Ep 87: The Anatomy of a Personal Injury Case

I'm Clark, speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is anatomy of a personal injury case. So Jeff, if somebody's injured in an auto accident and they want the best of the best, they want a first class Personal Injury experience from a law firm. What is a firm like ours going to be able to provide for them under those circumstances. Well,

the first thing you know, we'll make sure that they're making good decisions right from the very beginning and giving them all the information they need. We don't want them talking to the insurance companies at all their their insurance company, the other insurance company, they are not their friends, and they can say things that often seem innocent but can be used against them. So we want to make sure that they're letting us talk to the insurance companies, and then they can focus on getting well. So some

circumstances they may have to, they may be contractually obligated to talk to their own insurance company, but we want to be able to monitor that information and control the flow of it, to make sure that we're saying things that are going to be helpful to their case and not harmful, is that right?

That is true most of the time. We don't want to talk to the insurance company because it's somebody else's insurance company. But even when they're hit by somebody else that's at fault, they still may have conversations with their insurance company that we want to be able to control, because it could be the other person doesn't have enough insurance, and they have to come to their own insurance to get more coverage for their injuries. In that case, their own insurance company is not their friend again. So they may seem to be their friend at the beginning, but they may not be at the end. So we want to make sure that we're controlling what's going to the insurance company. Sometimes we can do written statements instead of a recorded statement, sometimes they have to do a what's called a examination under oath with their own insurance company. If that's the case, we want to handle that very much like a deposition, where we're there with the client. We're objecting, we're making sure the clients prepared before they go in there, and so nothing is going to be said to be said to the insurance company that can be used against our client. Well,

frequently, insurance adjusters want to have a recorded statement. They want to do that. Now, I've always thought that was strange, because the insurance adjuster is going to have access to a very detailed report put together by a professional. It's a four page report that'll have you know where this happened, what happened? Who was involved, who was present, what caused the accident? What were the road conditions? Were the weather conditions? And on and on and on for four pages, got details put together by a professional, but they're asking that information of our client. Our client may be going to or from a doctor's appointment, be distracted by a variety of different things and not be, you know, thinking about what's going on in terms of the conversation, it's just like, hey, the other guy hit me. What else do you want? But it can be more complicated than that. Is that right?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're they're trying to get our client to say things that are inconsistent with the facts as they know it from the police report or from witnesses. They're also trying to get our client to admit that maybe they were doing something that distracted them, or they weren't paying attention, or they were going too fast, or they're looking for any kind of a hook they can can, you know, latch on to, to try to drag our client into a lower case value, or deny the claim altogether. I

was, I was in a hurry. I was, I was, I was checking on my child in the back seat. I was changing the radio station. I was, I was late for work.

Yeah, those little details are critical. They'll take five seconds, and how fast the car is moving, and the grade, the grade of the road. And you can have a Reconstructionist come in there and say, Well, if you only saw him five seconds before then you weren't paying attention, because they were already halfway through the intersection. Just a little innocent detail like that can turn the case upside down.

Jeff, what's the next way that our firm can help somebody in an auto accident case? Well, we

want to get our investigative team out as soon as possible. Working. We have a first class team across the state of investigators. They'll go out to the scene and get photographs of cars, skid marks, evidence that disappears witnesses. They'll get statements before they move. Talk to investigating officers. All of this investigative work that has to be done right away. The insurance company has their investigators working, so we want to have ours working as well. Jeff, what's the

next thing that our our team does that adds value? Well,

we want to make sure that we're communicating with the insurance company. Okay? So we're going to send letters of representation the insurance company so they're not bothering our clients. We want to make sure we're getting them the information that they need up front. There may be different claims we have to open with different insurance companies, so we want to make sure that they've got all the information up front. They're opening their claims, they're beginning their investigation, so that while our clients are treating we've got the insurance companies ready to receive the information that we're going to be sending. What

is another way that we can help them at an early stage of the accident investigation? Well,

we want to try to build value in the claim as much as possible. And that doesn't mean we're making up things. That means we're trying to capture damages that a. Otherwise aren't captured. It's one thing to present as damages, somebody's medical bills, maybe they're lost wages, but there are other kinds of losses that people suffer, not just the pain and suffering of their injury, but sometimes there's economic loss in their house. They can't do the groceries, they can't do the laundry, they can't cut the grass. They're having to pay people to do that, or other family members are having to do that. And so there's a number of different types of things. Sometimes it's future medical bills. They haven't incurred them yet, but they know they're going to incur those future medical bills. We can go out and capture those with experts that we have, economists, future medical analysts, different people like that, that can capture a lot of these damages and build value in the case. What

about in terms of medical care and medical management? What are things that we might be able to do, or that the very, very, very best personal injury firms do under these circumstances to take care of injured people?

