Deciding to pursue a personal injury claim isn’t a decision most people make with clear information. You’re usually injured, stressed, dealing with medical appointments, and fielding calls from an insurance adjuster you didn’t expect to be talking to. The impulse is either to settle quickly and be done with it, or to wait and see how the injury develops. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but both can cost you significantly if you haven’t thought through a few key things first.
Any experienced personal injury law firm in New York, or anywhere else for that matter, will tell you the same thing: the early decisions in a personal injury claim tend to have outsized consequences. Here are five things worth thinking through before you commit to a path.
1. Do You Know the Full Extent of Your Injuries?
Settling before your injuries have stabilized is one of the most common and costly mistakes in personal injury cases. Once you accept a settlement, you typically waive the right to pursue further compensation even if your condition worsens later.
Before you agree to anything, you need a clear medical picture of where your injuries are heading. That may require waiting weeks or months for a treating physician to assess your prognosis and maximum medical improvement.
2. Have You Documented Everything?
Documentation supports your claim and helps protect it. Things such as medical records, accident reports, photographs of the scene and of your injuries, the contact details of any witnesses, and a written description of what occurred while your memory is still fresh all become more difficult to recreate later on.
Keep a journal recording your symptoms, the level of pain you experience, and how the injury affects your daily activities and routines. Since insurance companies assess claims on the basis of written material, the more comprehensive and detailed your documentation is, the more difficult it will be for an adjuster to reduce the extent of what happened to you.
3. What Are the Actual Damages?
A personal injury claim can include far more than medical bills. Lost wages, reduced earning capacity, future medical expenses, pain and suffering, and loss of enjoyment of life are all compensable in most jurisdictions.
The total value of a claim is rarely obvious from looking at the hospital bill. Before accepting any offer, you or an attorney needs to calculate the full scope of damages, including projected future costs, not just what’s been spent so far.
4. What Is the Statute of Limitations?
All states set a time limit for personal injury claims, the limit generally lying between one and three years from the date of the injury, although there are exceptions which can greatly shorten or lengthen that period.
If the deadline is missed, it is almost certain that the right to bring a claim will be lost, no matter how strong the case actually is. If you are close to the time limit, you should not deal with this later; it must be the first thing you address.
5. Should You Accept the First Offer?
Almost never. Insurance companies send initial settlement proposals to settle claims quickly and cheaply, typically before the injuries are fully known or proven. The adjusters are trained negotiators with the aim of paying as little as possible.
Legitimate claims are settled by accepting the first offer without knowing what the claim is really worth or without having an attorney examine the settlement terms, thus resulting in them being resolved for only a small part of their true value. Make a counteroffer. At the very least, obtain an independent review before you agree to anything.
Conclusion
You have no need to become litigious or adversarial because of these considerations; all they demand is that you should be well informed. A claim for injury is usually the only way of getting back to a financially sound position when another person’s negligence has altered your life. It is only by making the claim properly and having a full understanding of your injuries, the evidence you have, and your legal rights that this means of obtaining compensation can turn from a mere possibility into a reality and actually deliver the reimbursement to which you are entitled.
