Use This Hack to Make Sure You Get What You’re Entitled to After an Accident
The following is adapted from Not a Good Neighbor.
One of the worst parts about getting into a car accident—besides the accident, of course—is dealing with the insurance company. Their goal is always to pay out the least amount of money possible, no matter what.
You can, of course, hire an attorney to help you get the maximum settlement possible. But sometimes, it doesn’t make sense to hire a lawyer. Maybe you have enough evidence to build a case yourself, or maybe your maximum settlement isn’t enough to justify legal fees.
In those situations, you don’t have to throw up your hands and accept whatever the insurance company decides to award you. If you aren’t at fault, you can use a hack—the demand letter—to help you present a compelling case. To be successful, you just need to understand exactly what to include in the demand letter and how to set it up.
“You don’t have to throw up your hands and accept whatever the insurance company decides to award you. If you aren’t at fault, you can use a hack—the demand letter—to help you present a compelling case.”
What is a Demand Letter?
The demand letter is your ultimatum listing a factual summary of your claim, all the problems you experienced, and how much you want in compensation. The factual summary will list all the minor and major injuries, physical damages, disfigurement, and emotional trauma you experienced as a result of the accident.
The demand letter isn’t something you throw together a day or two after the accident. Before you can write the letter, you need to see a doctor (and any specialists you’re referred to), gather the relevant medical reports, and compile the accident-investigation documents.
Once you have those things, you’re ready to prepare a demand letter. Remember, it’s how you make your case for compensation, so it’s vital you write it in a cogent, thorough, well-organized fashion.
Provide the Basic Information
Make sure to include your name, address, and phone number, as well as your insurance company information, the adjuster, the claim number, and the date of the accident. You also want to make sure the letter is headed with a term such as For Settlement Purposes Only. That’s vital because settlement negotiations are considered privileged and can’t be used against you later.
For example, if you wrote a demand letter asking for $50,000, but later you wind up in a lawsuit asking for $1 million, the attorneys for the other side can’t use that letter to undermine your case. They can’t hold up your demand letter in front of a jury and say, “But Mr. Victim, last year you thought you needed only $50,000, and now you want a million. Are your injuries really that bad if all you wanted last year was $50,000?”
Summarize What Happened
The first paragraph of your demand letter is usually a summary—I was involved in an accident on the date above that was caused by your client. Include anything that happened before or after the accident that helps put your claim in perspective.
You also need to describe anything that is central to why you are damaged in this summary section. Perhaps you need special medical treatment because you have pins or screws in your neck that put you in a vulnerable condition.
Things like that should be described at the beginning of the letter. That helps the adjuster understand certain demands or calculations you’ll make in the rest of the letter.
Establish Liability
The next step is to establish liability. This is where you assign blame. You want to explain what happened in the accident and how the company’s client is to blame.
So you might say something like, “I was stopped at a red light in the southbound lane of LeJeune Ave at the intersection of Flagler Drive. When the light turned green, I proceeded through the intersection. I was nearly through the intersection when your client ran a red light and struck the rear passenger-side panel of my Ford Edge, causing extensive damage to my vehicle and causing my head to strike the window.”
Describe Your Injuries
After you’ve established liability, you need to detail your injuries and how doctors have treated you. You want to be sure to include every injury that has caused you physical or emotional pain. You want to document scarring or other disfigurements.
You want to include all the doctors you saw and what you saw them for. Remember, even if something seems minor, if you complained about it to a doctor after the accident and they documented and treated it, you need to include it.
Ask For a Specific Settlement
Once you’ve described your injuries and the medical treatment you’ve received, it’s time to say what you feel your settlement should be. The value of some of your damages will be clear cut, but others will be more subjective—and more likely to be disputed.
You want your first demand to be as high as you can reasonably make it while giving yourself room to compromise on the amount. Making an exorbitant demand will hurt your chances of a successful negotiation because it suggests that you aren’t negotiating in good faith and that you don’t have a good understanding of the process.
There are several parts to this section. You will need to consider economic damages, noneconomic damages (such as pain and suffering), and punitive damages.
Economic damages
Economic damages are provable damages whose value is easy to calculate and document. Make sure you include every medical expense, from the ambulance ride you needed to the ibuprofen you continue to take to manage swelling and lingering pain.
Your goal is to translate all the injuries and treatments you received into expenses so the adjuster can clearly see the correlation between injuries and damages. Go through each medical bill and list the treatment code for each visit, and include notes from the doctor.
In addition to listing your previous medical expenses, you need to calculate what your future expenses will look like. For instance, if your doctor expects you to need ongoing physical therapy, calculate it out: “I’ll need physical therapy eighteen times a year for the rest of my life. If I live to be sixty-five, I’ll need thirty-one years of visits. At $100 per visit, that will cost $55,800.”
Again, everything is fair game. Every Uber ride you take to a doctor’s appointment is reimbursable. If you lost your $500 deposit on a cruise because you were too injured to go, that’s reimbursable.
Include lost wages as well. This includes time spent at doctor’s appointments and therapy sessions. So, in the example above, if a physical therapy appointment takes four hours and you go eighteen times a year for thirty-one years, and your hourly wage is $30, that’s $66,960.
Noneconomic Damages
Another portion of the damages section is for noneconomic damages, such as pain and suffering. This includes your mental anguish, inconvenience, loss of enjoyment in life, disfigurement, and physical impairment. These are all the factors that a jury would be asked to weigh your case.
How much do you ask for? There is no methodology that you have to stick to to decide on a number. You can make that number anything you want because a juror can make it anything they want. They’re not bound by any number. However, a good starting point is asking for noneconomic damages equal to the economic damages.
Punitive Damages
Under certain circumstances, the law entitles you to punitive, or consequential, damages. This occurs when the defendant was drunk or texting when they caused your injury accident.
Punitive damages must be requested after the judge has facts that show the defendant acted with an intentional desire to harm the plaintiff or that the defendant behaved with a reckless disregard for human safety. They’re awarded by a jury as a multiple of the economic and non-economic damages after those damages are decided by the jury.
Set Yourself Up for Success
If you’re involved in an accident, you have a lot more power than you think to negotiate a fair settlement with your insurance company. One of the best ways to do that is to gather all your facts and evidence, then write a compelling demand letter.
By following the steps above, you can make your demand letter powerful and effective. And that will help you get everything you’re entitled to after an accident.
For more advice on maximizing your insurance settlement, you can find Not a Good Neighbor on Amazon.
Brian LaBovick is a lawyer and entrepreneur who has earned more than $400 million for his clients after establishing his injury law practice in 1991. As one of two students selected to the prestigious Order of the Barrister as the outstanding litigator in his class at the University of Miami, Brian was hired by the US Department of Justice Honors Graduate Program after graduation. He is now CEO of the LaBovick Law Group, an advisory board member of Keiser University’s legal education division, a past president of the North Palm Beach County Bar Association, and former director of the Palm Beach County Justice Association.