[Music] Hello and welcome to the millennial lawyer podcast with Mark Shirian. My name is Kevin Rosenquist and today we’re going to be talking about dealing with insurance companies. We’re going to talk about how to protect your rights after an accident. Mark, good to see you.

Good seeing you too. 

All right so what are some of the common tactics that an insurance company might use to minimize compensation that they offer accident victims? 

Insurance companies, for the most part, use a tactic called quick lowball offer. So if you’re injured in an accident and you reach out to the insurance company, they’ll be quick to offer you a very low amount in hopes that you’ll just take it as quick money. It’ll sound impressive and it sounds like it’s just as sufficient for whatever transpired. 

At what point should people hire an attorney? 

Immediately, ASAP, as soon as you’re able to because I understand that after injuries occur, go to the hospital, you get treatment, sometimes you’re not even able to speak to anyone, so as soon as you’re able to, reach out to a trusted attorney and get guidance. 

How should someone approach their first conversation with an insurance adjuster after they get in an accident? 

I would say that they shouldn’t even have a conversation with an insurance adjuster, but if it’s with respect to just reporting a claim, you know in car accident cases, if you’re in your own car and you’re in an accident and it was the other car’s fault for the most part, the no fault insurance of the car that you’re in. So it would be your no fault insurance that’s the policy that pays for up to usually up to $50,000 of your medical treatment so that it needs to be reported to your insurance company within 30 days the no fault application needs to be submitted. So if it’s in respect to just I guess reporting that an incident occurred and providing the location and the date and the time, as long as all that’s accurate you have a duty to report that to your own insurance, then I could understand that, but beyond that when it comes to injuries and anything else beyond those statements, I wouldn’t delve into that. 

Do you feel like even that someone may consider getting council first before they even make that initial call? 

I would say so. Before speaking to an adjuster I think it’s imperative that you first call an attorney and present your case to an attorney. So to answer your question, in a different way attorneys offices get calls all the time, sure, so I think it’s very important to, in I guess 10 sentences or less explain how the incident occurred and what the injuries are and where you treated and when it happened and where it happened and who may be at fault if it’s a slip and fall at a store or a sidewalk or a car accident you know. If you have a police report or not or do you have any sort of documentation about how the incident occurred. Gathering as much information as possible and making it as easy as possible for any attorney that you’re speaking to to evaluate the case. So before you speak to an adjuster from the insurance company, I would highly recommend that you speak to an attorney. 

So what type of documentation or information should victims have prepared before they talk to that insurance company? 

Well I said before, if it’s a car accident, a police report, if it’s a slip and fall, some sort of incident report. A lot of public places have incident reports so I think it’s very important to report the incident at the time that it occurs. A lot of times I’ve seen, you know it doesn’t make the case impossible, but it does make things difficult when you’re litigating a case that was never reported at all and they have no records whatsoever with respect to the incident. It’s important to report the incident at the time so that means if it’s a car accident, to call the police and make sure that a police report an mv104 is being generated in New York. If it’s a slip and fall or trip and fall somewhere, very important to document because what that does is it triggers the defendants to preserve evidence. If there’s a video, if there are witnesses, it actually puts pressure on them because they were on notice of the claim and that there’s a reasonable anticipation of litigation. If there was an incident and it was reported and they’re thinking of speaking to an attorney, there’s a reasonable anticipation of litigation. So that puts the obligation on the defendants to preserve evidence as much as they can. If there’s no incident report and you never reported an incident, then they’re under no obligation really to preserve any evidence. They’ll come back and say well we had no idea they never reported the incident so we didn’t go back and stop the video, we don’t have records of maintenance or inspection from that day because we didn’t find out about this until a year or two years after the incident. So it’s very important to report the incident as it occurs and to get documentation of that whether, you know, getting a copy of that report or taking a photo of it and providing it to your attorney. I would also say in medical malpractice cases when you’re complaining about the malpractice of a doctor or a hospital or whatever it is, get a copy of those records because it will make your attorney’s job a lot easier. When you have those records to provide your attorney, they can evaluate whether you have a claim or not, so report it as soon as possible and get that report and submit it to the attorney so you can prove that the claim happened on the date, and the time, and the location, and any witnesses. And a lot of times it has the name of the defendant or employees of the defendant if it’s a slip or trip and fall and that way when you’re doing depositions, those are likely the employees that you want to bring in for questioning. So all these things are very important. 

So your recommendation if someone’s in a slip and fall situation would be if possible to immediately go into the establishment or something and tell someone that it happened? 

Yes, it’s very important to report the claim and you’ve heard this term before, but get it and write it. It’s so true though because when you’re talking about presenting a case, look at the incident report because the incident report will also have your version of the story too. It’s helpful because when time passes, you kind of forget how things happen and you don’t have a true memory, whether it’s a year ago, or two years ago, or three years ago, or sometimes by the time a case is filed, and then there’s depositions. It could be years after and that report can refresh your recollection at a deposition or later on. So it is very important to put together an incident report, ask for an incident report, give your statement, and get statements from any other witnesses to make sure that the report is as accurate as possible and that will help you along the way. 

I imagine there’s probably a decent amount of times where someone might have a slip and fall or something similar and not feel anything immediately and be like ah it’s okay I’m fine you know, and then later that like few days later they’re like oh man my back is messed up or something of that nature. Does that happen a lot? 

