When to make a personal injury claim
10 secrets on how to double your personal injury settlement. Tips- Phoenix personal injury lawyer
- Hi, I'm John Kelly of the Kelly Law Team.
I'm a personal injury attorney here in Phoenix, Arizona.
I want to give you 10 tips to potentially
double your personal injury settlement.
The first one is that you
want to try to establish liability.
What that means is that the insurance companies
are going to wonder who caused the accident.
And you want to get that taken care of as soon as possible.
So, yo gotta keep your evidence of photographs
at the scene, talk to witnesses.
If you're able to, get the police report.
Usually you'll get an accident exchange sheet
that will give you the report number.
Track down all that information so you can
try to establish the liability of who caused
the accident right off the bat.
The second tip.
Do not give statements to any insurance companies.
What this means is that you'll have both
insurance companies, your own and the others.
The one's who hit you.
There'll be calling you and requesting a statement from you.
I would advise you to hold off on giving any
statements of not only your accident,
how it happened, but also your injuries.
You may want to do this later
But you'll have to consult with an attorney.
just for a moment
to talk to them about how that would go down.
You don't want to get tricked.
Cause these insurance companies do everything they can
to try to prevent paying you out in their claims.
And so they're looking for ways to minimize
the amount that they're going to pay up.
The third tip.
Get diagnosed for any injuries that you have.
So what this means is that if you have an injury,
just don't sit on it and assume that the insurance
companies gonna give you credit for that injury
based on what you tell them.
You need to have a professional doctor diagnose that.
So you might have to make an appointment
with your primary care doctor.
If you've already been to the hospital
have referrals that you need to follow
up with and get those scheduled.
That's very important.
The fourth tip.
Follow your doctor's orders for your treatment.
So this seems like this would be self-explanatory
but it becomes difficult with people that are
in injuries and car accidents.
That's because they have a lot going on.
What you want to do is make sure you follow up
with all of your doctor's orders.
You do the treatment that they've recommended.
You make sure that you go to all your
appointments and try not to miss them.
If you need to get transportation in line,
you got to try your best to get that worked out.
Or, work with someone who will help you get that done.
Because it's important to make
all those doctors appointments.
Remember, you're going to be ordering your records
and you want to have a full set
that shows all your progress.
The fifth piece of advice.
Get all your full bills and records.
Now remember, most of these first ones that I'm
going over, you don't need an attorney for these.
There are cases where you may
need an attorney to get involved.
But these initial steps are all steps you
could do to help you make sure that you're on
the right track, right off the bat.
So, the fifth step.
Get full bills and records.
So after you're done treatment
or after you get out of the hospital.
You wanna go to the provider and request
from them your full bills and records.
Get those in and it can take some time.
Get them organized and make sure you have those
all in your file and ready to go.
If you do already have a lawyer,
there'll likely be doing that for you.
But if you're trying to handle it on your own
you wanna make sure that you are getting
the full bills and the full records.
And not just the records or discharge paper work.
The sixth point is to hire an expert to follow
up with any deficiencies and outstanding issues
in your case.
If there's a problem with liability
you may need to get someone to review
your police reports, go to the scene,
do an accident reconstruction.
If there's issues that you've had, or preexisting
injuries or preexisting conditions that the insurance
company is telling you.
They believe the new accident didn't cause them.
You may need to have an expert get involved
to actually give an opinion about whether those
injuries were the result of the most recent accident
or there's some kind of preexisting condition.
The seventh issue.
The seventh tip that I have.
Once you have all this together, you make
a demand on the insurance company.
And typically you would just want to request
a policy limits or an inflated amount that
you believe covers all your medical records,
pain and suffering and a few future costs that you have.
It's sometimes easier to just ask
for the full policy limits.
Or a much inflated number.
You can put in there also some notes
about what you've all been through and everything.
And submit that to the insurance company.
The eighth tip.
You want to follow that up
with some kind of threat of lawsuit.
Understand that these insurance companies,
if they see that you're representing yourself
they think that you may not have the bite that
comes along with them denying you your claims.
So, you wanna threat a law suit, and if you
want to you can get an attorney involved at that
point to write a letter for you to have that backing.
The ninth tip.
Consult with an attorney regarding
any timelines that you have.
This may need to happen a little bit earlier
because you want to know your statue of limitations.
Every state is different.
Some statute of limitations run after one year.
Some two years, some shorter periods.
So you wanna know exactly what you're up
against right off the bat.
Remember you can just call a lawyer,
ask them about how your case would play out in the future.
Ask them about deadlines and any legal
requirements that your case may have
so that you know exactly where you are.
And the tenth tip to potentially doubling
your claim is to work on your liens and your
policy information with the insurance companies.
There may be multiple policies, insurance policies that
you can pursue.
Or the individual individually.
And you also have to worry about how the liens
from the health care providers that you have.
That's something that usually if you have a lot
of those, you wanna consult with a lawyer at least.
Because those can add up and you can save up a lot of
money to get reductions in your bills from the liens.
A lot of the medical care providers will come back
and say because you got a injury settlement
where we want to be reimbursed.
Some of them legally you're obligated
to negotiate with them.
Others, not.
And so, that's a very important aspect of
the case that needs to be taken care of.
So, I hope these tips helped you out.
If you have any questions,
you can leave them in the comments.
Otherwise, if you have an urgent matter,
you can give me a call.
At Kelly Law Team.
602-283-4122.
Thank you very much.
