Tactics Insurance Companies Use To Reduce Liability
March 30, 2023
Personal Injury
Personal injury cases can range from dog bites, slips and falls, medical malpractice, car accidents, and more. Any damage caused to you or your property due to another party’s negligence or failure to act may constitute a personal injury case. Victims are entitled to compensation, and this process often involves working with the other party’s insurance company. Without an attorney on your side, this process can become challenging as insurance companies have tactics to reduce their liability.
- Denying Your Claim
Insurance companies can outright deny your claim based on arguments like you didn’t properly fill out the paperwork or that your or their insurance doesn’t cover the injury. Sometimes, claim denials can be legitimate, but other times it can be the insurance company manipulating the facts or using loopholes to deny your claim with the hopes you give up.
- Delaying Your Claim
Personal injury claims have a statute of limitations for filing and completing the claim process. Insurance companies sometimes try to delay your claim, effectively running out the clock on this statute of limitations. A secondary goal can be, again, to make a victim frustrated enough that they simply drop the claim. Ways an insurance company can delay a claim are by adding extra paperwork or neglecting to respond to emails or phone calls in a timely manner.
- Calling You and Causing You to Misrepresent Yourself or Your Case
The insurance company often contacts a victim, and while they seem nice at first, they can have ulterior motives. When the insurance company contacts you, make it clear that you don’t feel comfortable negotiating or even talking about the case without your attorney present. Insurance agents can use “word games” similar to riddles, making victims admit fault or misrepresent themselves solely out of confusion. Even saying “I’m fine” when an agent asks how you are can be an opportunity for the insurance company to argue that a victim is faking their injuries.
- Offering an Early Settlement
Insurance companies have their own legal team, and they understand what they can expect to pay if they’re held liable. Instead of trying to outright refuse to communicate, an insurance company may offer an early settlement to a victim, throwing them off guard and having them accept this offer before they obtain legal help. This early settlement is almost always very low when compared to a settlement an attorney can help you obtain.
- Shifting Blame, Downplaying, or Arguing Prior Medical Conditions
An insurance company may try to redirect blame to the victim themselves, for example, if it’s a car crash, the company may argue that the victim caused the accident. An insurance company can also downplay a victim’s injuries or try arguing that the victim had prior medical conditions. If a victim slipped and fell on a wet floor and broke their back, the insurance company may try to bring up a sports injury that happened decades ago, setting the grounds for this new accident. Even if the insurance company is still held liable, bending or misrepresenting certain facts can lead them to have to pay less, but a personal injury lawyer, as our friends at Presser Law, P.A. recommends to seek out, has experience dealing with these sleazy tactics.
