So, you’ve been in a car accident and it’s time to settle your claim and you’re thinking about settling it on your own with the insurance company. There’s a number of things that you need to know. First, my recommendation is don’t settle it on your own. The insurance company does not want to pay you what you deserve. They’re a for-profit company and they’re going to pay you as little as possible. So, if you choose to settle it on your own and not call us at Rob Leavine Law, what do you need to know? Number one, you’re entitled to your medical bills. Number two, lost wages. Three, pain and suffering. Four, scarring. Five, residuals. Six, incidentals. And seven, permanency. So, let’s talk about some of those things. Your medical bills.
Depending on what state you’re in, there’s something called the collateral source rule. What does that mean? That means no matter where money came from into your claim, the insurance company still has to pay you. So, your medical bills are often paid for by your health insurance company. So, if you have $10,000 in medical bills, and your health insurance company paid them, the insurance company for the defendant is going to say to you, “Oh, we don’t owe you that money. It’s already been paid by your health insurance company.”
That’s a lie. They still owe you the money under the collateral source rule. And they don’t only owe you what the health insurance company paid. They owe you the face amount of the medical bill. And again, this depends what state you’re in. Two, lost wages. If you received TDI, for instance, and you were in Rhode Island, or you’re in another state and you have some form of temporary, short-term, or long-term disability, and you’ve received payments, again, the insurance company’s going to say, “Oh, well, you’ve already been paid for your loss wages.” No, they still have to pay you. They also might say to you, “Well, we’re going to net it down because that has to be taxed and we’re going to remove the tax and you’re only going to pay you what you would have netted.” No, they have to pay you the gross amount of the lost wages.
Three, pain and suffering. Pain and suffering is a complicated calculation to figure out what you’re truly entitled to. Were you have a soft tissue injury or do you have a more serious injury that has objective findings? Objective meaning you had an MRI, you had a CAT scan and we can see what’s actually wrong with you. Or maybe you had surgery, maybe you have scarring from the surgery and you have a serious injury.
Were you out of work? where you change from what your baseline is and you’re not going to return to your baseline. There’s a number of factors that would be very difficult to explain all of them. But what I can tell you is depending on the seriousness of your injury and how long it lasts, your pain and suffering is kind of like a scale.
So it runs over time from the date of your injury throughout. Now, we have a lot more to talk about and I don’t want to take up too much of your time in this video. So, tune in to part two where we continue to cover what to do if you’re settling the claim on your own.
