Tulsa Oklahoma Auto Injury Attorney

How Insurance Adjusters Prey Upon the Injured (Part 2)

How Insurance Adjuster prey upon unrepresented injury claimants:

During training, adjusters are told that only about one-third of claimants are predisposed to hiring an attorney. Since most claimants contact and hire an attorney within two weeks of an accident, adjusters are told that it is critical to contact the claimant and establish rapport as quickly as possible. Phone contacts are handled by script so that the adjusters don’t forget to make the necessary points to gain rapport and to discourage the use of an attorney (e.g., “If you hire an attorney, then I won’t be able to talk with you anymore.”). Contact by phone is preferred by the companies because it’s cheaper. However, if it appears that the claimant is a candidate for hiring an attorney, then the adjuster is required to meet him/her face-to-face immediately to build rapport. Allstate tells its adjusters that, “One way of identifying good candidates for face-to-face is to carefully think through the risk of losing the claimant to an attorney and your ability to influence the decision.” Allstate Unrepresented Adjuster Training Manual, July 1995.
In short, the most powerful arguments for hiring a personal injury attorney are found in an insurer’s own training manuals. Those reasons are usually economic in nature. Some other considerations are these:

A personal injury lawyer usually has substantial knowledge of what similar cases have settled for and can provide usable statistics to the client to make an informed decision about how far to pursue a claim.

A personal injury lawyer has a fiduciary responsibility towards his client to work in good faith in advancing the client’s interests, while an adjuster owes his allegiance solely to the insurance company and has a responsibility to save it as much money as possible.

If a lawyer makes a mistake (for example, misses a critical deadline which is fatal to the claim), he and his malpractice insurer are responsible to the client. If an unrepresented party allows a critical deadline to expire, that’s just tough luck. Believe it, because it happens.

It is to the economic interest of the attorney to obtain the highest recovery possible for the client, while it is to the economic interest of the adjuster to make the lowest possible settlement with the unrepresented victim. Some companies even give adjusters bonuses for the number of “unrepresented” claims they close in a year.

An adjuster has no ethical or legal obligation to tell an unrepresented party about other sources of insurance coverage or the consequences of losing coverage through failure to take investigative or procedural steps which would be known by a competent personal injury attorney.
The decision to hire an attorney or to self-represent in an accident claim is simple.

By the insurance industry’s own statistics and track record it proves wise to have your case evaluated by an experienced and qualified attorney. If you have a claim, please call The Romano Law Firm for a free evaluation.

(Read Part 1 of this Article:The Oklahoma Auto Accident Attorney & The Insurance Adjusters)

---