People who come to see me after they’ve been in an accident often have at the top of their mind the potential problems with their personal injury case.
There are a few things that are giant red flags if an insurance company sees them, and they’re red flags because if we have to go all the way to a jury trial in your case, a jury is probably not going look at your case sympathetically. One red flag is if you fail to get medical care immediately or fail to keep your doctor’s appointments. It’s a big problem if, after an accident, you to a doctor and you get some medical treatment, but then there’s a gap in treatment of a month, or two months, before you go back to the doctor. To the jury, that suggests that maybe you got better and something else happened to you in the interim. That scenario gives the insurance company enough of an argument to cast doubt in the minds of a jury. Avoid a large gap in your treatment.
Another red flag is if there’s not a lot of damage to your car in the accident. That’s called low property damage. We know scientifically that the amount of damage to a car has almost zero impact on the amount of damage to the person inside the car. However, juries typically expect that the more damage to the car, the more seriously injured someone inside the car could have been. So, although we’ve had cases where people develop serious and significant injuries with very little damage to their car, those cases are oftentimes more difficult to prove, and require more medical evidence to convince a jury of the nature of the injury. Questions about this? Call us at 206-285-1743 or check out our many free resources.