Someone that has been injured in an accident has suffered losses. He or she deserves some level of compensation. How much should be enough? How can that be determined?
Most of the payouts to claimants take the form of out-of-court settlements.
Personal injury lawyer in Lethbridge is of the view that a claimant with severe injuries tends to receive a larger compensation package. If an injured claimant has also lost income, or has experienced damage to property, then the value of the potential settlement increases.
Other factors that can affect the size of the payout:
The insurance policy purchased by the defendant must have placed a limit on the amount of money promised to the policy holder, if he or she gets held responsible for another person’s losses. The size of that limit determines the amount of money awarded to the claimant/plaintiff.
That fact explains why some drivers buy coverage for underinsured motorists. A driver that has purchased such coverage has less reason to worry about any limits on the insurance policy that was purchased by an at-fault driver, in the event of an accident.
Claimants that retain a lawyer tend to receive larger payouts than those that have chosen to represent themselves. Lawyers are skilled negotiators. A claimant might get impatient and agree to accept an insurance company’s low offer.
Not every claimant can succeed at displaying the right combination of traits, if he or she does decide to negotiate with the insurance adjuster. Patience is important, but so is persistence. There are times when the negotiator needs to be assertive.
For instance, it could be that the adjuster says that he or she must consult with a superior, before agreeing to a demand from the claimant. An inexperienced negotiator would not know how long to wait, before trying to learn what the adjuster’s superior had said. In contrast to that inexperience, an attorney’s experiences would allow him or her to gage the amount of time to wait.
Furthermore, once the adjuster was contacted, the attorney would understand how to phrase the inquiry, regarding the superior’s answer. The attorney’s words would be suitably assertive in nature.
The effect of a filed lawsuit
During the negotiations, the claimant has the right to file a personal injury lawsuit. That does not commit the filer/claimant to the need to spend time in a courtroom at some point in the future. It simply lets the other party know about the claimant’s readiness to involve the court.
Once an insurance company knows that a client has given thought to facing the defendant in court, that same insurance company feels more inclined to reach an out-of-court settlement. The amount received by claimants that have agreed to out-of-court settlements tends to be larger than other payouts.