If you're in an automobile accident, chances are that your car won't be the only thing injured. If you didn't cause the accident, you shouldn't be expected to pay for your vehicle repairs or your medical bills. You are entitled to have both of these bills paid for by the other driver's insurance company (one of the most important reasons to have auto insurance). The process can be lengthy, frustrating, not to mention emotionally draining, and you may not receive all that you believe you are entitled to.
Function
Settlements from auto-accident personal injuries are obtained from auto-insurance companies in order to help the injured motorist repair or replace the damaged vehicle and pay for medical expenses incurred from the accident. A settlement is not the same thing as a jury award from litigation. All settlements are agreements made outside of court, usually to potentially avoid a lengthy and expensive legal process. Injured motorists can use their own insurance company to help them reach a settlement with the offending driver's company, or they can hire an attorney to negotiate for them.
Time Frame
Lawyers don't need to file a lawsuit in order to obtain a settlement from an auto accident. They have until the statute of limitations ends to negotiate a settlement to avoid filing. Each state has a different statute of limitations for filing a personal injury lawsuit, but the average time is two years. However, North Dakota has six years, Florida and Wyoming have four years and Louisiana and Kentucky only provide one year to file. If a settlement fails to be negotiated before the statute date and a suit has to be filed, it can take anywhere from a couple of months to many years to get a settlement. Sometimes insurance companies will be more prone to settling once a lawsuit has been filed, and other times they'll become more stubborn. They may have no further interest in discussing settlement until after depositions have been taken and a mediation is scheduled.
Size
These settlements can generally only be as large as the other party's insurance policy. If the other party is a regular motorist - meaning a typical automobile driver - the policy limits could be as low as $25,000 and as high as $100,000. If the other party drives for a trucking company or another large company, the policy limits could be $1 million or higher. How much the insurance company will offer from the policy limits depends on the nature of the accident. A fender bender with little to no medical bills will not receive nearly as much as an accident with a vehicle declared a total loss, medical bills totaling at least $10,000, or a fatality.
Considerations
Before hiring an attorney, remember that attorneys will extract a fee from the total settlement, ranging anywhere from 30 to 45 percent. Also consider how much your total damages are. If your vehicle has less than $1,000 in property damage and is not a total loss, and you only have one emergency-room visit in your list of medical expenses, it's better to have your own insurance company handle the negotiations instead of hiring an attorney. Attorneys are better suited for larger cases with high medical bills, drunken-driving incidents and considerable property damage.
Misconceptions
If you are injured in a motor-vehicle accident caused by another driver, you are entitled to have your vehicle repaired and your medical bills paid for by the other driver's insurance company. However, it doesn't mean that you are entitled to be paid quickly. Before the insurance company can make a settlement offer, they will have to fully evaluate your claim by obtaining proof of the repairs needed for your vehicle or proof that it is a total loss and all of your medical records. The latter process takes the most time. It's also possible for the insurance company's settlement to not cover all of your medical bills, especially if they uncover that one of the injuries you sustained in the accident is a pre-existing injury, such as a herniated disc, or if they believe that your injuries do not warrant the amount of medical attention you are seeking. Another common misconception is collecting damages for "emotional distress." This term is often thrown around personal-injury cases, particularly in the courtroom, but it's extremely hard to prove and even harder to obtain these damages from a jury, much less an insurance company. Unless you lost a limb or witnessed a fatality from the accident, your attorney probably won't consider even requesting damages for emotional distress.
Tags: insurance company, medical bills, your medical, your vehicle, other party, policy limits, total loss