Yeah, we can't act like a doctor and just and decide what medical care people receive. But what we can do is listen to the injuries that they have and the symptoms that they have, and try to make sure they're getting to the proper medical care that that they need. For example, if someone's had a concussion, they've hit their head, they've got concussion symptoms. We don't want to send them to some doctor that doesn't do that right. We want to make sure they get to a neurologist who can look at a concussion or a traumatic brain injury and diagnose and treat those things, for bones and those types of issues. We want to get them to an orthopedic doctor. Maybe there's some things that chiropractors are better at. There's all kinds of different specialists out there, eye specialists, teeth specialists. You know, we get all kinds of injuries, and we want to make sure that we're getting people to the right medical care, that they're getting well, right? Because there's nothing more important in the claim than the health of our clients, so we want to get them as well as they can, and while they're treating then we can take care of the legal stuff,

right? Or maybe they have Medicare or Medicaid or something like that, and a lot of those traditional providers, usually the best providers in town, don't see people like that, but over time, we have developed relationships and built a network of the very best providers who can then provide this treatment for our clients when they otherwise wouldn't, and then give us the records and opinions that we need to maximize the value in their case. Yeah.

I mean, it used to be if you didn't have health insurance, it was very limited what you who you could would even treat you. You know, you could go to the emergency room, but that was about it. We've got a network of doctors and physicians and people that in different specialties even now, who will see people on a lien and who will treat people who have no health insurance, because we've developed those relationships with them, and that's huge for our clients, to be able to get the medical care that they need.

Definitely. What's the next way that a first class injury firm can help someone under these circumstances?

Well, you know, once somebody's finished treating and we've collected all their medical bills, we've got all the evidence together, we're going to put together a custom demand package and send that out to the insurance companies and make a demand for selling of the claim. And our negotiations team of attorneys and negotiators are going to come in and they're going to talk to the adjusters and try to negotiate those claims. Our attorneys have a lot of experience. They know what they're doing. They've been doing this for years. The insurance companies know them. They know that they're tough. They know they're not going to sell for less than the maximum value, and so those those negotiation team members will fight for our clients to get them the maximum recovery.

So one of the things that I see is that people that don't do this every single day don't necessarily know what the value of a claim is, or what are some of the things that make a claim more valuable or less valuable, or can't necessarily assess risk or opportunities to show that, to demonstrate that our case is worth more than maybe the insurance company is suggesting that it's worth, yeah, they're

looking at every detail. You know, you have a wrist injury. Well, is that your dominant hand or not your dominant hand? That's a small detail, but it matters all kinds of different details, like that, facts about the accident, or is there a claim to be made for punitive damages because the other driver was drunk? Does commercial accidents? Commercial Vehicles? Yeah, and you may have a bad driving record. You know, we're pulling driving records of other people. So there's all of these things that our investigators know to look for to build value in the claim make sure our clients are getting fully recovered. Jeff,

what's the next thing that our our team does that adds value? Well, if

we can't get the claim settled because the insurance companies are being, you know, crazy with their their offers, then the case will go to our litigation team, and they'll examine the case to see if it's a case that should be tried, or a case where the client should probably we should go back and negotiate more and try to get the case settled. If they if they decide that this case that needs to be litigated, they'll, of course, consult with the client, get their permission to talk about the litigation process and explain how it works. But. Our litigators have got decades and decades of experience litigating cases. I can think of one virus as 35 years. Another has 25 years. Another has 30 years. And these are guys that have been in court. They've tried cases. They know what they're doing, and the insurance companies know Jeff. What's

the next way that our firm can help somebody in an auto accident case. Well,

when the case is over, one thing we want to do is try to see if we can get their medical bills reduced. Not every firm does that, and so we want to go into their medical providers, their health insurance liens, see if we can get reductions, get those medical bills and health insurance liens down. If we can do that, we can put a lot of extra money, sometimes 10s. I've even seen a case where it was hundreds of 1000s that we were able to put in a client's pocket by getting these bills and liens reduced. It takes some time. It takes some negotiating, but it is well worth it for our clients. So

