Usually, you don’t have to go to trial to recover money for your claim. Most of my clients never appear in court.
Several things work in your favor when you make a claim against an insurance company. The first is that the company want to resolve the case as quickly as possible. The longer a case is not settled, the more the company has to pay its employees to work on the case.
A second is that the insurance company usually doesn’t want to hire an attorney to defend itself or the person it insures. And finally – and this may be the trump card – settling the case is the only way the company has of making sure that a jury won’t tell it to pay more than its claims people think it’s worth.
This does not mean it is always easy to recover what you are due. Claims adjusters and insurance lawyers are not hired to overpay. Sometimes they pay too much attention to inaccurate information – which they obtain from their own insured, or some other source – to the point where they don’t evaluate the claim accurately.
Some companies play a game of “chicken” until they are convinced that you will file suit, or even go to trial. Some will hold their best offer until the last minute, in the hopes that you and your lawyer will take less than the claim is worth in order to avoid spending the time or money necessary to take the case to trial.
But at the end of the day, nearly all cases settle before going to trial. I question the accuracy of any statistics; but well over 90% of my client’s cases settle without trial. People hire me because I can try a case. Nearly all of them are much happier when we get a good settlement.
{ 0 comments… add one }