Car insurance companies are notoriously tight fisted about paying fair settlements, especially if the accident is serious. Houston car accident attorney Steve Lee represents injury victims who arent being treated fairly by insurance companies.
 

Blog

Car Accidents and DWI Accidents

view all

Maritime and Offshore Cases

view all

General

view all

Library

Car Accidents and DWI Accidents

Truck Accidents and DWI Accidents

Construction, Refinery, Industrial, On the Job Injuries and Workers' Comp

General

View all

After the Accident: Insurance Tricks to Watch Out For (Part Two)

To watch these videos, please download Flash Player

As we stated in part one of this series, it is incredibly important to have a lawyer represent you if you are involved in a serious car accident. Insurance companies have turned getting out of their financial responsibilities into an art form, and accepting an accident settlement from an insurer without an attorney to look out for your interests is almost a guarantee that you won’t get what you should. In Houston, car accident attorney Steve Lee has been representing injury victims for over three decades.

Here are a few more standard operating procedures that you should look out for if you find yourself dealing with insurers after a car accident.

“Hi, this is Bill from Allstate. We’re calling because we wanted to get a quick statement about your accident.”

Insurers will make this call as soon as they possibly can. This statement could cause you a great deal of problems later on. When the adjusters take your statement, they will be recording every word of it. And they won’t be doing so “for quality control purposes.” They won’t just be asking you what happened. They will also ask you if you needed medical attention after the accident, or they will ask you how you are feeling. What they want is for you to say that you didn’t need medical attention and that you feel fine. These recorded statements can be used against you later on should real medical problems develop. It’s important to remember that not every medical condition is immediately obvious. For instance, if you develop a tumor, you don’t feel it’s presence as soon as it appears. Many forms of trauma result in slow damage to the body.

Having you on tape saying “I’m fine,” or “I’m okay” could be used to try to convince a jury that you are faking your injuries. If you receive a call from an adjuster and they repeatedly want to know how you are, say “I don’t know yet,” and try to end the call as soon as possible.

“We’re not available right now. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.”

Adjusters have been known to take advantage of the financial situation of the victim. Insurance companies bring in billions of dollars of revenue every year. They are unencumbered with mortgages, car notes, utilities, or groceries for their families. As a result, they have considerably more time than the average injured New Yorker. By making themselves hard to contact and deliberately elusive, they are hoping that the victim will be in dire need of money, and will then accept a settlement that is far below what is necessary.

“There have been some delays in your paperwork. Just go ahead and pay for the damage and we’ll reimburse you later.”

This is a particularly cheap method of maintaining a profit margin, but you should remember that adjusters are graded on how little money they pay out. This technique is usually used when the damage is minor, and when it seems like the owner of the car can afford it. The person with the damaged car pays the bill and waits for a check. And waits. And waits some more. Upon repeated calls the person with the damaged car learns that, due to reasons that vary from adjuster to adjuster, the insurance company will not be reimbursing anyone. The policyholder will be upset, but the car has been repaired, and the damage wasn’t enough to actually go to court over. For insurers, losing a monthly premium can sometimes be cheaper than actually paying to repair the damage.

We would love to say that we find this behavior shocking, but unfortunately we’ve been at this long enough to not be surprised by anything that insurers do. You should always remember that getting what is fair and necessary out of insurers takes a lot of work and careful planning. And if the insurance company in question doesn’t represent you, you can expect them to pull out all the stops in order to avoid any meaningful compensation for your injuries.

If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident, contact Houston Car Accident Lawyer Steve for a free car legal consultation today.

©2008 Steven M. Lee, PC, All Rights Reserved, Reproduced with Permission
Website Design for Attorneys, Search Engine Optimization, Optimized Video Services for Lawyers and Update Your Website Yourself
by Foster Web Marketing - The Best Attorney Website Design & Hosting Firm