when you say, not every firm does this, most firms have there's a there's a particular law that most firms can have access, can can use in the situation where they can they can pay a part of the medical bills to the provider, keep a part for their own fees, and then return a certain percentage to the injured person. The problem is that that a lot of times, leaves the injured person with bills that they may not fully appreciate until later, later they get a bill, or it's seized from their taxes or something like that, and we work very hard to avoid that situation by providing that extra layer of service. Is that? Right? Yeah,

sometimes it's unavoidable. But, you know, I've worked at other firms before where I've seen settlements, and there were big liens and big bills, and it was not explained to the client what they were going to have to pay out of if they settled the case for this, our firm will go in and negotiate those bills and liens down, and oftentimes we can get them down so low that the client owes nothing at the end, and their recovery is, is what it is. And so there's nothing misleading about it, and we've saved them 10s of 1000s of dollars in the process. How we can do that is really just effort. You know, we we identify what's owed. We have a staff that's constantly updating to let us know what our medical bills are, that are owed, what our health insurance liens are. And we will call these medical providers and we'll call these health insurance liens. Sometimes it's Medicare, Medicaid, sometimes it's military liens, and we'll negotiate those liens down. It's not so much a matter of having specialized knowledge as it is just effort and caring about your clients enough to take the time to fight that extra, sometimes maybe 30 days right, to save them $20,000 of medical bills or $50,000 medical bills. It is something that I cannot understand how law firms do not do that well, and it's

also part of our commitment to help people injure, people recover physically, financially and emotionally. Because if our, if our, if our job was simply to maximize recovery, then we would get the most we could, take the biggest fee we could and be done. But that's not our commitment. Our commitment is to help people recover physically, financially, emotionally, and that means looking at each of these cases as if it's a little it's a little business for our client, we want to maximize the revenue and minimize the expenses in every single case that we have, and that way, we can help make sure that our client walks out of this in the best physical, financial and emotional condition that they possibly can exactly. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time you.

I'm Clark, speaks the catastrophic injury lawyer. Welcome to the verdict. This is anatomy of a personal injury case. So Jeff, if somebody's injured in an auto accident and they want the best of the best, they want a first class Personal Injury experience from a law firm. What is a firm like ours going to be able to provide for them under those circumstances. Well,

the first thing you know, we'll make sure that they're making good decisions right from the very beginning and giving them all the information they need. We don't want them talking to the insurance companies at all their their insurance company, the other insurance company, they are not their friends, and they can say things that often seem innocent but can be used against them. So we want to make sure that they're letting us talk to the insurance companies, and then they can focus on getting well. So some

circumstances they may have to, they may be contractually obligated to talk to their own insurance company, but we want to be able to monitor that information and control the flow of it, to make sure that we're saying things that are going to be helpful to their case and not harmful, is that right?

That is true most of the time. We don't want to talk to the insurance company because it's somebody else's insurance company. But even when they're hit by somebody else that's at fault, they still may have conversations with their insurance company that we want to be able to control, because it could be the other person doesn't have enough insurance, and they have to come to their own insurance to get more coverage for their injuries. In that case, their own insurance company is not their friend again. So they may seem to be their friend at the beginning, but they may not be at the end. So we want to make sure that we're controlling what's going to the insurance company. Sometimes we can do written statements instead of a recorded statement, sometimes they have to do a what's called a examination under oath with their own insurance company. If that's the case, we want to handle that very much like a deposition, where we're there with the client. We're objecting, we're making sure the clients prepared before they go in there, and so nothing is going to be said to be said to the insurance company that can be used against our client. Well,

frequently, insurance adjusters want to have a recorded statement. They want to do that. Now, I've always thought that was strange, because the insurance adjuster is going to have access to a very detailed report put together by a professional. It's a four page report that'll have you know where this happened, what happened? Who was involved, who was present, what caused the accident? What were the road conditions? Were the weather conditions? And on and on and on for four pages, got details put together by a professional, but they're asking that information of our client. Our client may be going to or from a doctor's appointment, be distracted by a variety of different things and not be, you know, thinking about what's going on in terms of the conversation, it's just like, hey, the other guy hit me. What else do you want? But it can be more complicated than that. Is that right?

