Saturday, April 28, 2018

How to negotiate a better car accident insurance claim check; without a personal injury attorney.

How to negotiate
- We're with John Kelly. John is a personal injury
attorney in Phoenix, Arizona, and he's agreed to
answer an online question that was posted. This one, specifically
how to negotiate a better car accident
insurance claim check. With that said, John,
let's go into the question that was posted.

This question is from Emily. Emily says, "Hello John. "I'm in the process of
requesting a claim check "for a small car accident
I was in two weeks ago. "It was the other
person's fault.

"I do have a police report. "Can you provide me
with any tips or advice "on what I can do to
negotiate more money "from the insurance company? "Also, is there anything
you could recommend "to speed up the process? "Thank you." - Okay. So Emily's question is a
pretty common question. She just wants to know
what she needs to do after a small accident.

What wasn't addressed
there with Emily is whether she was
injured or not, but it sounds like she
probably has a little property damage. So I'll just kind
of go over both. One that I don't
talk about a lot, which is something that
actually people want to address right away, always, is the
property damage, their vehicle, how to get it fixed, if
it's at the tow yard, those kind of things always
bother people because they wanna get in a vehicle
so that they sometimes can get treatment too. One of the things that
people need to be aware of is that there's actually
typically two adjusters that are gonna
handle their claim.

One's a property damage
adjuster and the other one's their bodily injury adjuster,
and that's on both sides for the accident. So one of the things that
she can do right away is notify her insurance company
that there was an accident, make sure that they're aware. She can speak directly with
the adverse insurance company, third party insurance, if
she has that information. At the accident, she wants
to make sure that she gets the other party's insurance
company information.

If the police come,
which I always recommend that Emily would
call the police, they'll typically get the
insurance information for her and give her what we call
an accident exchange form. That will have the information
about the other party, their insurance company,
a contact number. So she can call that contact
number and open up a claim with them, and let them know
that there was an accident. There is a little warning here.

She doesn't necessarily
wanna talk to them about her injuries,
the extent of them, that kind of thing,
because that could later be used against her. If she tells them that, "My shoulder hurts a little
bit, but I think it's fine," and then later finds out
that she had a torn tendon in her shoulder, that could
potentially cause some issues later on. I would recommend that
they only deal with the property damage
at this point. Depending on her
damage to her car, if it's a total loss, which
it doesn't sound like it is, but if it is, the insurance
company would have to go out there, evaluate it,
and determine what the value of that vehicle is, and write
her a check for that amount.

Now, if it's just damage,
the insurance companies on her side and the other
side might want her to go and get a body shop to evaluate
what it is that would take to fix the car, and that's fine. She should be aware, though,
sometimes the insurance companies have their own body
shops that like to minimize the cost that they charge so
that the insurance company doesn't have to pay out more. So she might wanna find her
own body shop that she trusts and take it to that
person to get an opinion. Oftentimes, independent body
shops will use new parts to make sure that they
tell the insurance company exactly what needs
to happen there.

She also should take
good photos of the car and be aware that she also
has what we call a diminished value claim. A diminished value claim means
that if she gets that car repaired and later, sells it,
the person who buys that's gonna know that that
car was in an accident. There's all sorts of ways
people can find that out. They're not gonna wanna pay
as much for that vehicle as a car that hasn't
been in an accident.

So she has a claim there for
what we call diminished value, and she needs to make that
claim or assert that and say that I need money to compensate
me for the diminished value of this vehicle. Another note is the insurance
company should send her a report, if she asks for it,
that will list all the other vehicles that they have
seen in the area that have the same make, model,
and it helps determine what the value of
her vehicle is, and that's typically with
a car that's totaled, but that's something that
she wants to request too. With the property damage,
that's what she needs to know right off the bat. With her bodily injury, there's
gonna be another adjuster.

I would recommend that she
doesn't speak with them. She can talk to her
own insurance company and let them know she
was in an accident, that she was injured,
probably doesn't wanna go into a lot of details with
that at this point, but from the adverse company,
she just needs to make sure she gets all those medical
records that she has and sends them to 'em along
with taking good notes about how this injury
is affecting her life. A lot of attorneys will just
put together information about the medical records,
send that off to the other insurance company. They don't ever tell the
story, and there's always a story behind it that
actually includes a lot more information about how this
person has been affected, and what they've gone through
because of the accident.

Have they missed work? Have they lost income
because of that? Were they on their way to the
airport to go to a wedding and then missed the wedding? That's information that,
people forget that there is a human side to this, and
that the insurance companies, you can get them to budge on
their offers based on that. Those are just some ideas. There's a lot of
information to go over and I can't cover it all. So if anyone such as Emily
has these kind of issues, they just want to
talk to an attorney, I'd be happy to speak with them.

They can call my firm. It's the Kelly Law
Team at 602-283-4122. No pressure tactics. If they need me, my
service, moving forward, I'm happy to help 'em with that.

I'm always happy to
just consult them and let them know what they
need to know moving forward. - Excellent. Thanks
for your time, John. - [John] Thank you..

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