Should You Speak With the Other Side Yourself, After an Accident?

If you are in a car accident, you will find that there are a lot of parties and people who want to speak with you about your accident. One of those parties will likely be the insurance company that represents the Defendant.

Speak or Remain Silent?

You may have two, conflicting thoughts.

On the one hand, this isn’t your insurance company—why do you need to speak to them or tell them anything? But on the other hand, you are, presumably, asking them for compensation, and you don’t want to risk that by refusing to speak to them or give them information.

Dangers of Speaking to Them

So what do you do?

The problem with speaking to them on your own, is that their job is to protect the exact person you are suing or making a claim against—their job is to deny you compensation for your injuries after an accident.

They are very good at doing this—better than you are, unless you have some kind of legal training. They know what questions may seem innocent, but which in fact, are designed to get you to say things against their interests. The insurance company has in-house attorneys, who know the nuances of the law better than you do. They may even know your own insurance policy, better than you do.

They also know how desperate you may be after an accident, and will try to take advantage of your situation.

Get Legal Help

The easy solution is to get an injury attorney to help you. Your own injury attorney knows what information the other side can and cannot ask for. Your own attorney will answer their questions, and nothing more, and knows what information their questions are secretly trying to get at.

Your attorney has dealt with insurance adjusters over and over and over—perhaps even the exact insurance adjuster that’s asking to speak with you after your accident, and that relationship can go a long way to helping get compensation for your claim.

Your attorneys also know how to present your injuries in a way that truly reflects what you are going through. Yes, you are the one experiencing the pain and disability and the doctors visits, but your injury attorney has, in the past, dealt with thousands of other clients going through what you are going through and he or she has seen medical records just like yours, and thus, knows exactly how to present your injuries in a way that can maximize your recovery.

After the Settlement

Even if you are an expert at legal injury negotiations, do you understand what they will want you to sign, as a condition of settling your case? Many people do not, and many settlement agreements can harm you down the road, or have very punitive or one-sided terms—things you won’t know about or know to look out for, if you represent yourself.

Call our Boston personal injury lawyers at The Law Office of Joseph Linnehan, Jr. today at 617-275-4200 if you were injured in an accident, so you don’t have to navigate insurance companies on your own.

Source:

progressive.com/answers/what-is-an-insurance-adjuster