Ep 76: Intake & Investigation During the Pre-Litigation Process

Welcome to the Personal Injury Lawyer Podcast. I'm Clark speaks. This is the anatomy of a personal injury case. One of the things that that makes me think of is, when we talk about this a lot, a lot of times it comes up, well, what happens when a person is, you know, we're kind of picturing this as we're through our own eyes, like if we're, you know, our age, you know, or your age, or my age, or whoever is the person asking the question, but, but, you know, it's a different situation when you know, we get older, when you get 60, 7080, years old, you know, then it some of these things become much harder to do. And then one of the things that I was that I remember vividly learning about, or thinking about, in a case is where a child was hurt, you know, because the parents in that situation do so much to take care of the child, then, you know, the question becomes, okay, well,

you know, how does that look in the future, as the parents themselves age and ultimately, you know, pass away. Then what happens to the child who's going to be there to help that child when that child is 60, 7080, years old? And so that's one of the reasons why we have to be so careful and so diligent and so thorough about calculating these future economic damages. Yeah, absolutely. You talked about

future medical care. One thing that I think is important to note that we have, that our

Economist has pointed out. And you talked about discounting for present value. Can you explain what you mean by that? So if the economist comes up with a value in terms of lost wages, that value is going to be projected over the next 2030 years. It depends on your life expectancy, which is going to be determined on the life expectancy tables, and then it's going to be discounted to present value at that time in the future. And what does that look like in terms of what would the carrier pay? Now,

I'm not an economist, so that's a very, I think, detailed

mathematical equation. And so, you know, but that is, that's my understanding of what that looks like. So I think, I think the idea is that $1 today is worth more than $1. If I was going to give you $1 today, it would be worth more than if I was going to give you $1.25 years from now, right? And so. So I think the idea is that, because, because you could invest that money and then and then, and then and then, also,

you know that just the time value of money,

inflation and those types of things, one of the things that I think is interesting about future medical bills is insurance companies will try to, you know, if we'll say, Okay, well, this person can expect to pay $3 million over the course of their life for future medical treatment. One of the things that's interesting about the economists that we have worked with is they will go back and prove, no, that's not true, that actually medical care increases. The cost of medical care increases more than inflation, and therefore you don't discount it. Instead of that money that you have to you need more money today than you will in the future to account for the increasing cost of medical care. But in any event. So what I'd like to talk to you about now is some of the individual stages. So you mentioned some of those stages and these now we're talking about the catastrophic cases at a pre lit at a pre litigation stage. You mentioned intake and investigation and case management. You mentioned the demand that would go out, the negotiators, settlements, we haven't talked about liens, Bill reductions, disbursement, review, those are some of the things I'd like to be able to talk to you about now. So intake, what are some of the important things about intake and then investigation as two separate things in the in in a catastrophic context, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the urgency, like when, when a call comes in, it seems like it's important for, in a in a catastrophic case, for us to go to work immediately. What is your experience? Yeah, I think that urgency is one of the biggest things with respect to intake on a catastrophic claim. What can you tell me about

like, of course, I know who our invest our intake people are, but what's unique about our intake people, as compared to maybe intake people at other firms?

So our intake department is made up of, you know, prior police officers, people with military experience, people who are familiar with investigation and

the questions that need to be asked. They're familiar with the law, they're familiar with.

With analyzing the claim, they know what information. You know, we need to be able to process the claim efficiently and quickly and to set it up such that we are, you know, making progress, you know, for the client immediately.

And why is that important?

