How You Can Hurt Your Personal Injury Case
When a victim in a personal injury case make a claim against an insurance company, it seems that the victim is the one on trial because he or she is making a claim for his or her injuries. While this may seem impractical to most people, those of us in this industry understand why this happens, and we deal with it. Trust me, we don't like it either. However, the one thing we don't enjoy is when a client become his own worst enemy. It has happened to every personal injury attorney. My first client who killed his case came into my office on a Monday morning telling me how much pain he was in. I believed him. The next day, he was on the cover of the Newspaper giving an interview in his work-out clothes and discussing his work-out regime. He wasn't a client after that. Although this is an extreme example of how someone can hurt their own cases, there are other ways, more subtle ways.
For example, personal Injury cases open the books to the victims previous medical conditions which may have some relationship to the damages being alleged by the victim in this action. Let's say you had a prior neck surgery as a result of an old football or cheerleading injury. As a claimant, you must be open and honest with your attorney and disclose all of your previous medical issues. It is better to be open and honest, rather than trying to hide the previous neck surgery. It will come out sooner or later, and then you look like the bad guy or girl. Trust me, the insurance company is looking for anyway not to pay you the value of your case. Therefore, you don't need to give them additional ammunition. If you have something that embarasses you, we can deal with it, just let us know.
This is just an example of one of the ways in which you can hurt your case. Other examples include: Giving recorded statements to the insurance company, Completing insurance forms without your attorney reviewing same, etc.
If the insurance company asks you to give a statement, either verbal, written or recorded, please call us or another personal injury attorney first and seek their advice. As a policy, once we are retained, our clients do not speak to the other side's insurance company or it's representative without our being present.
Likewise, as a policy, we prefer that our clients do not complete any forms for the insurance companies without our review prior to the forms being forwarded to the insurance company.
We caution our clients about preparing job applications or any type of application wherein you will be making statements about their physical condition.
We urge our clients to always put their best foot forward and use their common sense after being injured in an accident. We want our clients to recover as quickly as possible, but we understand that some injuries are permanent.
This post is submitted by Carmen Dellutri, Esq., and he is a Board Certified Attorney and founder of The Dellutri Law Group, P.A. The firm has offices in Port Charlotte, Fort Myers and Naples. Mr. Dellutri is also a founding member of the Bankruptcy Law Network, Debt Law Network, Mortgage Law Network and Credit Law Network. He also writes a Bankruptcy Blog. Mr. Dellutri also sits on the Board of Directors of the American Board of Certification.
