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Advance Legal Raises A Client’s Damages By 600%!
Mr Sean Kehoe, Senior Partner at specialist personal injury firm Advance Legal has said:
“One of our personal injury lawyers has just demonstrated why it is that clients need a Solicitor to act for them and cannot safely negotiate their own accident claim with the insurer. Our client was injured whilst a passenger on a train. The train hit the buffer stop which caused our client to be thrown forward, resulting in him hitting his head and knee.
Before instructing us, the client had tried to pursue his own case and had been in negotiations with the insurance company’s representative. They started off offering him next to nothing, but through his own efforts he was able to increase their offer to £500. He then rang us, as personal injury specialists, just to get confirmation that the injury compensation that he was being offered was good enough. He assumed it was.
We calculated the likely value of his compensation claim and told him to reject the offer. We then took on his personal injury claim and contacted the insurers ourselves. Lo and behold, the case ended recently with our client being paid £3,000 damages for his accident claim – six times what the insurer had offered him! It was a big surprise to him, but not to us.
We are finding that this kind of story is happening more and more often. The insurance industry has been trying for a long time to change the system for compensation claims and to deal with Claimants themselves directly. Their argument is that this will “promote efficiency” and result in claims being settled much faster. Translated into English, that means that Claimants will be paid perhaps one sixth or less of what their accident claims are really worth.
The moral of the story is that you should never agree a compensation claim directly with an insurance company without at least checking it first with a specialist personal injury firm. Better still; do not even attempt to enter into discussions on your own. Many insurers will seek to persuade you to settle your injury claim without even seeing a doctor to provide a report.
You would imagine, after all these years, that we would be able to think of at least one or two cases where an insurer had offered the client damages which we felt able to recommend them to accept. In fact that has never happened! We have never seen a single case where the insurer has offered a fair amount on its own without a solicitor involved. In this particular case, we got six times as much as the client had been able to negotiate. On average we will tend to get at least twice as much and usually three to four times as much or more.”
Article author: Sean Kehoe
Neck injuries are caused by automobile accidents, or by physical trauma like slips and falls. Most neck injuries are not serious, but some that are seemingly innocuous can cause major problems later on. It is always best to consult a physician and a personal injury settlement attorney if you have been involved in an accident and suffer a neck injury.
Whiplash neck injuries are notorious, because they show no visible symptoms other than some discomfort that vanishes over time. Serious consequences like paralysis, disability and numbness can develop later on. The damage to the soft spinal cord tissue shows up after years in the form of chronic pain, paralysis and, in some cases, death. Take the case of a woman who was involved in a car accident and settled for a small compensation amount for what she thought was a minor neck sprain. Her injury became so serious over the years that she was ultimately confined to a wheelchair, unable to walk or move her lower body. Because she had already settled her personal injury claim, she could not sue again. Her mounting medical bills forced her into bankruptcy.
Always hire an experienced attorney to represent you in a neck injury case. Neck injuries have a very uncertain prognosis, and what seems minor, can escalate into paralysis. Only an experienced attorney will know how to claim compensation for an injury not yet serious, but having chances of becoming so. The lawyer needs to understand medical facts and discuss the outcome of the whiplash injury with physicians. If he is not able to convince the jury a fair compensation is needed because an injury might worsen over the years, it could lead to serious financial loss for the victim.
Injury Settlements provides detailed information about injury settlements, burn injury settlements, hydrocodone injury settlements and more. Injury Settlements is affiliated with Debt Settlements.
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ezinearticles.comGoodwill Gesture Or Proper Compensation?
Mr Sean Kehoe, Senior Partner at specialist personal injury firm Advance Legal, has said:
“We tend to find that Defendants and insurers are not very keen to pay out compensation to our clients. They will get up to all sorts of tricks and underhand tactics to try to avoid paying, or to delay it, or to try to pay less than the proper amount.
We had an interesting variation recently in a case involving a small boy who was injured at a firework display. Due to the negligence of the organiser, a firework shot across sideways into the crowd and hit our client, causing burns and he had to go to hospital. We were instructed and started a claim against the firework company. We wrote to them and asked them to admit liability so that we could talk to them about compensation. Instead, the firework company wrote directly to our client’s parents, not to us, with a letter containing the following words:
“I understand that you are currently pursuing a claim via Advance Legal Solicitors. I am more than happy to continue down this particular course, however I should point out that this particular process will almost certainly be very lengthy and will involve our insurers. I propose that before the formal claim route is progressed any further that we meet to discuss the issue. It may be possible to agree a mutually acceptable “goodwill gesture” that may avoid the need to progress a claim any further. If you would like to arrange a meeting then please contact me on the above number”.
This is typical of a growing trend amongst insurers and Defendants to try to under settle cases and get away without paying the proper accident compensation. This particular Defendant went one stage further than the normal method. They actually wrote directly to our clients giving them the lame excuse that pursuing a claim through their solicitor would create delay whereas they could settle it much more quickly giving a “goodwill gesture”.
We shall never know what they had in mind for their goodwill gesture, because our client’s parents sent the letter on to us and we have warned the firework company not to engage in any more tricks like that. The claim will now go forward in the proper way and our client will be seen by a Consultant who will make a proper report on his injuries. We will then value those and ensure that the full amount of the client’s damages is paid to him.
The public needs to be aware of these sorts of devious tactics from Defendants. If you have a personal injury claim then never settle it with the Defendant directly or with his insurer. Always insist that the negotiations be done through a solicitor who is willing to operate on a no-win no-fee basis. That way your compensation claim is much more likely to be paid in full.
Without a specialist injury lawyer acting for you, you will inevitably end up with some token payment. If you think I am exaggerating, you only have to remember what Norwich Union said some time ago. They argued that instead of personal injury victims claiming damages, they should get an apology and a bunch of flowers! Thankfully, on that occasion the Government did not listen to the insurance industry lobby.”
Article author: Sean Kehoe
