Andrew Cherin

If you are injured in a Seattle car accident, chances are high that the insurance adjuster as searched your Facebook, Twitter, and instagram pages to see your activity level. If you have just been injured in a car accident and all of a sudden you are posting pictures of you on a skateboard doing tricks, the insurance company is going to be skeptical and use that against you even if those pictures posted after the car accident were actually pictures taken before the car accident.

Insurance companies can look at your Facebook and other social media if you have your privacy settings set to public. The pictures you post on social media could be from a long time ago but they insurance company may believe that they are of you today and a jury will think the same. Your Seattle personal injury lawyer can prove that these were pictures from a long time ago before the car accident but it makes it much more difficult.

You social media may be discoverable at trial so your privacy levels may not even matter. Courts are somewhat up in the air about whether your social media accounts are discoverable by insurance companies in car accident injury cases. However, it would be a good idea to keep your social media private so they are not easily witnessed by insurance adjusters who then will not offer anything for your case and make it much more difficult to settle your case outside of trial.

You generally cannot fake injuries in car accident injury cases and the truth will come out one way or another. There are too many barriers for someone to fake the insurance industry and the insurance industry has too many resources to be faked. Your doctors will not treat you if they think you are faking an injury because they could lose their license. A lawyer will not take your case if they believe you are faking because they could lose their license. The truth will come out one way or another in the end. Insurance fraud is no joke and could come with monetary fines as well as jail time.

If you are injured in a Seattle car accident injury case, you have probably searched for your case value and came across personal injury calculators. You have probably looked into personal injury calculators to figure out how much your case is actually worth. Many of these websites will say that your case is worth 3 times the medical bills and lost wages, however, this is highly misleading and inaccurate. However, this is still not how much you will see in your pocket. This is generally what the personal injury lawyer says your case is worth before you have to pay back medical bills and your personal injury lawyer. Additionally, lost wages are generally not included in the multiplier, only added in after the multiplier.

Your Seattle personal injury case could be worth far more 3 times the medical bills or your personal injury case could be worth less than 3 times the medical bills. What determines whether a case is worth more or less is the type of treatment you receive, the permanency of your injuries, and the other factors. Every case is different so it is hard to pinpoint exactly what a case is worth but these are the general factors that are considered when determining a case value. You should set up a free consultation with a Seattle personal injury lawyer to learn more about your case value.

Most importantly, no one can accurately determine your case value or give you an estimation on your case value until your injuries are fully healed and you have completed 100% of your medical treatment or gotten as close to 100% as possible. There are too many factors that go into determining car accident injury case value that cannot be predicted without fully being healed, medical bill totals, lost wage totals, and permanency of injuries calculated.

What makes a case worth more than 3 times the medical bills and lost wages? These are car accident injury cases that have permanent, life changing injuries. Typically, these cases involve a surgery, lengthy hospital stay, and permanent impairment of some ability you used to have but no longer have because of the car accident. Additionally, these cases could have giant loss of income ability and lost wages that make the case value worth more than 3 times the medical bills calculation.

What makes a case worth less than 3 times the medical bills and lost wages? These are car accident injury cases that generally only have diagnostic costs such as MRI, x-rays, or CT scans that are expensive with little or not medical treatment. This is typically where the diagnostic tests are more expensive than the actual recovery medical treatment that is given like physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, etc. These cases are worth some money but generally not worth as much as cases where someone has gone through long treatment and has permanent or temporary debilitating injuries. Additionally, cases where massage therapy is the only form of medical treatment is generally not worth as much as other treatment.

Waiting too long to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer can wreck your personal injury case and make it much less valuable than it could have been if you hired one from the get go.

If you wait too long you could lose out on great advice and rights you could have been entitled to but waited too long. A Seattle personal injury lawyer will let you know from the outset of your case how to pay for the medical treatment that you need right now. Your car accident injury lawyer will be able to find insurance coverage to pay for the medical treatment that you need or possibly find you a doctor that will give you the medical treatment that you need and wait to be paid out of the settlement via a lien that your attorney signs as do you.

By delaying getting the treatment that you need at the outset of the case, you are giving the insurance adjuster the ability to argue that you were not injured by the car accident and this must be from some other act. Additionally, if you don’t get treatment early, the jury will think that you are not that injured otherwise you would have got treatment immediately or soon after the car accident.

Additionally, if you wait too long to hire a Seattle personal injury lawyer you could lose out on your case. In Washington State you have three years from the date of your car accident to either settle or file a lawsuit. If you do not settle or file a lawsuit within this time period, you no longer have any avenues to seek recovery against the defendant.

