If you were injured in a motor vehicle accident in British Columbia, it is in your best interest to hire a lawyer. Consult legal advice before speaking with anyone about:
- Your injury
- How the accident occurred
- Details of your potential claim
It may be difficult to fully understand the questions, or the significance of the questions you are asked by an insurance adjuster. Remember that anything you say can later be used against you. Claims adjusters work for insurance companies, and their primary goal is to pay the injured party as little as possible.
As soon as you make a claim with Insurance Corporation of British Columbia (ICBC), a claims adjuster will want to speak with you and convince you to sign documents.
Wait until you speak with a lawyer
While many people assume they have to talk to ICBC and sign their documents, you do not need to do this immediately. While you must eventually provide a written statement, the phone conversations and in-person discussions that the ICBC often attempts to have are unnecessary. Once you hire an automible accident attorney, you will no longer have to deal with the ICBC; your lawyer will do this for you. Instead, you can focus on your rehabilitation and mental well-being if you have been involved in an accident.
Claims adjuster tactics
If the claims adjuster does get a hold of you, he or she may tell you to wait to contact a lawyer until after the ICBC has made a settlement and you are unhappy with its offer. By no means should you wait. There are three main tactics the ICBC counts on, in order to keep its settlement payouts low:
- That claimants will not fully know their legal rights
- That claimants will not have the knowledge to build a strong legal/medical case
- That claimants will have no other alternative than to accept the offer by the ICBC or other adjuster when it comes time to negotiate a settlement
The ICBC tries hard to keep injured parties from hiring lawyers for these three reasons.
Seeking treatment
- A lawyer’s role
A lawyer's goal is to achieve the maximum compensation for you. Right after your accident, your personal injury lawyer’s role is to ensure that you receive the adequate care, including medical attention and rehabilitation to expedite your recovery.
Your experienced British Columbia automobile accident lawyer will then gather all the necessary information, and work to ultimately convince the defendant’s insurer to settle for a fair amount. Your accident attorney will prepare your case in a way that encourages the other party to settle. To do this, he or she will obtain the best experts in all the relevant areas that depend on expert testimony.
Testimony may be given by:
- Economists
- Various medical experts
- Settlement experts
- Actuaries
- Future care costs experts (such as rehabilitation consultants and vocational consultants)
Your lawyer will then reconstruct the accident to the best of their ability, using accident reconstruction experts, photographs, automotive engineers and surveyors. Then, settlement negotiations start. This step requires meetings between the lawyers on both sides, along with the insurer and experts from each side for clarification purposes. Mediation will first be attempted, but if settlement discussions are ineffective, a trial and judge or jury will ultimately determine the outcome.
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