Georgia Accident Myths

Hi. This is Roger Ghai and I wanted to talk today a little bit about myths whenever you’re involved in a car accident case. These myths relate to something that you may have heard from your friends, family, or something of that nature. One popular myth is that if you write a letter to the insurance company and that you demand a real reasonable settlement in your mind, that the other insurance company is going to go ahead and settle your case.
They’re going to settle it fairly. They are going to do it quickly and they’re going to treat you right. The reality is that, that’s about the farthest thing from the truth because they are in it for the profit. Another myth is that if you’ve been involved in a car accident case and the defendant’s insurance company wants to take your recorded statement. You have to give them the recorded statement, otherwise they won’t settle the case with you. That too is a huge myth.
You do not have to give any recorded statement to the insurance company. They still have to settle the case with you even though you don’t do a recorded statement with them. Another myth is that there’s a certain formula to settling your car accident case. That’s not true either. This is not a worker’s compensation case where there’s a statutory scheme to determine the value of your case.
In a personal injury case, there are a multitude of factors that determine what’s going to settle your case and how much money that the insurance company is going to have to pay. Those factors can include your age, whether you have lost wages, they can include whether you’ve had previous injuries, how many car accidents you’ve had. Those types of factors affect the value of the case.
Now, another myth is that all lawyers are created equal and I’m sure that you know that all lawyers are not created equal. Some lawyers have had ability to try a case, some of them have not. Some of us have had great experience at mediating cases, some of us have not. All of those types of factors are going to determine whether you get a good settlement, a great settlement or a really poor settlement on your case.
The lawyer that you do choose is going to make a difference. Now, I want to talk about two related myths in the first, and I’m going to tie them in together. The first myth is that you’ve been involved in a car accident, “Yay, yay, yay. I’ve now hit the lottery. Okay, and I’m going to get a million bucks from my simple auto wreck case.” That is a huge myth, but nonetheless it’s still persists and I’ve seen clients come to me with that type of a mindset.
First of all, you have to remember that juries in Georgia are really not that generous. If you have a serious case, you’ve been permanently hurt and you have very severe injuries, that’s usually the instance where you read in the newspaper, you see on the TV that there was a huge verdict.
It’s not the type of a case where you’ve been treating with a chiropractor for six weeks or eight weeks and then you’ve been done — and you’re all better, and then you get a million dollars on the case. That just doesn’t happen. That is a huge myth which really needs to be dispelled.
Anyway, I hope that you have found these discussions of these myths this morning helpful and if you have any questions, feel free to call me at 770-7921-000.