What kind of settlement should we expect from an auto accident?
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Okay this is what you do. First keep in mind any insurance company is going to try and offer you the most ridiculouse lowest amount possible to keep their losses low. So of course you ALWAYS turn the first couple of offers down from the insurance company, counter offer with what you think your lost wages and damages are at. It's good you know the policy limit because the insurance company isn't going to pay more than the limits. Since you are making a claim against the policy you have to PROVE your claim. If he lost over 100k in lost wages, you must prove that. To do that, prior pay stubs showing his prior salary up to the date of the accident. Then doctors notes requiring your husband to stay home from work. Since he had surgery, this shouldn't be hard to get this. If you had to take off work for your husband, see if your doctor can get you a doctors note saying your husband had to be cared for, for whatever days you had to take off work. Then you should be able to be compensated for you lost time at work. I have been through this type of claim before, it happened to be a fatal accident but the at fault party only had $25,000 in coverage. If you want to ask me more questions I can let you know what you need to do. Aarontimmins@gmail.com..
Your not supposed to be making a profit off of it. Why should the insurance company give you anymore?
don't take what the insurance co offered, get an attorney...i was just on a jury and the woman who was hurt only had a possibly fractured ankle and went through 6 months of physical therapy...the jury against my opinion opted to pay her the medical bills plus over 6 yrs of the possibility of lost wages...this woman was not pregnant nor did she have any of the injuries you described in fact she a a pretty bad drug problem that made her minor injury worse. the man who was at fault didn't have problem paying but this woman say $$$$$ signs and went for the gold...bottom line, because of one of the jurors who had a vendetta against all insurance companies held us up for three days refusing to compromise one of our other jurors was elderly and not feeling well by then...he wanted the injured woman to get close to a million dollars but we finally settled for 190,000.00 sad but true the rest of us were held hostage and the judge said we had to make a decision. you could get way more than a million thats for sure.
Lawyer is trying to get a quick settlement so he can get paid for doing next to nothing. (Assuming it was on a contingency)
The insurance company is probably willing to pay more but not some magic figure like 3X the medical bills. Make sure any and all long term losses are considered, like hubbies shoulder unless totally healed, document and permanent damage.
If nothing else ask for 10k pain and suffering and see what they say.
With permanency involved I would ask for $100k and negotiate down from there. Make sure you can justify it with documentation, even if it means you typing out the pain and suffering experienced.
Has your attorney made an attempt to find out what the policy limit is? And is he recommending you settle?? He has been in contact with the carrier, I'd think that he'd have some feel for it.
But $5,000 pain and suffering is silly, unless that's the entire amount left under the liability limit.
Does the 'lost wages' portion of the offer include 'lose of earning ability' from the disability in the arm? If not, $5000 pain an suffering sounds low to me as well. If it includes a reasonable allowance for reduced income potential, it may be fair.
get another opinion, $5,000 pain and suffering isn't enough
this just isn't fair
I'm all against giant jury awards but this just isn't right
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