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VOICEOVER: What if I don’t have insurance coverage? How can I get medical care?
WES: Any hospital to which you are taken for emergency services after an injury is obligated to provide enough treatment to stabilize your condition, but you’ll be billed for the services later. Usually, the next question that I’m asked is… How am I going to afford ongoing care? Well, many doctors, diagnostic centers and out-patient surgery centers will accept a letter of protection from a reputable law firm and will continue to provide medical care to you until your case is settled or until you get a verdict from which you will be able to then pay your bills as they occur. Your attorney’s letter of protection to a health care provider is often your very best ticket to continuing medical care for your injuries.
VOICEOVER: What will the defendant’s insurer do about my claim?
WES: The insurance company will assign a team of people to your case. That’s why it’s important not stand up to them alone. The team will be made up of a claims supervisor, adjusters, and possibly investigators to gather information about you, about how the accident or other method of injury happened, and what it can do to settle your claim for the lowest amount possible. I know I’ve said this before, but after viewing this DVD one of the most important things for you to remember is the insurer is in business for one reason only: it’s to make money. If it pays you, it has less profit for its stockholders. Their number 1 objective is to build a case against you.
Once they have finished their investigation, some standard defenses you can expect, depending on your type of negligence case, are things like pre-existing conditions, failure to mitigate damages, comparative negligence, failure to wear a seat belt if it’s an auto case, and various statutory set-offs against your damages. In other words, things you’ve probably never heard of. Again, that’s okay if you’re represented, because your attorney is trained in ways to avoid or minimize these defenses to get a reasonable value for your case.
VOICEOVER: Why hire an attorney? Can’t i handle my own case and save a legal fee?
WES: Of course you can handle and settle your own case, but if you do, you’ll probably be taken serious advantage of by the defendant’s carrier and not even know it. One major auto insurance company’s training manual for adjusters tells them to act friendly toward accident victims, get their trust, and then settle and get a release signed before the victim hires an attorney. Why? The answer is in the claims manual. It says that on average if a victim handles his own case, he gets paid only one-third what a victim who’s represented by an attorney gets. Only one- third. That’s why they don’t want you to get an attorney.
Of course, despite what I’ve said, you may decide to go it alone. If you do, in the end be careful, very careful, because you’re going to have to handle liens and subrogation claims possibly from hospitals and your health insurance carrier. Don’t neglect these things, because you can be sued by the parties having the liens or subrogation rights. In the end, it comes down to this. Plumbers should do plumbing. Ships’ captains should drive ships. And personal injury attorneys should handle injury claims. Everyone has something that he or she does best, and if everyone sticks to that, logically, things come out a lot better. In 30 years, I haven’t baked a cake, but in 30 years, I’ve successfully handled thousands of injury cases.
