“Go Ahead, Cash the Check and We’ll Send You Another…” (and other lies)

Why do car accident victims seek out lawyers? In some cases its because they figure out that they have been outright lied to by the insurance adjuster.

We had a gentleman hire us yesterday. English is his second language. He was involved in an accident where the other driver ran a red light before crashing into our client’s car. Our client was taken to the hospital and is still under treatment several weeks later.

Here’s the game the adjuster plays. (This is one of the big car insurance companies.) She gets on the phone with the guy and tells him she is “sending a check for his medical bills.” She tells him to go ahead and cash the check and if there is money left over after paying the bills he gets “to keep it for himself.” She knows he was in the ER for hours and got x-rays and CT scans. She has to know that his bill will be more than $2,500.

Our guy says “great, that sounds reasonable.” So the check comes. But it comes with a “full and final release” and the language on the back of the check warns that signing the check settles the case and closes the claim. Completely opposite of the lie she told him.

He’s smart enough to show the documents to a co-worker (our guy works on the custodial staff of a local high school). The co-worker has seen our advertising (“you may not need an attorney but get our free book before you talk to the adjuster”) and sends him our way for advice. He hires us.

He may have been able to settle this case himself had the adjuster not gotten greedy. Had she not been trying to achieve her goal of settlling XX cases in a month she may have kept the lawyers out of the case.

Look…not all adjuster are like this and not all insurance companies act this way but enough do to make anyone who settles might be thinking about settling a case on their own very wary.

You DON’T always need an attorney but you probably should get educated about your claim before settling, and even before talking to the highly trained, fast talking adjusters.

More from benglasslaw

• USAA-”we’ll pay your medical bills and that’s all…”
• Verdicts and Settments
• Delay, Delay then….”surprise…your claim will expire!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 6:49 am and is filed under Finding an Attorney, The Insurance Adjuster. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.