It's important in, you know, a number of ways. I think it's important from a communication aspect, I think that, you know, the client wants to know that there's someone who's there to help them and advocate for them, and someone who knows what they're doing and has some expertise in this area. A lot of times when folks are involved in accidents, you know, just in general, and not just in catastrophic cases, it's it's something that they've not been through before. It's something that they're not familiar with. They don't know what to do. They don't know who to call. A lot of times, if it's a motor vehicle accident, they've lost their form of transportation, and that can be difficult for people. You know, you have jobs, you have children, you need to get them to school, you need to get to your place of work. You need to get to medical treatment. And so having someone there to guide you through that process and to help you and support you, someone that you can talk to about, yeah, this is how I'm feeling. This is what my doctor said. You know, I think that that helps alleviate stress for people. And I think that that is a that's a big part of what we do, is we we take that stress from the client, because it's already a stressful situation with respect to the injury. So the stress of having to collect information and document information and research, you know, we do that for you, and that's one of the services that we provide. So I think that that is, that is always helpful. And, you know, we, we reach out to clients immediately, once we get the files, and we we see, you know, that that is something that is very much appreciated by the client. Let me ask you about, specifically about, you know, catastrophic cases, these million and multi million dollar cases, in terms of the urgency of this intake process and the investigative process. And you mentioned our intake people are former

police officers and military personnel who have actually investigated for living, and they understand the importance of documentation.

Are the insurance companies do the insurance companies go to work immediately on these claims? Yes, what types of things might they do to go to work? I have had insurance companies do surveillance on folks immediately after the accident. Oftentimes, they're going to reach out to the client before you have gotten a comprehensive view of your medical treatment. They're going to try and get you to settle early. They want to close out your claim. They want to limit your ability to treat so for example, I'll give you $2,500 and this is, this is a general, general example, and not necessarily catastrophic example, but I'll give you $2,500 for general damages, and we'll pay for $5,000 worth of medical treatment over the next three months. And, you know, sign this release and and then we'll be good to go, because they want to minimize, you know, the expense that they're going to pay out as far as their liability is concerned, is that in their best interest to do that? The carriers best interest, I'm sorry, is that in the is that in the injured person's best interest to do? No, I mean, there's a week after an accident, there's no way for you to know if you're going to have long term injuries, how long you need to treat what your injuries are.

You know, a lot of times, our clients haven't even had an initial follow up, you know, visit within a week of the accident. Okay, now back to catastrophic accidents,

my experience has been that after a catastrophic accident, an insurance company will, for example, in a in a trucking accident, they'll immediately have experts and engineers go pull the data from the from the truck that's recorded in order and analyze it in order to be able to say how fast the driver was going and how how long they put on their brakes, and what was happening during the the few few seconds, or whatever, before the accident, to try to recreate and then, and then they'll have accident reconstructionists that'll that'll try to figure out exactly what happened and that and and also, I'm thinking about a couple of different instances where,

you know, they they did investigations, and it would have been helpful to us if we would have been contacted earlier, so that we could have had one of our investigators go there to take pictures before the scene was disturbed, to get statements from people before they moved or their memories faded, to get to get a, you know, videos of and reports, and have access and also prevent the other side from,

from from trying to eliminate certain evidence. Is, have you had similar observations? Yeah. So

initially, what we do.

So from a case management you know, function is send out spoilation letters,

basically informing the insurance carrier that we represent the client and that they need to preserve any evidence it's going to be related to

the collision or any premises liability

accident. And so why is that important? Like, couldn't an individual just go ahead and send something out to why is it? Was it difference does it make if we send something like that out? Because if they don't preserve the evidence, then there is a presumption that we would get

if we were to litigate the claim later on, that would be to the client's benefit. So, so it is important, so it has a legal consequence of us sending that letter out. It has a legal consequence that affects the value of this claim later in court. That's right, wow. Okay, so in terms of the investigation, who do we can you tell me about our investigative process? Who we use? What are their experience? What are their qualifications? How do they help? So our investigative process outside of our intake department, you know, we have experienced private investigators who are going to do research on a multitude of things with respect to evidence for the accident. So photos, any red light footage, if this is a motor vehicle accident, or even if it's not, if there is surveillance video in close proximity, if this happened at a restaurant or in a parking lot at a business, are there videos? Are there records? You know, if this is at a gated facility. You know, are there entrance and exit records, who was on the property, you know, supervising the work. Also with respect to assets, what are the assets look like,

coverage investigations? Are there multiple insurance policies? What are the what are the policy limits? Can we identify those early on?

You know, there, there are other things, like Resident relative that may apply, you know, dependent on the circumstances. And so our investigators are very important part of that process.

