How does the settlement process work for a St. Petersburg personal injury claim? Now, what prompted this video is that our clients, uh, although they’re aware that we are sending demands or are in the negotiation process, uh, for their personal injury claim, they are not intimately involved into the, in the interactions between my office and the insurance companies. So I wanted to film a video basically to explain to our clients what, what exactly we do, uh, as we prepare a demand and then what we do specifically during the settlement process to arrive at the number and then ultimately get them to check for their, uh, for their claim. So this, this video really starts at the completion of treatment phase. All right. So our clients were in some type of accident, uh, some personal injury related accident in St. Petersburg could even be a car accident, slip and fall, trip and fall, whatever the case may be.
They’ve completed their treatment and now they’re ready for demand. And we already have an insurance adjuster and an insurance company on the other side. And what we need to do at that point is we have to compile all of the medical records, all of the medical bills, all of the liens. And it’s not an overnight process. It takes time to make sure that all those numbers are correct and we’re not missing anything because obviously we don’t want to send out a demand and we’re missing a bill that you could have been, you could have received compensation for. So it takes some time. Medical providers are not quick either. They don’t send it to you the next day. So there’s always a little bit of a lag or delay in compiling all the bills and records. So what we then do is we evaluate all of the medical records we’ve looked for whatever surgery, if there’s a surgery recommendation, if there’s a recommendation for injections, whatever the case may be.
We compile all the bills and all the records and we outlined to the insurance company what exactly happened. So first portion of the demand is a statement as far as liability, what happened in the accident, who’s at fault, and why we believe that, uh, liability is to be placed at the, on the other person’s shoulders. The next phase then is a complete summary of all of the injuries, all the recommendations, as I mentioned earlier, for any type of future treatment. Then the bills, then any type of lost wage claim that may be out there. And then any recommendations for future medical bills or future lost wages. So it’s very in depth. Finally, what I like to do in every one of my personal injury cases is to have my staff speak to the client one last time to find out exactly how the injuries have affected their life, their lives.
Uh, do they have difficulty sleeping, for example, can they no longer go jogging? Uh, can they no longer turn their head, um, in a certain direction, whatever it has been, uh, permanently affected. I like to include in the demand and also a little bit of a blurb about the person. So we send that demand off to the insurance company. Uh, and we give them 30 days to respond. And I’m only talking about what happens in a normal case. Most of these cases will settle cases, settle pre-suit. So an insurance company will get the demand, they’ll review it in certain cases, the last person follow-up records, uh, but normally they’ll review the demand and they’ll send back either by a telephone call, uh, and a confirming facts, some type of offer. So then what we need to do on our end, we’ve got all the medical bills, we’ve got all the medical records, we find out, okay, well what exactly is the net to the client out of this personal injury settlement?
And we go to the medical providers based on the offer that we’ve obtained, and we ask them, okay, um, are you able to reduce your bill by X number of dollars? And not every provider will reduce their bill. Some will. Uh, so that’s one way that we can put more dollars in our client’s pocket. And once we get those final dollars, we then communicate with the client and say, Hey, look, this is what we’re looking at. If we accept the offer that the insurance company made or uh, this is what you’d be at a net to you, um, at this level or this level, uh, and normally I’ll get the client’s permission to settle for some specific level at that time. Then we’ll follow back up with the insurance company, go back and forth. And normally the insurance company will have a set dollar amount of, um, of money that they are able to pay.
Um, and that’s it. I mean, it’s not, it’s not generally a, well, Hey, we’re $50,000 apart. Can you do this? These adjusters and generally speaking, have a set dollar amount. Um, and they’re not capable of exceeding that. So what we try to do in every single case is to get that, that top dollar on the table. And if that’s in a range that we believe is fair for our clients, we settle. So at that point, the insurance company will send off a release and they’ll send ’em. They’ll also send the check to us. Uh, we’ll, we’ll also in the, in the meantime, finalize any of the outstanding bills. Once we get the check in, the release, what the clients sign off, we deposit the check-in about a week to 10 days. Once the check has cleared, we issue a payment to the client and all the medical providers, um, that or people that hold liens against the file. And that’s generally how a settlement, the settlement process works, and a St. Petersburg personal injury claim. So, uh, when you pull back the, that’s what we do here, uh, in a case that settles in pre-litigation. So I hope you found this informative. If you have any questions about a personal injury claim or accident, please feel, feel free to contact us.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy.
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