Part 2: Resolving Your Car Accident Injury Case and How to Deal with Insurance Companies
(Time Frame: 7 Days After the Crash to Complete Resolution of Your Case)
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it’s less good than the one you had before. You can fight it, you can do nothing but scream about what you’ve lost, or you can accept that and try to put together something that’s good.
— Elizabeth Edwards
» Damages that You Can Potentially Recover in Louisiana
» Repairing Your Car Or Replacing It If It’s a Total Loss
» A Quick Guide to “Soft Tissue” Injuries Caused by Louisiana Car Accidents
» Understanding Insurance Companies and Their Bag of Tricks
If you’ve been in a car accident in New Orleans, hopefully have at least a basic understanding of what’s going on in your life and in your case. By this time, you should have an accident injury attorney to help you navigate the waters; that person can explain the next steps of the process in specific detail, so that you’re not guessing or making things up as you go along.
Even if it’s been several weeks – or even months – following your crash, you can still potentially make a claim. But you want to do so before the so-called “statute of limitations” elapses. This is a ticking clock, limiting your ability to bring a case. It depends on a variety of factors, such as when and how the crash occurred, who was involved, and what damages occurred. If you don’t sue by that deadline, you lose your rights to take action forever.
Damages that You Can Potentially Recover After An Auto Accident in New Orleans
Property Damage
This is not just limited to damages that’s been done to the vehicle itself, but it also can include the damage done to objects in the vehicle (such as a laptop computer that got smashed) and/or loss of use, and the diminished value of your car following the accident.
Medical Expenses
These expenses can include the costs associated with your emergency room and doctors’ office visits, and medicines taken after the crash. They can also include much longer term costs, such as long-term therapy to heal a soft tissue injury, acupuncture, massage, antidepressants to deal with the emotional trauma from the accident, and so forth.
Lost Time at Work
This figure doesn’t just include how much productive time you’ve lost but can also include compensation for things like projects you had to abandon because of your injury. For instance, your inability to travel might prevent you from meeting new clients or getting a promotion or qualifying for a bonus.
Pain and Suffering
You can be compensated for the mental and physical agony caused by the crash.
Loss of Consortium
The crash may impact your ability to be a supporting spouse or a good parent. Louisiana law provides for recovery of damages for loss of love and affection/companionship, impairment of sexual relations, loss of financial support, and loss of aid and assistance.
Punitive Damages
The court can also assign what are known as punitive damages. These are designed to punish the wrongdoing liable party for acts of gross negligence or carelessness. For instance, let’s say a trucking company hired a driver with a history of drunk driving and gave him the keys to the company vehicle. Then the guy T-boned you at an intersection while driving drunk. The court can impose punitive damages to “slap the company on the wrist” for hiring and/or entrusting that terrible driver with a car.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
Repairing Your Car Or Replacing It If It’s a Total Loss
The driver at fault for the accident – or that driver’s insurance company – should pay for repairs or for vehicle replacement.
Depending on how bad the damage was – or how urgently you need a vehicle to get to work and run errands – you may need to rent a car in the interim. Speak with your attorney to figure out how to do so. Find a repair center (body shop) that has an excellent, ethical reputation.
You may need to coordinate with an insurance company, which may want you to use a preferred collision repair center or rental car agency. The insurance company’s inspector or adjuster can provide an initial estimate before you take the vehicle to a body shop for repair. But talk to your attorney before you speak with the insurance adjuster, so that you can develop a game plan and avoid a situation in which you agree to bad terms such as use of aftermarket or junk parts instead of parts made by the original manufacturer of your car (known as OEM — original equipment manufacturer – parts) during the repair.
Save all paperwork, and don’t take the insurance company’s words or directions on faith. The company may offer to pay X amount of dollars on vehicle repair or purchase, but you probably have no way to know whether the insurance company is “low-balling you” or offering you bad terms.
Also, document your lost wages.
If you work for a company, your Human Resources department or Office Manager can help you track lost hours. However, you also want to track other costs. For instance, maybe you were working on a big project that could have led to a promotion, but the accident stopped you from getting it. Document such opportunity costs.
The more evidence you can collect, the better. For instance, let’s say that you’re a salesperson who had been trying to close a deal that would have paid you $10,000 in commission, but you had to abandon that deal because of the accident. Your supervisor or sales manager could write a note to the effect of “Johnny left the account because of the accident, and he therefore missed out on collecting a $10,000 commission.”
A Quick Guide to “Soft Tissue” Injuries Caused by Car Accidents in New Orleans, LA
The human body supports a complex network of muscle, fascia, tendons and ligaments.
Auto accidents can damage these systems, causing headaches, digestive issues, and pain far from the source of the actual injury or impingement. Common soft tissue injuries, such as bruises (also known as “contusions),” strains to muscles, joint and ligament sprains, and damage to the connective tissue known as fascia, can lead to unpleasant symptoms, including swelling, inflammation, stiffness and soreness.
Some car accidents are more prone to lead to certain soft tissue injuries.
For instance, if a car hit you hard from behind at a stop sign, your body might have been thrown forward and then backwards again. That type of impact can strain muscles and soft tissue in your neck and lead to whiplash.