Welcome to the Personal Injury Lawyer Podcast. I'm Clark speaks. This is the anatomy of a personal injury case. One of the things that that makes me think of is, when we talk about this a lot, a lot of times it comes up, well, what happens when a person is, you know, we're kind of picturing this as we're through our own eyes, like if we're, you know, our age, you know, or your age, or my age, or whoever is the person asking the question, but, but, you know, it's a different situation when you know, we get older, when you get 60, 7080, years old, you know, then it some of these things become much harder to do. And then one of the things that I was that I remember vividly learning about, or thinking about, in a case is where a child was hurt, you know, because the parents in that situation do so much to take care of the child, then, you know, the question becomes, okay, well,

you know, how does that look in the future, as the parents themselves age and ultimately, you know, pass away. Then what happens to the child who's going to be there to help that child when that child is 60, 7080, years old? And so that's one of the reasons why we have to be so careful and so diligent and so thorough about calculating these future economic damages. Yeah, absolutely. You talked about

future medical care. One thing that I think is important to note that we have, that our

Economist has pointed out. And you talked about discounting for present value. Can you explain what you mean by that? So if the economist comes up with a value in terms of lost wages, that value is going to be projected over the next 2030 years. It depends on your life expectancy, which is going to be determined on the life expectancy tables, and then it's going to be discounted to present value at that time in the future. And what does that look like in terms of what would the carrier pay? Now,

I'm not an economist, so that's a very, I think, detailed

mathematical equation. And so, you know, but that is, that's my understanding of what that looks like. So I think, I think the idea is that $1 today is worth more than $1. If I was going to give you $1 today, it would be worth more than if I was going to give you $1.25 years from now, right? And so. So I think the idea is that, because, because you could invest that money and then and then, and then and then, also,

you know that just the time value of money,

inflation and those types of things, one of the things that I think is interesting about future medical bills is insurance companies will try to, you know, if we'll say, Okay, well, this person can expect to pay $3 million over the course of their life for future medical treatment. One of the things that's interesting about the economists that we have worked with is they will go back and prove, no, that's not true, that actually medical care increases. The cost of medical care increases more than inflation, and therefore you don't discount it. Instead of that money that you have to you need more money today than you will in the future to account for the increasing cost of medical care. But in any event. So what I'd like to talk to you about now is some of the individual stages. So you mentioned some of those stages and these now we're talking about the catastrophic cases at a pre lit at a pre litigation stage. You mentioned intake and investigation and case management. You mentioned the demand that would go out, the negotiators, settlements, we haven't talked about liens, Bill reductions, disbursement, review, those are some of the things I'd like to be able to talk to you about now. So intake, what are some of the important things about intake and then investigation as two separate things in the in in a catastrophic context, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the urgency, like when, when a call comes in, it seems like it's important for, in a in a catastrophic case, for us to go to work immediately. What is your experience? Yeah, I think that urgency is one of the biggest things with respect to intake on a catastrophic claim. What can you tell me about

like, of course, I know who our invest our intake people are, but what's unique about our intake people, as compared to maybe intake people at other firms?

So our intake department is made up of, you know, prior police officers, people with military experience, people who are familiar with investigation and

the questions that need to be asked. They're familiar with the law, they're familiar with.

With analyzing the claim, they know what information. You know, we need to be able to process the claim efficiently and quickly and to set it up such that we are, you know, making progress, you know, for the client immediately.

And why is that important?

