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Understand how insurance companies calculate a payout. Determine the strength of your liability claim. Recognize your own negligence. Know how insurance companies calculate the extent of your damages. Estimate your damages. Submit thorough medical records. Understand medical treatments that will be assigned higher values. Avoid delays or gaps in treatment. Hire a proven attorney.
After you provide the insurance company with documentation of your expenses related to the accident and a claims adjuster has assessed your vehicle, the insurance company will determine how much money they will pay. This amount is determined by the strength of your liability claim and the extent of your damages. Your claim is dependent upon convincing the insurance company that their client was liable for the accident. Generally, you must prove that the other driver was negligent or careless. Your case will be helped if you have a police report that identifies the other party as responsible for the accident. Some examples of driver negligence include: not seeing another vehicle that should have been seen following too closely driving too fast for the circumstances making an unsafe turn disobeying traffic signals or signs talking on the phone or texting while driving If you and the driver of the other vehicle both contributed to the accident, your claim may be reduced or dismissed. Some states have "contributory negligence laws" that state that you cannot win a claim if you were at all negligent, even if the other party was far more negligent. States with this law include Alabama, Maryland, North Carolina, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Some states have "comparative negligence laws" that reduce claims based on the proportion of the fault. This means that if it is determined that you are 30% responsible and the other party is 70% responsible, your claim will be reduced by 30%. You can find out the laws in your state here. Most insurance companies use a software program called "Colossus" to determine the amount of damages a claimant is entitled to. Insurance companies that use Colossus include Aetna, Allstate, CNA, Erie, Farmers, Metropolitan, Ohio Casualty, The Hartford, MetLife, Travelers, USAA and Zurich. While you likely do not have access to Colossus, you can consider some of the areas that the software takes into account. The program considers and assigns values based on the data that is entered (usually from medical records). The next steps explain how determine whether your claim will be assigned higher values. The program assigns "severity points" to injuries, rewarding higher points to injuries that are easy to verify, like broken bones, and lower values to soft tissue damage, like strains. Some injuries that tend to increase the Colossus value include: muscle spasms dizziness radiating pain headaches restriction of movement nausea vision impairment neurosis depression or anxiety Hospitalization: claims that involve a documented trip to the hospital are assigned a higher value. Additionally, treatment by specialists is given a higher value. Physical therapy: physical therapy is assessed by duration. 1-90 days is considered 1-3 months, and 91+ days is 3-6 months (or longer). Longer periods of physical therapy are assigned higher values. Delays or gaps that are not explained by a doctor in the medical records drastically diminish the value of the settlement assigned by Colossus. The Colossus system will take the lawyer's success rate against insurance companies into account, assigning a higher settlement amount to clients of successful attorneys.