Do insurance companies try to trick you?

While there are times when the defendant's insurance company acts in good faith and offers a fair settlement without extensive litigation, it's more common for the insurance company to use tactics to try to mislead you and make you lose our claim. With very few exceptions, insurance companies keep shareholders happy by making as much money as possible. This often involves charging monthly premiums while making very low settlement offers or outright denying claims. Worse, the insurance company may try to trick you into doing something that would harm your claim.

Working hand-in-hand with the first trick, many insurance adjusters will work to delay your claim by not returning your call. By lengthening and delaying the claim process, insurance companies try to exhaust the state's statute of limitations. Victims of car accidents in Florida have up to four years from the date of the accident to file a claim against a citizen or private company and up to three years from the date of the accident to file a claim against the state. Don't wait for your insurance adjuster to call you back, especially in cases involving personal injury claims.

At no time should you disclose your medical record to your insurance company after an accident without the advice of an experienced personal injury accident attorney. It's a very common practice for an insurance adjuster to offer an injury victim a couple of thousand dollars to settle their injury claim expeditiously, to “make it go away” and “end it.” Before you even consider making a detailed statement to an insurance company, you should have the professional advice of a personal injury attorney who can collect the evidence (police report, witness statements, evidence of property damage, etc.) When you talk to an insurance adjuster about an injury claim, whether it's an appraiser from your own insurance company or someone else's, it's helpful to picture yourself in a television police drama in which the recently arrested person is “read their rights.” Many accident and personal injury lawyers request that their potential clients contact them before contacting their insurance company. Simply denying a claim is also a tactic that some insurance companies will unfairly adopt, especially when the claim is handled by the individual victim of the injury and not by a personal injury attorney.