Yeah, for sure. I mean, they're they're trying to get our client to say things that are inconsistent with the facts as they know it from the police report or from witnesses. They're also trying to get our client to admit that maybe they were doing something that distracted them, or they weren't paying attention, or they were going too fast, or they're looking for any kind of a hook they can can, you know, latch on to, to try to drag our client into a lower case value, or deny the claim altogether. I

was, I was in a hurry. I was, I was, I was checking on my child in the back seat. I was changing the radio station. I was, I was late for work.

Yeah, those little details are critical. They'll take five seconds, and how fast the car is moving, and the grade, the grade of the road. And you can have a Reconstructionist come in there and say, Well, if you only saw him five seconds before then you weren't paying attention, because they were already halfway through the intersection. Just a little innocent detail like that can turn the case upside down.

Jeff, what's the next way that our firm can help somebody in an auto accident case? Well, we

want to get our investigative team out as soon as possible. Working. We have a first class team across the state of investigators. They'll go out to the scene and get photographs of cars, skid marks, evidence that disappears witnesses. They'll get statements before they move. Talk to investigating officers. All of this investigative work that has to be done right away. The insurance company has their investigators working, so we want to have ours working as well. Jeff, what's the

next thing that our our team does that adds value? Well,

we want to make sure that we're communicating with the insurance company. Okay? So we're going to send letters of representation the insurance company so they're not bothering our clients. We want to make sure we're getting them the information that they need up front. There may be different claims we have to open with different insurance companies, so we want to make sure that they've got all the information up front. They're opening their claims, they're beginning their investigation, so that while our clients are treating we've got the insurance companies ready to receive the information that we're going to be sending. What

is another way that we can help them at an early stage of the accident investigation? Well,

we want to try to build value in the claim as much as possible. And that doesn't mean we're making up things. That means we're trying to capture damages that a. Otherwise aren't captured. It's one thing to present as damages, somebody's medical bills, maybe they're lost wages, but there are other kinds of losses that people suffer, not just the pain and suffering of their injury, but sometimes there's economic loss in their house. They can't do the groceries, they can't do the laundry, they can't cut the grass. They're having to pay people to do that, or other family members are having to do that. And so there's a number of different types of things. Sometimes it's future medical bills. They haven't incurred them yet, but they know they're going to incur those future medical bills. We can go out and capture those with experts that we have, economists, future medical analysts, different people like that, that can capture a lot of these damages and build value in the case. What

about in terms of medical care and medical management? What are things that we might be able to do, or that the very, very, very best personal injury firms do under these circumstances to take care of injured people?

Yeah, we can't act like a doctor and just and decide what medical care people receive. But what we can do is listen to the injuries that they have and the symptoms that they have, and try to make sure they're getting to the proper medical care that that they need. For example, if someone's had a concussion, they've hit their head, they've got concussion symptoms. We don't want to send them to some doctor that doesn't do that right. We want to make sure they get to a neurologist who can look at a concussion or a traumatic brain injury and diagnose and treat those things, for bones and those types of issues. We want to get them to an orthopedic doctor. Maybe there's some things that chiropractors are better at. There's all kinds of different specialists out there, eye specialists, teeth specialists. You know, we get all kinds of injuries, and we want to make sure that we're getting people to the right medical care, that they're getting well, right? Because there's nothing more important in the claim than the health of our clients, so we want to get them as well as they can, and while they're treating then we can take care of the legal stuff,

right? Or maybe they have Medicare or Medicaid or something like that, and a lot of those traditional providers, usually the best providers in town, don't see people like that, but over time, we have developed relationships and built a network of the very best providers who can then provide this treatment for our clients when they otherwise wouldn't, and then give us the records and opinions that we need to maximize the value in their case. Yeah.

I mean, it used to be if you didn't have health insurance, it was very limited what you who you could would even treat you. You know, you could go to the emergency room, but that was about it. We've got a network of doctors and physicians and people that in different specialties even now, who will see people on a lien and who will treat people who have no health insurance, because we've developed those relationships with them, and that's huge for our clients, to be able to get the medical care that they need.

Definitely. What's the next way that a first class injury firm can help someone under these circumstances?

