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Auto Accident Adjusters May Undervalue Your Claim

Written by jeffreyhoward on . Posted in North Carolina Law Blog.

When you have an auto accident personal injury claim in North Carolina, the insurance company that represents the at-fault party has every reason to avoid paying you what you deserve.  Your personal injury attorney has to work hard to get you what you deserve; it’s not an easy job, and it’s only getting more difficult.

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m not trying to write a “woe is me” article about how bad we personal injury attorneys have it.  The point of this article is to help you understand how difficult auto accident injury claims can be in North Carolina, and what you might be able to do to help yourself and your claim.

The insurance company adjusters will use every reason they can justify, and many they can’t, to avoid paying you what you deserve.  But the thing I hear from them the most often is the “Minor Impact Soft Tissue” argument.  Many companies use this MIST acronym to flag claims that they don’t want to pay for.  They argue that the impact to your car was “minor” and as a result, you can’t be hurt, or you can’t be hurt as badly as you say you are.  In other words, “if the car ain’t hurt, you ain’t hurt.”  I hear it every day.

This is clearly unscientific.  Look at it this way: When we buy eggs, we always look inside the carton to make sure the eggs aren’t broken, right?  Even if the carton looks fine, the eggs can be broken.  This is the same with auto accidents.  You could be injured quite severely, and your car may not show much damage at all.  And remember Dale Earnhardt?  The accident that killed him wasn’t anywhere near the most cataclysmic of accidents in NASCAR.  His car just hit a wall.  There were no flips or rollovers, just a straight impact like many accidents on the road.

Think about it!  Cars are made of rubber, plastic, and metal – all resilient materials made to withstand significant impacts.  We are flesh and bone and blood and we take injuries in different ways than machine-made parts of vehicles.

The sad part about this argument is that it can work!  Juries are comprised of our peers, and our peers can fall for this argument, unscientific though it might be.

I hope you won’t be involved in one of these accidents, but if you find yourself in an auto accident where there’s relatively minimal damage to your car, I’ve laid out some tips below to help you out:

  • Report your injury immediately.  The longer in time from the accident to your first complaint, the more the insurance company will use it against you. “Toughing it out” means tough luck for your claim.
  • Get several estimates of your vehicle’s damage.  Don’t trust the first one.  More importantly, when they start work on your vehicle, make sure they know that you want everything that could have possibly been damaged to be checked out!  If they forget to check something, it may be too late to get it fixed.  Moreover, the more they have to fix, the more property damage they pay for and the harder it is for them to argue it was a “minor impact.”
  • If anything inside the vehicle was damaged, save it and report it.  If your bumper isn’t smashed in, they will say you aren’t hurt.  But if your cell phone flew up against the console and got smashed, they will have a hard time arguing it was only a “minor impact.”
  • Check your owner’s manual regarding seat belts and accidents.  Some manuals say that after any accident involving a reported injury, the seat belts should be replaced.  Make the insurance company pay for this, and that will also help get your case out of the “minor impact” category.
  • If after your car is repaired, it seems to be having problems, take it back in!  If you let these things go, a) you won’t get them fixed on the other side’s dime, and b) it will lend credence to their argument that your car wasn’t damaged enough to warrant your injury.
  • Choose a health care provider that is experienced with these sorts of auto accident claims and who isn’t afraid to go to bat for you and testify that your injuries were, to a reasonable degree of medical certainty, caused by your accident.
  •  Don’t linger in your treatment any more than you have to!  Running up a bill is a bad thing for injury claims.  Of course you need treatment, and of course you shouldn’t cut corners where you don’t have to.  Getting the treatment you need is important, but be active in the decision to be released from care, and let your provider know you want what you need, but only what you need.  The quicker you get better, the easier your claim should be.

These are just a few helpful tips.  Like I said before, I hope you don’t have an auto accident, and I hope you don’t need me for a auto accident claim, but if you do, perhaps these tips will come in handy.  Let me know if I can help.