THE AGONY OF AN ACCIDENTAL INJURY and PICKING UP THE PHONE TO CALL A LAWYER

THE AGONY OF AN ACCIDENTAL INJURY and PICKING UP THE PHONE TO CALL A LAWYER

https://youtu.be/hIEVCFsBYc8

1. It happens in an instant. You just slipped out of the house to get the essentials at the store, leaving your kids under loose supervision by your next-door-neighbor. Your husband is “on the road” and won’t be back for four days, and you need to swing by to pick up your Mom’s prescription and your Dad’s newspaper.
2. But the guy who is texting and driving doesn’t care. He runs that stop sign and “T-Bones” you, fracturing your cervical vertebra and ribs, and giving you a significant brain trauma.
3. You wake up in the hospital, facing a week in the hospital and a week in rehab. And TWO YEARS until you reach “maximum medical improvement”, “MMI”.
4. You’ll need an in-home care provider, a wheel-chair , and then walker, transportation to myriad medical appointments, and a lot of grit to get through this.
5. But, everything is foggy! You just can concentrate, your short term memory is messed up, and you are having anxiety attacks, flashbacks, and nightmares.
6. “Hubby” has taken off work, a blow to your budget, and your support system is stretched thin.
7. Just to make it interesting, you  are in the midst of the Coronavirus crisis!
8. What should you do? 
9. From my experience, the overage person and her family think calling a lawyer at this stage will appear crass and greedy.
10. After all, we all know Fran and Jamie from Progressive, the Deep-Voiced Man from Allstate, the Geico Gecko, the Jolly Jokester from Farmers Mutual, or Liberty Mutual’s “Limu Emu”.
11. We can trust them, right? Short answer, “NO!”. They aren’t real. They are animated, or they are actors, or they are props.
12. In fact, every one of them lies to you every day. They are marketing gimmicks, trying to hook you with minimal fees for minimal coverage.
13. As the moments tick by, the evidence is seeping away. The cell phone data may be destroyed, witnesses move on or move away, adjustors forget to contact you, medical records and the police report are not being ordered, the security video of the wreck will soon be erased, and, often critical, no one is analyzing your various insurance coverages.
14. Nor are they contacting the right parties, or saving you thousands of dollars.
15. You are immobile at the worst possible time! 
16. One big example of a risk of delay: the medical provider may not want to accept your Medicaid, Medicare, or WV C.H.I.P. medical insurance card.
17. Your credit rating is plummeting because no lawyer has written to the providers and instructed them to accept the card.
18. They want the dollar-for-dollar reimbursement that a cash settlement may provide, but that settlement may be contested or  it may be months away.
19. Your insurance is your insurance! Use it! Your lawyer will help you deal with your medical insurance providers’ “subrogation claim” later, often with a large compromise of their total claim. The savings can go into your posket.
20. You need someone you can trust and learn from.
21. That’s why we are here. And, we compete with lower fees and greater experience than most of the firms with the huge T.V. advertising overhead.
22. We hope you stay safe, and we hope to hear from you if you don’t.

jbh

This post was written by Burton Hunter