Insurance companies don't make money by paying out settlements on insurance claims. When you put it that way, it's easy to understand why the insurance companies are low-balling their settlement claims, whether the claim is brought by a third party or by their own insured.

Insurance companies make money by collecting premiums and holding onto their money. They invest it and make even more money. While insurance adjusters handle your claim, they utilize industry tips and tricks to lowball your settlement. I'm not saying all adjusters and insurance companies engage in such practices. However, when was the last time you ever heard someone say, "The insurance company offered me a really fair deal!" or better yet, "The insurance company was very generous with me." These are statements you will rarely ever hear.

About half of U.S. insurance companies are using software products (one actually called "Collosus") to evaluate claims. They basically plug in your information to get a sense of your case value. These software products utilize tons of historical data to evaluate claims of all kinds using parameters like age, injury claimed, region of the country, type of accident, jury verdicts, etc. However, critics of these software products argue they take the "human" element out of the equation, reducing your personal injury case to a commodity. Truth be told, sometimes I wonder why I'm dealing with an adjuster (a human being) when all they are doing is punching data into a computer. However it is a sad reality nevertheless.  No matter how hard you try to explain to them some unique circumstances of your case, your case will simply be lumped in with every other case their computer has analyzed.  Many insurance companies will publicly deny they use such software to evaluate cases.  After all, why would they?

These software companies compete for insurance company business. They want their software product to be chosen, touting more "accurate" results and more importantly, bigger "savings" for the insurance company. These claims of "savings" by the software companies lead some to conclude that insurance companies are "fine tuning" the software products to produce certain more "favorable" results.  Critics note these "adjustments" and "fine tuning" are nothing more than tactics designed to cheat the consumer.  My personal feeling is that using historical data, regional differences, age, etc are fine, but if the companies are tweaking their software parameters to produce more conservative and "lowball" settlements, then consumers have even less hope in this "David versus Goliath" scenario.

For more information about Collosus software and similar products, click here for more information.

If you did not have insurance on the date of the accident, then your recovery (assuming you recover anything at all) will be limited to your economic damages.  Examples of economic damages are hospital bills, ER bills, physical therapy bills, property damages, lost earnings, future medical bills, and other economic damages that can be measured.  However, that's pretty much where it stops.  If you did not have insurance on the date of the accident, then you cannot recover "general" damages.   

General damages are often known as damages for "pain and suffering."  If you have a smaller injury, then involving a lawyer will be tough.  Most lawyers won't get involved in a case like this because your recovery will be severely limited.  Also, just because you have certain economic damages doesn't mean the insurance company for the responsible party won't try to nickel and dime every expense.  After all, they don't have to pay your bills just because you accumulated them.  However, if you have a significant injury, especially one that will require future care, a lawyer may be willing to help you because there is more chance for recovery.  Getting a lawyer on board in that case might be helpful to your case.

I recently had to turn away a handful of cases because the clients had no insurance.  Proposition 213 (a California law passed in 1996) limits their recovery to only economic damages. These are known as the Financial Responsibility laws because they essentially say that if you don't play by the rules, you cannot benefit from doing so.  Because their cases were relatively small, I told them they might be better off without a lawyer because my fees would eat into their recovery which is limited in the first place.  Therefore, you can always get legal advice but if you did not have insurance, there is only so much a lawyer can do.  ​