It's important in, you know, a number of ways. I think it's important from a communication aspect, I think that, you know, the client wants to know that there's someone who's there to help them and advocate for them, and someone who knows what they're doing and has some expertise in this area. A lot of times when folks are involved in accidents, you know, just in general, and not just in catastrophic cases, it's it's something that they've not been through before. It's something that they're not familiar with. They don't know what to do. They don't know who to call. A lot of times, if it's a motor vehicle accident, they've lost their form of transportation, and that can be difficult for people. You know, you have jobs, you have children, you need to get them to school, you need to get to your place of work. You need to get to medical treatment. And so having someone there to guide you through that process and to help you and support you, someone that you can talk to about, yeah, this is how I'm feeling. This is what my doctor said. You know, I think that that helps alleviate stress for people. And I think that that is a that's a big part of what we do, is we we take that stress from the client, because it's already a stressful situation with respect to the injury. So the stress of having to collect information and document information and research, you know, we do that for you, and that's one of the services that we provide. So I think that that is, that is always helpful. And, you know, we, we reach out to clients immediately, once we get the files, and we we see, you know, that that is something that is very much appreciated by the client. Let me ask you about, specifically about, you know, catastrophic cases, these million and multi million dollar cases, in terms of the urgency of this intake process and the investigative process. And you mentioned our intake people are former

police officers and military personnel who have actually investigated for living, and they understand the importance of documentation.

Are the insurance companies do the insurance companies go to work immediately on these claims? Yes, what types of things might they do to go to work? I have had insurance companies do surveillance on folks immediately after the accident. Oftentimes, they're going to reach out to the client before you have gotten a comprehensive view of your medical treatment. They're going to try and get you to settle early. They want to close out your claim. They want to limit your ability to treat so for example, I'll give you $2,500 and this is, this is a general, general example, and not necessarily catastrophic example, but I'll give you $2,500 for general damages, and we'll pay for $5,000 worth of medical treatment over the next three months. And, you know, sign this release and and then we'll be good to go, because they want to minimize, you know, the expense that they're going to pay out as far as their liability is concerned, is that in their best interest to do that? The carriers best interest, I'm sorry, is that in the is that in the injured person's best interest to do? No, I mean, there's a week after an accident, there's no way for you to know if you're going to have long term injuries, how long you need to treat what your injuries are.

You know, a lot of times, our clients haven't even had an initial follow up, you know, visit within a week of the accident. Okay, now back to catastrophic accidents,

my experience has been that after a catastrophic accident, an insurance company will, for example, in a in a trucking accident, they'll immediately have experts and engineers go pull the data from the from the truck that's recorded in order and analyze it in order to be able to say how fast the driver was going and how how long they put on their brakes, and what was happening during the the few few seconds, or whatever, before the accident, to try to recreate and then, and then they'll have accident reconstructionists that'll that'll try to figure out exactly what happened and that and and also, I'm thinking about a couple of different instances where,

you know, they they did investigations, and it would have been helpful to us if we would have been contacted earlier, so that we could have had one of our investigators go there to take pictures before the scene was disturbed, to get statements from people before they moved or their memories faded, to get to get a, you know, videos of and reports, and have access and also prevent the other side from,

from from trying to eliminate certain evidence. Is, have you had similar observations? Yeah. So

initially, what we do.

So from a case management you know, function is send out spoilation letters,

basically informing the insurance carrier that we represent the client and that they need to preserve any evidence it's going to be related to

the collision or any premises liability

accident. And so why is that important? Like, couldn't an individual just go ahead and send something out to why is it? Was it difference does it make if we send something like that out? Because if they don't preserve the evidence, then there is a presumption that we would get

if we were to litigate the claim later on, that would be to the client's benefit. So, so it is important, so it has a legal consequence of us sending that letter out. It has a legal consequence that affects the value of this claim later in court. That's right, wow. Okay, so in terms of the investigation, who do we can you tell me about our investigative process? Who we use? What are their experience? What are their qualifications? How do they help? So our investigative process outside of our intake department, you know, we have experienced private investigators who are going to do research on a multitude of things with respect to evidence for the accident. So photos, any red light footage, if this is a motor vehicle accident, or even if it's not, if there is surveillance video in close proximity, if this happened at a restaurant or in a parking lot at a business, are there videos? Are there records? You know, if this is at a gated facility. You know, are there entrance and exit records, who was on the property, you know, supervising the work. Also with respect to assets, what are the assets look like,

coverage investigations? Are there multiple insurance policies? What are the what are the policy limits? Can we identify those early on?

You know, there, there are other things, like Resident relative that may apply, you know, dependent on the circumstances. And so our investigators are very important part of that process.