When filing your personal injury claim, a First Coast personal injury attorney can tell you how to achieve the best result and convince the insurance company of the seriousness of your injuries.
Most people don’t realize that insurance carriers are far more impressed with specified damages that can be documented on medical bills and loss of income statements, than with lengthy essays about pain, anguish, and mental suffering.
Your case will improved if you and your First Coast personal injury attorney obtain substantial documentation of your damages. This does not mean just personal accounts of pain and suffering and other subjective complaints that cannot be documented. Insurance companies are not likely to be interested in such intangible statements of inconvenience and mental anguish. They are much more likely to be persuaded by facts, figures, and objectively documented injuries that prove it is in their best interest to settle your case.
Here is a hypothetical to illustrate this point: Two backseat passengers are involved in a rear-end collision and suffer the same injuries. Passenger A goes to a doctor who recommends six weeks of physical therapy. The passenger takes about eight weeks to recover and has to take two weeks off from work. He recovers entirely after six months and has no residual injuries, and has dollar amounts for his therapy bills and lost wages.
Passenger B goes to the emergency room, which recommends that he see a specialist. He goes to a chiropractor (not exactly who the ER had in mind) several times and insists on returning to work except for two days he takes off. He is in severe pain and has difficulty performing at work, and he loses many of his hobbies for the rest of the year. His medical bills are only a couple hundred dollars and his lost wages even less. But he is in dire pain that is easily seen by his concerned friends and family, who write letters attesting to the difficulty he has been having since the accident.
The insurance company will probably offer to settle Passenger A’s claim for close to his documented damages and lost income, but will offer Passenger B a far lower amount.
If you have further questions about documenting your injuries from an accident, contact First Coast personal injury attorney John Fagan for a free initial consultation.
