Should I Settle My Car Accident Injury Case?

I’m Roger Ghai, and I wanted to talk to you today about a question that I frequently get in handling these automobile accident cases which is, why does a lawsuit have to be filed? Why can’t we just settle the case? My preference is actually to be able to resolve the case. It’s not that I’m litigious or lawsuit happy or anything like that or file frivolous lawsuits. The primary reason that we have to file suits, and that lawyers are forced to file suits a lot of times is because we’re talking case value. For example, let’s just take for an example on a basic what we call soft tissue whiplash case, sometimes the insurance company– your medical bills might be between $5 and $10,000 from chiropractic in the emergency room and combined that type of a thing, and the insurance company will go ahead and offer you $5,000 total.
Well, after you take out the attorney fees, after you try to pay your medical providers and everything, there’s just not enough money to go around. Many times, lawyers are getting offers from these insurance companies that don’t even fully compensate the client for the medical bills. There’s no way on God’s green earth that any decent lawyer can go ahead and recommend a settlement to a client, if the medical bills aren’t even being covered. In fact to use a case in point, I have a case right now where the client had a rotator cuff injury which is a significant injury, and had undergo surgery, had over a $100,000 in medical bills or just near $100,000.
The insurance company in that case offered the client, I think it was $75,000. Of course, I politely told the insurance company that we were not going to be able to accept that offer. We were not going to make a counteroffer, which I did not. They didn’t even make a counteroffer and I bluntly told the adjuster, the insurance companies adjuster, that they needed to get serious about the case, and at least come up with an initial offer of what the clients medical bills were. They did, they didn’t end up moving up much after that to $115,000 and this was a permanent injury. That was a reason that in this case, we had to file a lawsuit. If you have questions about why lawsuits have to be filed, what the lawsuit process is, feel free to call me at 770-792-1000.