Soft tissue injuries can be challenging to prove. When an accident breaks a bone or causes damage to an organ or leads to other obvious problems that show up in imaging-rays, MRIs, CT scans, etc., you can clearly show the damages.
However, what happens when you just “feel sore” or have a headache that won’t go away? When the injuries don’t show up in X-rays or other imaging, proving damages can be harder. After all, pain is internal. Moreover, soft tissue injuries are odd. A therapy will seem to relieve the pain… only for it to come roaring back days later for no obvious reason. Unlike the healing for a broken bone – which typically follows a very specific process that’s easy to anticipate and show – healing for a soft tissue injury often progresses in a frustrating fashion.
The costs of treatment can add up. Different treatments work for different people in different situations. For instance, your whiplash might resolve just through some rest, physical therapy and massage. Another person’s whiplash might persist for months or years or lead to further complications, such as fibromyalgia or other symptoms located away from the injury.
Another challenge is that symptoms may appear distant from the actual source of the injury. For instance, muscle knots in the chest, neck and upper back, according to many respected researchers, can play a powerful role in creating symptoms that most people commonly understand as “carpal tunnel syndrome.”
A muscle undergoing spasm in the upper back and chest can pull the body’s connective tissue, almost like a stretching rubber band, causing numbness, tingling and other sensations in the forearm and fingers. Improper diagnosis of soft tissue injuries is common, because the cause is often located far (on the body) from the symptoms.
How and why soft tissue injuries occur and what can be done to treat them is beyond the scope of this article.
However, consider the following:
- Document your treatment and diagnostics.
- Find therapies/treatments that work for you.
- Pay attention to what causes symptoms and what leads to less pain.
- Don’t underestimate the long term aggravation and costs associated with these injuries. Although soft tissue injuries may not look as “bad” as a broken leg or concussion, they can lead to thousands of dollars’ worth of medical costs, not to mention untold hours of lost work, pain and annoyance.
Your attorney can help you develop a strategy to obtain compensation in these potentially challenging cases by, for instance, deposing an expert witness (or several) to testify to the nature and extent of your injuries.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
Understanding Insurance Companies and Their Bag of Tricks
Let’s get something straight first: Insurance companies are not “evil.”
They can play a vital role in the repair and recovery process. Many people who work for insurance companies do so out of a true belief that they’re helping people. Many companies do good things.
However, insurance companies are not your friend. They are businesses. Your claim represents a liability that threatens profits.
Shortly after the accident, a representative of the insurance company, known as the adjuster, will likely get in touch with you. This person may try to get you to admit responsibility for the crash, encourage you to offer a recorded statement, ask you to sign a medical release form, discourage you from speaking with a lawyer about your case or encourage you to use a particular body shop or vendor to repair your car.
These requests may seem harmless, but they can all create big problems for your case and prevent you from getting fair compensation It can be tempting to agree to these requests “just to get the whole thing over with,” especially if you’re suffering from a seemingly minor injury, such as a sore neck or slight headache. However, as we have hopefully hammered into you by now, “minor” injuries can lead to thousands of dollars’ worth of costs over the long term.
In addition, even innocent things that you say or admit to an insurance company representative can lead to trouble. For instance, let’s say the insurance adjuster asks you, four days after a big accident, how you’re feeling. You answer “I am feeling better.” What you intended might have been better expressed as “four days ago, I felt like I had been run over by a truck, but today I’m feeling slightly less absolutely awful.”
But the insurance company could still try to use your words — “I am feeling better” — to build a case implying that didn’t actually get hurt! The insurance company may also want you to sign a medical release form to search for a preexisting medical condition to use to deny a claim. For instance, let’s say the accident really messed up your neck and back, but you have a history of getting chiropractic work done.
The insurance company may argue that your back was already injured and that the auto accident had nothing to do with your latest bout of pain.
Another trick the insurance company might use is to get you to sign a release — a so-called “full and final statement” — regarding the case. Doing this might sound appealing, since it means that you can get an immediate check to pay for things like your hospital bill or car repairs. However, odds are very high that insurance company is not offering you the most money that you could obtain. Plus, if you sign away your rights now, you might be selling yourself short of thousands of dollars (potentially much more) – money you could need in the future.
What’s particularly bad is that insurance adjusters often are pleasant, kind seeming people who are specially trained to get injury victims to open up. Using a mix of charm and bullying, they can often win big victories for their employers.
Refuse to give statements to the adjuster unless your attorney is present, and do not allow the adjuster to record your telephone conversation or personal conversation. Never say anything to the adjuster like “I am sorry for what I did” or “I regret making that left turn.”
Insurance companies might try to delay your claim, low-ball you, threaten you (“this is all we’re offering, or you get nothing”) or intimidate you. Insurance companies also have a history of spying on claimants, and they may try to downplay your injuries.
The bottom line: be careful when dealing with the insurance company. Retain a qualified attorney to protect your rights.
For immediate insight into your Louisiana car accident, call the Law Office of Keith L. Magness, LLC right now at (504) 264-5587.