If you wait too long to hire a Seattle car accident injury lawyer, you may lose out on potential defenses that you may have had to mitigate defense insurance arguments limiting the value of your case. Some times a person in a car accident could have potential holes in their case such as partial liability or fault. A personal injury lawyer can mitigate this by going to the car accident scene, taking pictures, getting witness statements before they disappear, or more. Additionally, hiring an accident reconstructionist early can avoid potential pitfalls by insurance adjusters hanging their hat and withholding money because of their view that there is partial liability.

It is best to find a Seattle personal injury lawyer at the outset of your case so you know your rights and they can limit the arguments that the insurance company can use against you to make for a less contentious settlement.

A potential pitfall for Seattle car accident injury victims is when it comes to talking to the other insurance company and giving them too much information. While the truth will always come out, it is a good idea to not give them the opportunity to spin your words into something that is untrue or misleading.

At the outset of a Seattle personal injury case, the other insurance company will ask for you to give a recorded statement. This may seem harmless but it is ripe with danger. The insurance adjuster is trained in asking questions that may be misleading or lead to inaccurate information.

Some of these questions can include talking about your medical history and your current symptoms. The insurance adjuster loves talking about prior injuries and trying to relate those injuries to the current car accident injury case. If you had prior injuries, they will ask if the injuries seem like the same injuries you suffered in this car accident and if they were present before this car accident. This could lead you into a hole that may be hard to get out of.

Additionally, insurance adjusters will try to ask you about your current injuries. They may try to downplay your injuries on the phone and ask you how you know you are that hurt. They may ask you how you are feeling right now and you may say fine. However, they will not ask you about how you felt last night or when you were driving in your car. Moreover, many injuries manifest themselves over a period of days after the car accident. The sooner they talk to you and get a recorded statement, the harder it is for you to say all of a sudden you are injured and need all this care.

They will and can use the recorded statement in court as a prior inconsistent statement or to show that you were not hurt. If all of a sudden you are hurt but during the recorded interview you said you were fine, the jury may look down on you as untrustworthy or lying about your injuries and the severity of them.

Additionally, the recorded statement may have to do with how the car accident happened. If the car accident happened because of anything but a rear end car accident, they may try to put words in your mouth like you ran the red light or you ran the stop sign. They could say that you saw my client right? So why did you continue if you saw them. They didn’t see you. Even if you didn’t see them or you had no time to stop. They can easily put words into your mouth on how the car accident happened and potentially make it your fault if there are no independent witnesses to say otherwise.

If you have been injured in a car accident, you need a Seattle car accident injury lawyer to represent you before you talk to the insurance company. You don’t need to make a statement to the defendant’s insurance company but you may need to give one to your insurance company. Make sure you have a lawyer representing you before you give any statements to anyone.

As a Seattle personal injury lawyer, I have seen many things that can help or hurt a car accident injury case. Here are some of the top mistakes or misconceptions that clients have that I have seen that hurt Seattle car accident injury cases. A misconception is that doctors, chiropractors, massage therapists, and others will only write in your records what helps

What you say to your doctor, massage therapist, chiropractor, or any medical personnel will be put in your medical records and potentially used against you. You may think that because your doctor has treated many people injured in car accidents before that they know what will hurt your case and what will help your car accident injury case. However, most doctors and other medical personnel have no clue about what will help your case and what will hurt your case. They are simply a recording device and focused on you getting better.

Doctors, massage therapists, and other medical personnel want to see you get better. In fact, it is their number one goal to get you better from the injuries you suffered in the car accident. Their goal is to get you better as fast as possible. When they see that you state that you are feeling good, they write it down. When you say you are no longer feeling pain in a certain area, they write it down. They often will not differentiate between how you are feeling right now and how you felt last night after work or how you felt as you drove home from work yesterday. However, the good ones will.

It’s important to understand that you are not lying and they are not lying when they put down this information, only that it is not the complete truth. A lot of time doctors will ask how you feel right now, which is fine but you need to be honest with them and tell them how you felt last night, how you felt driving here in the car, and how you feel when you do something that causes you pain too. This will allow them to put this into their notes as well.

It’s not a lie to tell them you are feeling ok right now because you are just sitting here. Additionally, a lot of people are anticipating feeling good because of past experiences and comfortability with your doctor, massage therapist, chiropractor, etc. who have made you feel good in the past. This can dull the senses in some ways and make you think of the future instead of the past.

What can you do to make sure that you are not hurting your case when you talk to your doctor, massage therapist, physical therapists, or chiropractor? When the doctor asks you how you are feeling right now, always think of they are asking how you have been doing since they last saw you. Think of the time you had a lot of pain with your car accident injuries since you last saw this doctor. It’s important to report both the good and the bad.

A lot of times doctors will focus on the good because they want to see you improving so they feel satisfaction with their being a part of your healing, which is great but give them the whole story.