusters know how to make you feel that they are on your side even though they’re building a case against you from the very beginning. And so they take a taped statement from you which will be used against you later. Or they take the medical release form you signed and dig up embarrassing medical issues from your past in an effort to limit the value of your case. Or the insurance company uses the form you signed to talk to your doctors without your knowledge in an effort to get your doctors to say or write things which the doctors don’t even realize will hurt your case even though you are not present to make sure everyone’s playing fair.
Giving a taped statement and signing a medical release do little more than enable the insurance companies—even your own—to build a case against you. And the insurance company is still not required to pay you anything unless a Court orders them to do so after a trial. At our firm, we know when and to what extent your medical records need to be released while protecting you from insurance companies using your own doctors against you.
With respect to your own insurance company, remember that you have a duty to promptly inform your own insurance company if you are in an accident and to cooperate with them, and if you don’t, your own insurance company may cancel your insurance coverage. Our firm protects our clients from the other driver’s insurance companies and lawyers while advising our clients how to cooperate with their own insurance company without compromising our client’s case or their own insurance coverage.
Mistake #2: Believing the insurance company when they tell you a quick settlement is in your best interest.
The insurance companies are taking advantage of the fact that you have not considered whether you are done healing, whether you will need future medical treatment, whether you will be able to return fully to work, whether you have any other damages to which you are entitled, etc. Since the insurance company will require you to sign a Release of all Claims before they will give you a settlement check, they know that trying to settle with you quickly is in their best interest before you learn the true value of your case. And of course, once you sign on that dotted line to get your settlement check, you will not be able to get more money from that insurance company later. Our firm works hard to discover the true extent of your injuries and damages while keeping an eye on the various deadlines.
Mistake #3: Believing the insurance company when they say: “You do not need an attorney to settle this claim.”
The insurance industry keeps track of statistics; they know that injured persons represented by attorneys on average get paid substantially more than those who do not have attorneys. So the insurance companies train their adjusters to aggressively discourage injured persons from contacting an attorney. So if a claims adjuster tells you not to get an attorney, now you know why.
Mistake #4: Believing the insurance company when they tell you: “Your claim is only worth X and we won’t pay more.”
Virtually every case we’ve ever taken involves the insurance adjuster offering a very low settlement which prompted the injured person to call our firm and ask us to represent them. And then sadly, we are contacted many, many times each year by people who have settled for a lot less than their cases are worth and there is rarely anything we can do for them since they already signed on the dotted line.
Mistake #5: Believing the insurance companies—even your own insurance company—will inform you as to the best way to pay for medical bills and other damages.
Let’s say you’re in a car accident and you have many medical bills and that your health insurance and a car policy can both cover your medical bills. Since certain insurers get larger discounts than others, submitting your medical bills to the wrong insurance carrier can be very, very harmful to your bottom line. For example, do you want to pay over $2,500.00 for an MRI or just over $700.00 for that same MRI? Because insurance policies have limits, paying that extra $1,800.00 for the same MRI might potentially be $1,800.00 less in your pocket at the end of the case. Don’t expect the insurance companies to figure this out for you—they have their own agenda. Don’t expect the doctors and hospitals to point this out to you either because they can get paid sometimes 2 to 3 times more for the same exact treatment or test by submitting it to their choice of insurance carrier even though this hurts your bottom line. Our firm knows what to look for and how to find it while further advising you about the order in which the various insurance policies should be used to maximize your bottom line and insurance coverage.
Mistake #6: Settling your case on your own and believing that your case is done and that you can keep your full settlement check after a settlement with an insurance company.
Let’s say you get in a bad car accident and that you settle with an insurance company for $125,000.00. Over the next several years, your health insurance company, your own car insurance company, and your own disability insurance company seek repayment of the $200,000.00 they collectively paid for your medical bills, lost wages, and so on. So what seemed like a good settlement a couple years earlier has been spent and you now have to come up with $200,000.00 out of your own pocket to pay back these other insurance carriers who claim the legal right to be repaid. Our firm takes the reasonable steps necessary to reduce the risk this could happen to you.
Mistake #7: Not knowing how many insurance policies cover your accident and not knowing the complexities involved when more than one policy applies.
Before coming to our firm, few people actually know where to find multiple insurance policies which may cover a given accident. Attorneys who only dabble in personal injury cases may also have a very difficult time finding additional insurance policies applicable to a given accident. Insurance companies — even your own — have no duty or obligation to inform you as to the true extent and availability of your own (or other available) insurance coverages as these insurance representatives feel their only obligation is to save their insurance company as much money as possible, even if that means hurting their own policy holder.
