Ads on television claim that like a good neighbor a “leading insurance provider” is there. But in reality, most insurance companies are like bad neighbors who while they are metaphorically attached to the hip with you, they have their own bad habits, interests and agendas that don’t line up with what you want. This makes the complications in a personal injury case as they hold the keys to your compensatory award for your damages.
Basically, it’s the lawyer’s job to create an argument from combined evidence to show that you are a victim of someone’s negligence (from which you are not at fault) and that you have suffered a great deal of damage physically and financially in order to receive a compensatory package that is relative to the damages suffered. And while a personal injury lawyer, such as one from B Cunningham Law will do everything in his or her power to get you the best settlement you deserve, the insurance adjuster will be making their own moves against you as well:
Lack of Evidence: One such tactic is to decrease liability by arguing that you don’t have enough evidence to substantiate your claim. For instance, you want to make a claim for the wages lost while vacating from your job as you recovered from your injury, but perhaps you didn’t think to acquire any records or reports showing what your wages were before and after the accident. An insurance adjuster could easily say that you’re saying that you’ve lost wages. But unless they have an official report proving this, how can you expect them to compensate for this?
Denying Liability: While your lawyer’s job is to prove negligence on the account of the opposing party, the insurance adjuster will be putting forth effort to deny liability by trying to prove that you’ve contributed your own negligence. This can in fact be done in any number of ways depending on the situation. Say if it’s a dog bite case, an adjuster could argue that you are partially at fault for aggravating the dog, thus causing it to get defensive and bite you. The argument might get taken into consideration thus decreasing liability and your compensation.
Minimizing Injury: One of the biggest mistakes one can make after an accident is to not see a doctor or not follow up on treatments. Seeing a health care provider, and regularly gets you official, validated records of your damages thus showing that your claim is valid. If you don’t see a doctor and fail to get all those reports, the adjuster could minimize or deny your claim saying it’s impossible to take your case seriously; especially if you didn’t take it seriously yourself.