That happens a lot, and I also hear I, I understand this, but I hear this a lot that something happened and they were so shocked by whatever it is that happened, by the incident, that they didn’t think to report it. They didn’t think to report the incident to anyone or the adrenaline of what occurred. They didn’t feel pain at the time, but they got home and then they woke up the next day and they were in excruciating pain. So yes that happens a lot and it’s understandable. Sure that doesn’t mean it’s too late to hire an attorney, send a notice of preservation, so then they could go back whether it’s within 7 days or 14 days to preserve any sort of evidence that could still be preserved. So it does happen and it is understandable but again at the moment you feel any sort of pain, it’s important to speak to an attorney. But I would say that I would air on the side of caution whether it’s not something you even think you would pursue. I think the rule of thumb is to document as much as you can just to protect yourself in case anything comes back to you whether it’s a car accident or anything else. So even if it’s not something you want to pursue or it’s something that can be pursued, it is important to err on the side of caution to document as much as you can. 

I imagine that sometimes people think that they can handle these sorts of things themselves. These insurance claims you know, not have to pay a lawyer, or not have to get a lawyer involved, or just hopefully it be quick. Tell me why that’s a bad idea? Why is that risky? 

First of all, they’re going to take advantage of someone that’s not an attorney. Like I said before, they’re going to look to lowball you. An attorney will be able to present the case in the best way to understand the strongest legal arguments that you can make towards liability and to counter anything that they’re going to say with respect to how the incident happened and what the damages are or how related the damages are to the incident. So I would say the biggest thing about an attorney getting involved is that you know when you go through a car accident or slip and fall or an injury, there’s a lot of emotion that goes through. You’re going through a lot of emotion, you know, when clients come to me they’re not in the highest graces, you know, spirits. When clients come to me, they’re not in the highest spirits and the emotions are high and that makes it very hard to negotiate with an insurance company. An attorney will come in and will advocate. I definitely come in and advocate very strongly and assertively, but you do so without emotion. And someone who’s going to try to negotiate with an insurance company is at a disadvantage because they’re likely emotionally very invested in the claim and that might hinder their ability to negotiate, you know. And I see this with clients who are, you know, extremely educated and sophisticated and very successful in their own careers that doesn’t necessarily translate into advocating for yourself and getting the highest award. 

So that’s a good point, maybe you’re a master salesman but that doesn’t mean that you can negotiate your own settlement after an accident. That’s a really good point. How do you protect clients from making statements that might hurt their case during the negotiations? 

I advise them once they’re retained not to speak to anyone without me being present. They are instructed and advised not to speak to anyone without their attorney present. It’s as simple as that, so they are instructed if they get calls from the insurance company or for the defendant or the friend of the defendant not to speak to anyone, because understand you know if they’re in a supermarket and there’s a slip and fall on aisle 3, you know, there could be friends or neighbors that shop at that store that know the owner. And things are being communicated and said so I advise them not to speak to anyone and that way prevent them from saying something that they shouldn’t be saying and giving statements that you know they shouldn’t be giving. So that’s one thing that we do. 

That’s a good point. I didn’t even think about it like that. As I asked the question, I was thinking more like talking to insurance companies or anyone involved in the case, but you’re right, you just never know who might know someone. You could be neighbors with somebody, like you said, that you talk to and they could be related to the store manager. 

I’ll also say from what I’ve seen I wouldn’t tell your friends that you have a personal injury case. From my experience and being in this, you know, New York City, whatever scene that I’m in, and the clients that I have, and the scenes that they’re in, people will, clients will talk about their cases to their friends and you know, unless you have to talk about your case. I would advise that the least amount of people that know about you the better. It is very important for a lot of reasons, but I think the obvious is you don’t know who you know is supporting you or not really supporting you. And also once the case resolves, you certainly don’t want people knowing that your case is resolved because then they start asking you for money. So, and again, it goes back to the original point. I think if you can keep it to your attorney and to your immediate family about your case because it is an emotionally taxing predicament to have and want to talk about, you know, the case and what’s going on with the case. And people are going to ask you questions if you’re visibly injured, people are going to ask questions, and yep they’ll ask if you have an attorney, and you know people will be curious. But I would advise to tell as few people as you possibly can. You never know who will talk and who becomes a witness because you know you go to a deposition. They’re going to ask you if you speak to anyone about your case. And they don’t come out so yeah. 

What are some warning signs you’ve seen that an insurance company is trying to delay or or potentially even undervalue a claim? 

There are a lot of different scenarios that this comes up. You know, we have cases against car accident cases, and I won’t name any particular insurance companies, but where there’s a certain policy amount and our client liability is an absolute slam dunk. It’s a rear end, they’re a passenger in a car, and they had surgery, they’ve never had any issues to this body part before, and we’re looking for the full policy on the case and and the policy on the case is, I would say, not even sufficient but we’re limited to whatever the policy is and they’ll lowball you, and they’ll say things like, well the injury, the surgery wasn’t related to this incident, or the surgery was not, the treatment that they underwent was not necessary, nor was it related to this incident, or they had pre-existing injuries that predated this incident and the case is worth pennies on the dollar, right. So those are a lot of and we have to work very hard to demonstrate that these treatments that our clients undergo are directly related to this incident, or sometimes even if they had prior injuries before an incident and you injure the same body part in a later incident, you know that does not preclude you from being awarded damages because you know if there’s an exasperation of a body part as a result of an accident, then that’s something that has value. So those are some things that I’ve seen as far as delays, you know. I understand that the insurance companies do need time, they have a lot of claims to review, so that’s why we always, when we make a settlement demand, we give them typically 30 days to respond to our demand. So those are some things that we do to make sure that the case is moving along. If they are delaying or they’re not offering us what we believe is sufficient, then we’re going to file the lawsuit and litigate it to the very end. 

Yeah all right, well thank you for joining us on the Millennial Lawyer podcast with Mark Shirian. If you want to get in touch with Mark, please visit shirianpc.com and, of course, like and subscribe to the channel. We love having you be part of our audience. Mark, thanks so much for being here. It’s always good to see you. 

Great seeing you too, thank you. 

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