For the sake of argument, let’s say you actually know there are five insurance policies covering your accident and that your damages exceed the policy limits of all 5 policies. So your strategy is to settle the case yourself by negotiating with one insurance company and then going on to the next one and so on.
After you settle with the first insurance company, you call each of the other 4 insurance companies who all inform you they don’t have to pay because you did not obtain each of the other insurance companies’ permission to settle with the first insurance company in a very specific manner BEFORE you actually settle with the first insurance company as required in all of the various insurance policies. So you lose out on coverage under 4 of the policies. This is just one example of the many complexities involved. Our firm knows how to guide you through the legal mine fields involved when more than one policy is involved.
Mistake #8: Believing the insurance company when they say that since the police report says the accident was “caused” by the weather and since nobody was ticketed, you are not entitled to get anything.
For example, if it has been snowing all day and you and everyone else on the interstate are traveling at 35 mph but a car traveling at 70 mph gets sideways on the ice and hits your car, you better believe that the other driver is at fault for driving too fast for the existing conditions and their insurance company should pay.
Mistake #9: Going to a doctor recommended by the insurance company to get checked out following an accident.
While most doctors are good and decent, the sad truth is that insurance companies pay a lot of money to some doctors to say a person is not injured even when they really are. You better believe the insurance company will do whatever they can to save money, even if it means sending you to a doctor who is essentially paid to say you are not hurt very badly even if you are. Moreover, your own doctor may even be one of the doctors who also take money from insurance companies to say people aren’t hurt that badly. Our firm’s experience gives us an advantage in identifying some of the doctors who might have unfair prejudices against people who are genuinely hurt in accidents.
Mistake #10: All Attorneys can handle serious personal injury cases.
On the one hand, a lot of attorneys advertise they handle personal injury cases even though they might spend 90% of their time doing divorce law, criminal law, or some other type of law. Allowing an attorney who spends 90% of their time doing divorce work to handle your one and only personal injury case makes about as much sense as letting a surgeon that spends 90% of their time doing hernia surgeries handle your brain surgery.
On the other hand are attorneys who handle so many personal injury cases at one time that one wonders whether a given client is receiving the time and attention they deserve. For example, an attorney handling 120 cases at a time must, on average, either settle or try a case in a courtroom once every three and one-third days (click here to see calculations). We will never do that to our clients at Sam Sheronick Law Firm, P.C.
Letting an attorney who handles too many cases at a time handle your one and only case makes about as much sense as allowing a brain surgeon who performs 15 brain surgeries a day operate on your brain: It really does not matter if that brain surgeon is the best on the planet if they’re performing that many brain surgeries every day.
For going on 20 years, Sam Sheronick Law Firm, P.C. has handled serious personal injury cases very differently: We limit the number of cases we handle at one time to assure the proper time, attention, compassion, and resources necessary to increase the chances that we achieve the results each client deserves. While spending more time on a case does not guaranty a better outcome, we tend to think that it increases the odds. This means we must turn away many more good cases than we accept. But this discipline is necessary if we are to put our clients’ best interest first.
In doing so, we are able to take the time to learn what it’s like to be in our clients’ hide by using techniques Sam Sheronick learned at the Trial Lawyers’ College, a post law school college which only accepts 48 attorneys nationally each year to attend the College led by famed trial lawyer Gerry Spence. Sam Sheronick still returns to the College for Graduate courses every year to hone his trial skills with the guidance of some of the nation’s best trial attorneys. Our clients deserve that. We can only tell our client’s true story to a jury if we bother to take the time to learn our client’s true story. We can’t do this handling too many cases at one time.
How much does this care and attention cost? At our firm, you do not pay our firm an attorney fee unless we win/settle your case which has served our clients—and our firm—well.
At Sam Sheronick Law Firm, we limit the number of cases we handle to give each serious personal injury client the time, attention, and compassion each client deserves.
Now this is not an all inclusive list of things you should watch out for when dealing with insurance companies, but it should give you some idea of some of the common unfair tactics the insurance companies use to take advantage of an injured person. Remember, to avoid doing damage to your case, make sure you talk to an attorney experienced and knowledgeable in this area of law before applying any of this information to your specific case.
Disclaimer: The information contained here and throughout our website, and in our printed or other materials, are for general informational purposes only as this information should not be considered to be legal advice concerning your specific case. You should consult an experienced and knowledgeable attorney in this area of law to determine whether the information given in our videos, website, and other materials applies to your specific case as the failure to do so could do significant harm to your case. Please realize there are many more mistakes than those listed here, but we have listed some of the more common mistakes we’ve seen here. Our firm does not represent you unless or until we enter into a written fee agreement signed by both you and our firm. Click here for additional disclaimer information.
(c) 2011 Sam Sheronick Law Firm, P.C. (SSLFPC). All rights reserved.
