Let’s say you’ve been in an accident, you haven’t retained a lawyer, and you’re dealing with the other party’s insurance company. It’s not uncommon, we see it all the time, that they will make a low ball offer to you.
They’ll say, “Here’s a few thousand,” and of course, “We’re going to fix your car.”
You think, “Oh, well, maybe that sounds reasonable.” But then oftentimes, a month later, that mild back pain becomes much more severe.
You go in and get a scan or a film, and it turns out you’ve got a bad disc, and you’ve already signed away your rights.
We hate to see that and we know that the insurance companies are not fair to people who represent themselves. They typically offer cents on the dollar compared to what we were able to ultimately resolve cases for. And it’s almost never in your best interest to settle a case quickly because it’s so common for people to not recognize the full scope of their injury, their harm until they’ve experienced it for 6 months or a year.
We’ve seen people develop things that arose from that initial impact, but that they didn’t really come to light in full for quite some time. So, better to be patient, and when people come to us, we don’t try to settle our cases quickly for low dollars. We try to make sure that they’re fully developed—that we have a good idea of exactly the full extent of their injuries before making a demand on their behalf.