Well, you know, once somebody's finished treating and we've collected all their medical bills, we've got all the evidence together, we're going to put together a custom demand package and send that out to the insurance companies and make a demand for selling of the claim. And our negotiations team of attorneys and negotiators are going to come in and they're going to talk to the adjusters and try to negotiate those claims. Our attorneys have a lot of experience. They know what they're doing. They've been doing this for years. The insurance companies know them. They know that they're tough. They know they're not going to sell for less than the maximum value, and so those those negotiation team members will fight for our clients to get them the maximum recovery.

So one of the things that I see is that people that don't do this every single day don't necessarily know what the value of a claim is, or what are some of the things that make a claim more valuable or less valuable, or can't necessarily assess risk or opportunities to show that, to demonstrate that our case is worth more than maybe the insurance company is suggesting that it's worth, yeah, they're

looking at every detail. You know, you have a wrist injury. Well, is that your dominant hand or not your dominant hand? That's a small detail, but it matters all kinds of different details, like that, facts about the accident, or is there a claim to be made for punitive damages because the other driver was drunk? Does commercial accidents? Commercial Vehicles? Yeah, and you may have a bad driving record. You know, we're pulling driving records of other people. So there's all of these things that our investigators know to look for to build value in the claim make sure our clients are getting fully recovered. Jeff,

what's the next thing that our our team does that adds value? Well, if

we can't get the claim settled because the insurance companies are being, you know, crazy with their their offers, then the case will go to our litigation team, and they'll examine the case to see if it's a case that should be tried, or a case where the client should probably we should go back and negotiate more and try to get the case settled. If they if they decide that this case that needs to be litigated, they'll, of course, consult with the client, get their permission to talk about the litigation process and explain how it works. But. Our litigators have got decades and decades of experience litigating cases. I can think of one virus as 35 years. Another has 25 years. Another has 30 years. And these are guys that have been in court. They've tried cases. They know what they're doing, and the insurance companies know Jeff. What's

the next way that our firm can help somebody in an auto accident case. Well,

when the case is over, one thing we want to do is try to see if we can get their medical bills reduced. Not every firm does that, and so we want to go into their medical providers, their health insurance liens, see if we can get reductions, get those medical bills and health insurance liens down. If we can do that, we can put a lot of extra money, sometimes 10s. I've even seen a case where it was hundreds of 1000s that we were able to put in a client's pocket by getting these bills and liens reduced. It takes some time. It takes some negotiating, but it is well worth it for our clients. So

when you say, not every firm does this, most firms have there's a there's a particular law that most firms can have access, can can use in the situation where they can they can pay a part of the medical bills to the provider, keep a part for their own fees, and then return a certain percentage to the injured person. The problem is that that a lot of times, leaves the injured person with bills that they may not fully appreciate until later, later they get a bill, or it's seized from their taxes or something like that, and we work very hard to avoid that situation by providing that extra layer of service. Is that? Right? Yeah,

sometimes it's unavoidable. But, you know, I've worked at other firms before where I've seen settlements, and there were big liens and big bills, and it was not explained to the client what they were going to have to pay out of if they settled the case for this, our firm will go in and negotiate those bills and liens down, and oftentimes we can get them down so low that the client owes nothing at the end, and their recovery is, is what it is. And so there's nothing misleading about it, and we've saved them 10s of 1000s of dollars in the process. How we can do that is really just effort. You know, we we identify what's owed. We have a staff that's constantly updating to let us know what our medical bills are, that are owed, what our health insurance liens are. And we will call these medical providers and we'll call these health insurance liens. Sometimes it's Medicare, Medicaid, sometimes it's military liens, and we'll negotiate those liens down. It's not so much a matter of having specialized knowledge as it is just effort and caring about your clients enough to take the time to fight that extra, sometimes maybe 30 days right, to save them $20,000 of medical bills or $50,000 medical bills. It is something that I cannot understand how law firms do not do that well, and it's

also part of our commitment to help people injure, people recover physically, financially and emotionally. Because if our, if our, if our job was simply to maximize recovery, then we would get the most we could, take the biggest fee we could and be done. But that's not our commitment. Our commitment is to help people recover physically, financially, emotionally, and that means looking at each of these cases as if it's a little it's a little business for our client, we want to maximize the revenue and minimize the expenses in every single case that we have, and that way, we can help make sure that our client walks out of this in the best physical, financial and emotional condition that they possibly can exactly. Thanks for joining us. Don't forget to subscribe and follow us to stay up to date with our weekly episodes. We'll see you next time you.