Can a Car Accident Lawyer Help With Claiming Insurance Benefits?
When you’ve been involved in a car accident, it can become an overwhelming situation that creates other anxiety-inducing scenarios. You’ll probably be injured, meaning that seeking medical assistance will be high on your priority list. But while you do that, you might be thinking about getting justice for what happened to you. After all, somebody has to be held accountable, right? While there may not always be an outright culprit, you may still be entitled to some form of benefit. While the process may seem simple enough, it can become protracted, requiring you to seek the services of a lawyer and search: car accident lawyer Sarasota.
Many insurance companies and their agents are not known to be paragons of honesty and offering deserved benefits, at least willingly. It takes some pressure, usually in the form of the threat of legal action, before such insurance companies can acquiesce to the demands of offering insurance benefits. Of course, these insurance companies tend to have a team of lawyers whose sole job is to ensure that these companies pay out as few benefits as possible or none at all. This means if you’re involved in an accident, the clock is already against you because the insurance company immediately starts looking for ways to negate your claims.
Why You Need a Car Accident Lawyer
As soon as you’re involved in an accident, the insurance company and their lawyers start working feverishly to find ways of avoiding paying out any compensation. They treat the accident in the same manner as a prosecutor would a criminal case, looking for ways to nail you! Without the right car accident lawyer by your side, you could find yourself cheated out of the insurance benefits that you deserve because of the insurance company’s cunning. Worse still, it could be due to your naivety and inexperience with such matters. For instance, making thoughtless statements immediately after an accident can make it difficult to claim insurance benefits later on. Insurance companies have been known to misrepresent what accident victims say at the scene of a car crash in a bid to avoid paying benefits. Even admitting to a simple case of neglecting to indicate while driving, for example, can be detrimental. Once such a statement goes into the police report, the insurance company and their lawyers can quickly pounce on it and try to make you look like the one in the wrong.
While the above is a common technique used by insurance companies, there are other sinister tricks too. For example, an insurance agent of the company may reach out to you shortly after the accident with an offer. The purpose of such a seemingly noble gesture is two-fold; to make it appear that they’re concerned about your wellbeing, making you lower your guard. Then they’ll put an offer on the table. This will most likely be a low figure that is not commensurate with your injuries or car damage. The idea is that by taking the first step, they appear as heroes trying to look out for your best interests. In a worst-case scenario, they may bring a low offer while harassing you and threatening to withdraw it altogether if you don’t agree to it quickly.
An experienced car accident lawyer becomes essential to navigating these challenging situations.
How a Car Accident Lawyer Will Deal With the Insurance Companies
Strictly speaking, you can choose to take on the insurance company yourself and hope for the best. However, given that you’ll be inexperienced in matters of tort law, car accident claims and how the law goes about all of it, an experienced car accident lawyer is your best bet at getting the situation resolved amicably.
The following are the ways a car accident lawyer can help you get satisfactory results as far as claiming insurance benefits is concerned.
1)Communicate With the Insurance Company
Immediately after an accident, you may be tempted to reach out to the other driver’s insurance company to discuss benefits. Sometimes, this insurance company will contact you instead. It is all part of their tactics to resolve the situation quickly—for their best interest. It’s usually advisable not to speak with their adjuster, much less make any recorded statements about the car accident in a way that could reflect poorly on your side of the story.
As soon as you’re involved in a car accident, it’s best to contact a lawyer experienced in such matters immediately. They’ll advise you accordingly. Depending on the facts of the case and how you’d like to proceed, the lawyer can then speak with the insurance company, thereby shielding you from any scare tactics and the drawbacks of your inexperience.
2) Negotiate the Appropriate Insurance Benefits
As soon as you file a claim with the insurance company of the at-fault driver, they get to work right away on how to find ways of avoiding a payout. Their adjusters, lawyers, and investigators will run through every aspect of the accident and your claim, looking for evidence to refute it. It is rare that an insurance company will accept your claims without putting up a fight. This could mean endless negotiations and, if necessary, court appearances. Your car accident lawyer will put all the cards on the table. Sometimes, the insurance company is simply trying to see what they can get away with. Your lawyer will have the knowledge and expertise to handle such situations.
3) Gathering Evidence and Proving Your Case
Sometimes, your car accident lawyer is called into action right away. If the insurance company begins negotiations by attacking your side of the story, it is upon you and your lawyer to refute these claims. This refutation involves gathering the necessary evidence to corroborate your story. This evidence could be in the form of photos of the accident scene and witness statements along with any forensic evidence. It then becomes your lawyer’s task to prove that the evidence supports your side of the story. This is usually enough to get the insurance company to offer reasonable monetary benefits.
Getting involved in a car accident could mean incurring extensive damage, meaning you’ll be in the hole for significant sums of money in repair bills. Going at it alone can be very stressful. At Hale Law, you can count on our car accident attorneys to fight on your behalf, ensuring that unscrupulous insurance companies don’t trample on your rights. Contact us here: https://halelaw.com/ or call us at 941-735-4529.
Hale Law,
2803 Fruitville Road Suite 240 Sarasota FL 34237,
941-735-4529
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