Because They Can Get Away With It. A Lot.
I keep seeing the same thing. Someone calls me – the insurance company has offered them small change on a big accident. So little they have to call a lawyer.
They call me. I get copies of all their medical information, and send it to the insurance company. The insurance company pays three or four times what they initially offered.
Why do they make the lowball offer? Because they can get away with it. And there are enough people who bite at the lowball that the insurance company will lose money by not trying.
The insurance company is not penalized for failing to make a fair offer to you if you are injured by its driver. (With uninsured motorist coverage, a lowball offer means they might get sued for bad faith; but a bad faith lawsuit requires relatively extreme conduct by the insurance company, and a lot of patience on the part of whoever is suing them.)
What can you do about it? Don’t fall for the lowball. Your case is worth more than most – if not all – adjusters will offer you on the first offer.
Call a lawyer and ask him what to do.
What can your lawyer do? He can let the insurance company know he’s involved.
That wipes out the “discount” they were hoping to get from you for proceeding without a lawyer. It will probably get you more money than you would have gotten with the insurance company’s best offer to you if you had never hired a lawyer.
Your lawyer can assemble all your information – get your medical bills together, talk to your doctors and get them to write letters if that will help, talk to you and find out what’s going on that the medical bills don’t tell you about.
And if they still won’t come up with a reasonable offer, the lawyer can file suit. Filing suit makes them spend money on their own lawyer.
And it gets your lawsuit on a trial schedule. If anything forces a settlement, it’s knowledge that a trial will happen soon.
I have been a lawyer over 30 years. You hardly ever take the first offer. And don’t take last offer if you haven’t talked to a lawyer about it. If you have a personal injury case in Cincinnati, Ohio or if you want to know what your lawsuit is worth, talk with an experienced Cincinnati Personal Injury Attorney about the case. Call me, William Strubbe, at 513-621-4775.
Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.
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