What Can I Expect As Compensation For My Personal Injury?

The legal system has been designed to provide someone that has sustained a personal injury with a means for seeking compensation. Victims that appreciate their right to be compensated often pose certain questions, when meeting with an Injury Lawyer in Barrie.

Can I expect a fair compensation?

One group of personal injury lawyers conducted a survey of the amount of money awarded to their clients. The survey results showed that ½ of their clients had received between $3,000 and $25,000. Among those clients in the second half of the surveyed group, 26% received more than $25,000.

What factors affect the size of a victim’s compensation?

Some of the factors remain beyond the victim’s control. Those are things like the nature of the injury sustained by the claimant/victim, and the policy limits, as stated on the defendant’s insurance policy. Other factors provide each claimant with a way to work towards obtaining a larger compensation.

Claimants that hire a lawyer can expect to enjoy a larger award. Lawyers help their clients to discover how extensive any one of their claims might become. Claimants that negotiate with the insurance company tend to receive a larger compensation. Their readiness to proceed with negotiations keeps them from agreeing to accept the claims adjuster’s first offer. Sometimes adjusters make a low-ball offer.

Why should a claimant’s approach act to limit the temptation to accept such an offer? A low-ball offer often serves as a test. Claims adjusters use it to test a claimant’s understanding of the strength of the presented claim. Hence, that specific offer’s size usually falls far below the amount in a fair compensation.

Claimants’ chances for receiving a larger award increase, whenever any one of them has chosen to file a lawsuit, in addition to a claim. When an insurance company learns that a given claimant has filed a lawsuit against a defendant/policy holder, then the same company recognizes the claimant’s readiness to fight for a fair compensation.

Claimants’ desire to go after a fairer compensation often means agreeing to face the defendant in a courtroom. Insurers do not look forward to having a policyholder’s defense team present its arguments in a courtroom. There the lawyers on that team must face a jury.

No one can predict what a given jury will recommend, in terms of an award for an injured plaintiff/victim. Sometimes, juries feel that the plaintiff deserves to receive a large amount of money. The money used to satisfy a large payment must come from the insurance company. In view of that fact, it seems obvious why insurers hate facing the claimant/plaintiff in court. For that reason, the mere threat of a lawsuit frequently pushes the claims adjuster to agree to an out-of-court settlement.