When you are injured in an accident, you might consider filing an insurance claim to get damages for your medical bills, lost wages, and other damages. However, insurance companies might not always present you with the best offer, and you should be cautious when settling an insurance claim.
Always work with an injury lawyer when negotiating with insurance companies. An attorney can review the insurance company’s offer and help determine whether it accounts for all damages, such as pain and suffering. We can also help appeal the decision if there is a problem with the value, and even take the case to court if the insurance company refuses to settle for an appropriate value.
For a free review of your injury case, call The Queenan Law Firm today at (817) 476-1797. Our Arlington personal injury lawyers are available for free case evaluations.
How Much Should I Settle My Personal Injury Claim for with a Texas Insurance Company?
It is important to know what your case is worth before attempting to settle with an insurance company. As mentioned, an experienced Texas personal injury lawyer can typically help with this by analyzing your damages and calculating the ideal settlement for your case. Typically, our attorneys look at the following factors when calculating damages:
Medical Bills
A settlement should properly cover all medical expenses that resulted from the injury. That means adding up all medical bills you’ve already faced as well as having an expert calculate how much your future medical care will cost.
Insurance companies are often willing to undercut estimations of future medical bills or deny coverage altogether. It is important not to overlook these damages and to have your Dallas personal injury lawyer hire an expert to help calculate a fair value. If these damages are not properly accounted for in your settlement, you should consider taking the case to trial instead.
Lost Wages
The wages you already missed because of your injury are, like medical bills, somewhat simple to calculate. You calculate these bills by taking your average wages and multiplying that by the time you missed at work because of the injury.
If you’ve returned to work at your full capacity, that is the end of it. But if you need reduced hours or duties, you could be looking at lower wages going forward. Additionally, some injuries are severe enough to block you from ever going back to work at your full capacity.
Calculating this effect on your lost earning capacity again requires help from an expert to project future raises and opportunities for promotion that you will miss out on. All of that needs to be compared to what your expected lifetime earnings are now that you face injuries and disabilities.
Pain and Suffering
Pain and suffering, alongside other non-economic damages, are often difficult to calculate objectively. This is because each person faces different levels of pain, and injuries affect their day-to-day activities and enjoyment of life differently.
Our Flower Mound personal injury lawyers will focus heavily on calculating what your pain and suffering damages are worth since this is often one of the highest areas for compensation in an injury case. Ultimately, these damages are capped in some cases, such as medical malpractice claims. Nonetheless, other injury cases should allow for very high pain and suffering payments.
How to Settle with Insurance in Texas
Once you know what your case is worth and you’ve had your Texas personal injury lawyers review your case, you are ready to file your initial claim with the insurance company and seek a strong settlement offer. In most cases, insurance companies return with an initial settlement offer that is too low. This is used to try to get quick settlements at low values to end cases early and without hassle. However, we will typically have to appeal this value and seek to negotiate a better settlement as our first step toward settling.
If the initial settlement offer is too low, our lawyers can appeal. There are usually internal processes within the insurance company to appeal problems with an insurance claim and have the case reevaluated. Along the way, our attorneys may be able to sit down to conferences with lawyers and insurance adjusters at the company to discuss your damages and fight for a better settlement.
In some cases, however, a “good” settlement cannot be reached.
Should I Settle My Texas Insurance Claim or File a Personal Injury Lawsuit?
Many cases instead need to be handled through personal injury lawsuits because the insurance companies will not cooperate with your claim. There are two major ways that this happens:
Refusal to Settle
Many insurance companies will simply disagree with our lawyers’ valuation of your case and refuse to settle for the value you deserve. This could come from an honest disagreement over how much your case is worth, or it could come from an unwillingness to spend the money you deserve.
Either way, our Fort Worth personal injury lawyers might advise you to file a personal injury lawsuit in court. Often, our attorneys will file an injury claim in court around the same time as your insurance claim to simultaneously pursue compensation through both routes. Insurance companies are more likely to negotiate and potentially settle your case with the reality of a lawsuit on the table.
If they refuse to settle, we can simply continue with the lawsuit and take them to trial to seek proper damages from a judge and jury.
Bad Faith Insurance
If you are filing an insurance claim with your own insurance company and it becomes apparent that they never intended to pay your claim in the first place, our Texas personal injury lawyers can file a bad faith insurance lawsuit. These claims usually arise in situations where the insurance company strings you along, denies claims, cancels policies, “loses” paperwork, or otherwise takes steps to avoid their duty to deal in good faith.
If you think the insurance company is merely stringing you along with your claim, call our Grapevine, TX personal injury lawyers for help.
Call Us for a Free Case Review Today
If you or a loved one was injured and needs help with an insurance claim or settlement, call The Queenan Law Firm’s Houston personal injury attorneys today at (817) 476-1797 for a free case review.