You got hurt in an accident that was someone else’s fault. You were barely back from the emergency room before the at-fault party’s insurance company contacted you. The claims adjuster offered you a few thousand dollars to settle your claim against their policyholder. This situation sounds too good to be true, especially after your bad luck of getting hurt in an accident in the first place.
Should you accept a settlement offer from the insurance company at this point? A Chicago personal injury attorney could talk to you, take a look at the situation and let you know if you deserve more money than the insurance company is offering. Your attorney could negotiate directly with the claims adjuster for you.
How to Determine the Financial Value of Your Insurance Claim
You cannot tell, merely from the dollar amount of the settlement offer, if you are receiving a fair amount of money for your claim. An offer of $10,000 might be appropriate in one case, while $5 million might be the right amount in another situation. Every case is different.
The insurance company looks at the facts of your personal injury claim and checks its database to see how much money juries tend to award in cases like yours. In the situation of a quick, early offer, the claims adjuster likely slashes the expected jury award and hopes that you will take the bait. Let’s say that the insurance company thinks a jury would give $50,000 for your personal injury claim. A quick early offer might be for $5,000.
The general public does not have access to databases like this. Insurance companies and personal injury attorneys are able to check on jury awards. It would be a shame for a person to accept $5,000 on a claim that was worth $50,000 because they did not know the value of their injury claim. When you work with a Chicago personal injury attorney, we can evaluate the financial worth of your claim.
Factors That Impact the Settlement Value of Your Claim
Here are some of the factors that juries evaluate when determining how much money to award to a person who gets hurt because of someone else’s carelessness:
- The amount of medical expenses for treatment of the injuries.
- How severe the injuries were.
- Whether the plaintive had to undergo uncomfortable or invasive treatments like surgery or physical therapy.
- The amount of lost wages incurred by the plaintive when they could not work because of their injuries.
- Whether the plaintive still has impairments from their wounds even after undergoing all the prescribed treatment. What impact will these impairments have on the person’s life?
- Whether the injured person is partly to blame for the accident that injured them.
- Does the treating physician anticipate that the plaintiff will need additional medical procedures for their wounds?
- Would the settlement offer pay all of the medical bills?
Until you know the answers to these questions, you do not want to settle your injury claim. Your lawyer might need to file a lawsuit instead of accepting a settlement because Illinois places a deadline on injury claims. If your case has not settled, you will need to either file a personal injury action or lose the right to go after compensation.
Contact Our Personal Injury Attorneys
The Chicago personal injury attorneys at Hale & Monico can provide legal advice and guidance during every stage of a personal injury claim. Contact our office today for help with your case, we offer a free consultation.