Following a personal injury incident, you might need to file a personal injury claim to pursue compensation for damages not covered by insurance. In that case, you will have to deal with an insurance company whose main goal is to keep its profits up. They will employ an insurance adjuster to find information that can limit your settlement, as well as get you to admit fault to reduce the amount of compensation you could receive.
Without personal injury claim experience, you could make mistakes that could affect your ability to recover full compensation for your damages. Hiring a personal injury lawyer could help with insurance settlement negotiations, as they will know the best way to mitigate attempts to limit your compensation. The personal injury lawyers at The Russo Firm have experience negotiating with insurance companies and can use that experience to help you recover fair compensation for your damages.
Why Do Insurance Companies Try to Limit Settlements?
Insurance companies will attempt to limit personal injury settlements to keep their profits up. At the end of the day, it is not in their best interest financially to pay thousands upon thousands of dollars to a personal injury victim for damages that they did not cause.
They will do anything in their power to limit your settlement in order to avoid paying exorbitant amounts of money for current and future damages. Some of the ways they try to limit personal injury settlements include offering lowball settlements, using insurance adjusters to find information that could hurt your settlement, or delaying the settlement to the point of frustration for the victim.
Insurance Companies Offer Early Lowball Settlements
One of the first tactics an insurance company will use to limit your potential settlement is by offering a lowball early settlement. They will do this in hopes that a personal injury victim will see the money being offered and believe it can help their financial situation. The problem is that this lowball early settlement will not be nearly enough to pay for the full cost of the victim’s damages.
If a personal injury victim accepts the settlement, they will not be able to go back to the negotiating table. Whatever they accept will be what they receive, even if they incur future costs associated with their personal injury. A personal injury lawyer can help victims see through this attempt to limit their compensation and can help negotiate a fairer settlement.
Using Insurance Adjusters to Find Information to Lower Your Settlement
Another way an insurance company will try to limit your settlement is by employing an insurance adjuster to find information that can hurt your settlement. An insurance adjuster is someone hired by the insurance company to investigate a claim. They search for information to provide the insurance company with that can determine how much they may need to pay to a personal injury victim.
An insurance adjuster will search for any information that can downplay the severity of your injuries or point toward you sharing some of the fault. This can include social media posts portraying you as being fine, low medical bills, and police reports where you admit to sharing fault. They may also interview you and use tricky language to get you to admit sharing fault, which can reduce your compensation.
Delaying Settlements to Dissuade From Pursuing the Settlement Further
Insurance companies will also try to delay settlements in order to frustrate the personal injury victim. If you deny a lowball settlement, they will play the waiting game in an attempt to make you more likely to accept a settlement below the value of your damages.
Delaying a settlement can begin with the insurance company failing to contact you for a couple of weeks. Let’s say you sent a counteroffer to a lowball early settlement. An insurance company may take multiple weeks to respond to the offer in any way. This round of negotiations may take weeks to multiple months, only for both sides to not come to an agreement. From there, they may just go dark and not send any communication about advancing the negotiation. They will do this when they feel the amount they will have to pay is above what they are comfortable with.
An insurance company knows that you need money, as economic damages like medical bills, lost wages, and property damage are piling up. You are desperate and likely cannot wait much longer before you need financial relief. By going dark, they hope that you get desperate enough to accept a currently standing lowball offer and seem less likely to push negotiations to the point where it gets too expensive.
How Can a Personal Injury Lawyer Help You Negotiate With an Insurance Company?
Hiring a personal injury lawyer is the best way to prevent an insurance company from limiting your settlement. They will know all of the above methods an insurance company can use to limit your settlement and will be able to mitigate the effects of the attempts. With the personal injury claims experience, you will have someone in your corner who knows the best way to handle the process and maximize your potential for fair compensation.
Contact The Russo Firm for Help With Insurance Company Negotiations
The personal injury lawyers at The Russo Firm have experience negotiating settlements with insurance companies that can help you recover fair compensation for your damages. They know all of the tactics that insurance companies and insurance adjusters use to limit settlements. They can craft a negotiation plan to mitigate attempts to limit your settlement and use personalized legal counsel to put you in the best position to recover fair compensation for personal injury damages.
Whether you suffered damages from medical malpractice, social media harm, a truck accident, or a car accident, our personal injury lawyers can help you recover fair compensation. At The Russo Firm, we offer free consultations to potential personal injury clients to show how we can help with the personal injury claims process. Contact us at (561) 270-0913 or leave a message on our online contact page.
