http://www.727injury.com (727) 381-2300 St Petersburg Personal Injury Attorneys McQuaid & Douglas
This video applies to what happens when the at fault driver's insurance company is not cooperating with you after an accident. Now this circumstance happens actually pretty frequently and there really are a number of factors that you have to consider after an auto accident or any type of accident, uh, until you determine whether the other insurance company is doing the right thing or the wrong thing. So one of the factors to be considered is the other insurance company actually has to investigate the accident before they'll pay for any of your damages. So what that means is they'll have to review the accident report, which can quite frankly take a few days to complete. They'll have to speak to any witnesses and most importantly they have to speak to their insured. Now you can imagine that not all insureds are as responsible perhaps is yourself. So if the person has flaked out, if they disappeared, if they're not answering phone calls, for example, that will delay the claim accordingly.
Um, so one of the issues that we find really frequently here in Pinellas county involves out of state insurance companies. And the reason why we have so many issues with these out of state companies is because we get a lot of snowbirds. We have a lot of tourists. So there are vehicles from all across the country and from Canada down in Pinellas county. And those insurance companies may not always do business here in Pinellas county. So if there's an accident here, they don't have boots on the ground, they don't have adjusters set up here to come out and view the damage to your car to speak with you. They don't have a auto repair shops lined up, so that will delay the claim. Basically what they have to do is hire a local independent contractor, uh, insurance agent to come on and do the work for them and then, and then contract out with repair shops and all that.
So, uh, what we find is the out of state insurance companies and dealing with them, it's always a delay. Now, the last factor or another factor you should consider about a possible delay in your insurance claim with the other driver as if you know, perhaps there's an issue with coverage. Now, you may not know that. They have no obligation to tell you that. But I, for example, I just had a case with an out of state. Again, it was an out of state insurance company and my client was unrepresented at the time and he was simply trying to get the damage to his vehicle repaired. And it was so obvious, uh, and he felt it was so obvious that the other person was at fault and he was pulling his hair out. Why won't this insurance company pickup and do the right thing? And he wound up coming to me.
We were retained. We were able to figure it out after speaking with the insurance agent. But, uh, essentially there was no coverage. Uh, there was some type of, uh, of, um, problem with the insurance agent and they never actually got the coverage that was necessary. So, so at the end of the day, we were able to figure that out and solve the problem. But, uh, like I said earlier, there's so many factors as to why an insurance claim May d maybe delayed. Ultimately, if you have a lawyer that does this type of work regularly, the lawyer can normally speed it up and at least answer the questions and give you some type of timeframe as to when your claim will be appropriately handled.
*The above has been transcribed by a third party service and has not been checked for accuracy
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