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Cincinnati Area Tips and Tricks for Dealing with Insurance Companies After A Car Accident

Posted on Thursday, August 16th, 2018 at 4:07 pm    

The following post is part of our Law Student Blog Writing Project, and is authored by Dayna Wilson, a law clerk at Lawrence and Associates, who is pursuing her Juris Doctorate at Chase College of Law.

Getting into an accident is frightening. You may feel alone and unsure how to proceed after such a terrifying event. Who should you talk to? What should you say? Who is on your side? All these questions may be scattered in your head as you question who you should turn to. The first call you might get is from an insurance adjuster who wants to question you about your accident. At this point, you need an experienced attorney who can help you handle communications with the insurance adjuster to protect your rights. Insurance adjusters for liability insurance policies get annual training on the best ways to interrogate people in car accidents to avoid or minimize damages payable under the policy. Don’t be one of their statistics!

Should You Talk To Your Insurance Company After an Accident?

crashThe goal of your insurance company is to make the other driver’s insurance pay for damages to the vehicle. Although your insurance company is on your side, they are not paid or trained to pursue your claim against the at-fault driver the same way an attorney will. Your retained attorney will work on your behalf with your insurance company and the other driver’s insurance company to maximize your settlement. This is why it is important after an accident to contact an attorney so your rights can remain protected.

In addition, your insurance company has an obligation to pay for related medical bills after a car accident. These payments are called PIP payments in Kentucky, and Med Pay payments in Ohio. However, the adjuster often lives outside the Cincinnati area, and therefore doesn’t have the expertise to help you choose a doctor from the confusing army of medical professionals in the Tri-State area. In a similar vein, many primary care physicians are part of hospital networks that are pressured to refer within the hospital’s network, rather than to the doctor best equipped to treat your injury. One benefit of retaining an attorney early on is that an experienced personal injury attorney knows every doctor in the area, and has seen the outcome of their treatment on hundreds of patients. We know who to refer you to, and take pride in referring to the best medical professional for your condition!

Can An Insurance Adjuster Trick You Into Saying Something To Hurt Your Case?

When you are injured in an automobile accident, one of the first things that will happen is an insurance adjuster will contact you about the car accident. The adjuster may begin with some simple or innocent questions. Although the questions may seem innocent, the adjuster’s motives are not in your favor. Adjusters questions often include:

“Have you been involved in a previous car accident or other accident?”
“Are you the registered owner of the vehicle?”
“Was the weather a factor in the accident?”
“What happened?”
“Were you using a cell phone or any other electronic devices?”

The purpose of an insurance adjuster is to investigate and evaluate insurance claims. Adjusters decide whether an insurance company must pay and if so, how much. They conduct interviews, inspect property, and review police reports. The goal of the adjuster is to obtain valuable information to use during the claims process. While the information may seem reasonable, often any data collected is used against you to lower the value of your claim.

There are good reasons to limit your phone conversations with insurance adjusters when an adjuster calls you after an accident. Many adjusters will call frequently in an attempt to get you to settle quickly. In this case, if your injuries are minimal or nonexistent, it is permissible to talk to the other driver’s insurance company. The police report may place liability on the other driver. If this has occurred, communication with the other side may speed the claims process along.

Often, insurance adjusters will ask the victim to make a recorded statement. Remember an important rule: you should not provide an insurance company a recorded statement concerning the motor vehicle accident without having an attorney present. Simply put, the other side’s insurance company is not on your side, no matter how friendly or approachable they may seem. You can be completely honest about everything. However, later at trial, the insurance company may attempt to use any inconsistent statements between the recorded statement and the testimony at trial against you. Often, such inconsistent statements occur because your memory will fade between the recorded statement and trial, or because you won’t have known an important fact at the time of the recorded statement that you later learn before trial. Despite such reasonable explanations, the lawyer representing the insurance company many attempt to use this contradiction to make the jury question your credibility so that the jury will find for the defendant and not the victim. Having adequate representation will help prevent you from accidentally saying the wrong thing, or speaking about facts that haven’t been adequately investigated.

In addition to attempting to extract information to use against the victim and to get a recorded statement, the insurance company may also try to get the victim to sign a medical release form. These medical release forms allow an adjuster to get all of your medical records from every provider you have ever had. That is an enormous invasion of your privacy, and unjustified by any provision of Kentucky or Ohio law! It is important to keep the goal of an adjuster in the back of your head. They are there to reduce or eliminate your claim and protect their profits. If you provide recorded statements or sign medical releases prior to consulting with an attorney, there is a high chance that your claim will be significantly decreased.

How Can I Protect Myself If an Adjuster Wants to Take My Recorded Statement?

Individuals who have been injured in an automotive accident cases may choose to consult with personal injury lawyer. If you are seriously injured in an accident you should consult an attorney. An attorney can also help you if your own insurance company denies payment of your PIP or Med Pay benefits. Here at Lawrence & Associates Accident and Injury Lawyers, LLC we can handle the process of communicating with insurance companies so that you will not make a mistake that will negatively impact your case. We will handle the proper negotiations with the insurance company in order to pursue just compensation. If there’s even a small chance you could have significant injuries or damages, or the question of who caused the accident is in dispute, it’s probably smart to not speak with the other driver’s insurance company without legal representation.

Call our attorneys today for a free, confidential consultation if you need help. We’re Working Hard for the Working Class, and we want to help you!

Last Updated : February 22, 2019
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