As part of your injury claim, you are generally entitled to "lost earnings." That basically translates to "money lost from your job due to the accident." Notice, there has to be "money lost" and it has to be "due to" the accident. Speculative lost earnings (speculative damages of any sort) generally won't hold water.
I recently had a case where a client alleged she lost her job because of an accident. I later learned she didn't really lose her job...she was on her way to interview for the job. There was no guarantee she was going to get the job. Even then, there was no proven track record to illustrate how much actual money she would have lost. She assured me she was "going to get" the job. While that may indeed be worth some compensation, a claim for $20,000 in lost earnings wasn't going to fly. Proving lost earnings is a very tricky endeavor. If you're going to ask for such compensation, be prepared to prove it to the suspicious insurance adjuster. Remember, as far as most insurance adjusters are concerned, you are probably trying to "get away with something." So many people out there are trying to take advantage of insurance companies and most adjusters will treat you as "guilty" until proven innocent. They will want pay stubs, tax records, etc. I had a client once who alleged thousands in lost income. She had her own business (which makes things even more difficult. Income that fluctuates is even harder to prove). When we closely examined her lost earnings, we found she was actually reporting a loss of a few thousand dollars every year. For example, one year she made $35,000, but she took "expenses" of $36,500 on her tax forms. Therefore, she arguably lost $1,500 by operating her business that year. The same was true for subsequent years. I explained to her that the defense would likely argue she was better off WITHOUT her business because she was LOSING money every year. In short, if she was always operating at a loss, it was hard to show she lost income because of the accident. I generally don't encourage lost earnings claims unless they are easily substantiated. If you find that you're going to have to do a lot of explaining, it's probably not worth the effort and may backfire. If you can't convince the insurance adjuster of your lost earnings, imagine trying to convince 12 jurors. Imagine showing a jury all your aggressive deductions on your tax records. Do you think most jurors will appreciate that? Finally, a lost earnings claim should be brought if it doesn't hamper the rest of the case. I had a case recently where my client's injuries were substantial. However, he insisted on arguing for a few thousand dollars in lost earnings. I explained that the value in his case was in his injury claim - not so much with the lost earnings portion. By continuing to emphasize the lost earning component of the case, I was worried it would become a side show that would take the focus away from the serious injuries he sustained. Juries would be closely examining tax forms, income and expense reports, etc., instead of focusing on the client's serious injuries. If you wish to discuss your case with Robert Mansour, call (661) 414-7100 to see if we can help you with your accident case. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello, everybody. This is Robert Mansour, and I wanted to make a brief video today about the issue of medical payments coverage. Medical payments coverage is something that a lot of people have under their insurance policy, and they're not even aware of it. Your auto insurance policy may have some coverage for you called "medical payments coverage," or MPC. What that means is, they basically serve as a health insurance company for you.
So, let's say you don't have health insurance. If you have medical payments coverage under your auto insurance policy, they might be able to pay for your health care coverage, or your health care needs after an auto accident. Now, it's important to know what the limits are of your Medical payments coverage. So for example, you might have $2,000 available to you, or $5,000 available to you. You need to make sure number one that you have it available; and number two, you need to know what the limits are. In some cases, I have seen clients with $25,000 of medical payments coverage available to them. And the nice thing about this is that you can get your health care providers paid more quickly. Some of the health care providers don't understand personal injury cases, and they don't want to work on a lien, for example. They don't want to defer their payment for later on in a case. They want to get paid now. And if you don't have health care insurance, it might be good to use your medical payments coverage. In some cases, the medical payments coverage will only pay after you've exhausted your health care coverage. So, if you use your health care coverage first and then you have some money left over that you have to get paid, some bills, you can use your medical payments coverage at that point. The other thing is that they may want you to exhaust your health care coverage first, your health care coverage options; or at least demonstrate that you don't have health care, before the medical payments coverage kicks in. In many cases, and I would say in most cases, the insurance company has a right to reimbursement of their medical payments. So, let's say you recover money from the party at fault. You probably have to repay your insurance company for the medical payments they advanced on your behalf. So, it's not necessarily a freebie. So, let's say your insurance company pays $5,000 to the doctors on your behalf, under your Medical payments coverage. If you recover money from the other party, let's say you recover $10,000, you have to repay your insurance company for the Medical payments coverage that they extended for you. Now, that is, in most cases, a contractual obligation that many clients aren't even aware of. So, make sure you talk to your lawyer about your medical payments coverage, whether or not it's even going to be available for you. And also make sure you discuss the right of reimbursement that most insurance companies have, when it comes to the medical payments coverage provision. If you don't have medical payments coverage, talk to your insurance professional and see if it will be appropriate for you. In most cases, it's not very expensive and it can be very helpful if you have a personal injury case. Thank you very much for watching this video. I hope you found it helpful. If you need help with your accident matter, please call my office to learn more and see if we can help you with your personal injury auto accident case. Call (661) 414-7100. Also, visit our Videos page for more educational videos you may find helpful. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
David: Welcome back to SCV today, and I'm going to just bring right in Robert Mansour. We've had him on the program before, from the law offices of Robert Mansour. But this is really cool because, I've experienced what we're going to talk about. You've got the ten insurance company secrets that they don't want you to know about. You've got a list here. Robert: True. David: And we're going to go through these things because this is fascinating stuff. And this first one really surprised me. Insurance companies don't want you to get a police report after an accident? Robert: That's right. And there's several reasons for that. The first reason is if you don't have a police report, you haven't documented the event. So sometimes they'll even deny that anything even happened. Or their client, their insured, will say, "I wasn't there. I don't know what you're talking about. I was at the ballgame. I went to the Kings game." And so, also, they don't want you to have a police report because the other party can change their story. If the police report documents what happened, the other guy can't wiggle out of what happened. So when a client comes to me and says, "I didn't have the police report." I say, "Watch their story change. They apologize to you at the scene for causing the accident, but now that there's no police report, they're going to change their story. Let's watch how it unfolds." And I would say 50 percent of the time, the other party, indeed, changes their story. And the last reason they don't want a police report is because if you tell the officer you were injured and the officer writes it down, it lends more credibility to your assertion that you were injured. But the absence of a police report, they will assume you weren't injured, otherwise you would have called the police. And so they will use it against you. Tami: Now what is the time frame for filing a police report because my automatic assumption is you must do it within an hour of an incident. Robert: You should do it at the scene. If you suspect that you were injured, even a little bit. See most people don't call the police. They think their head has to fall off their body and roll down the street to call the police. You call the police if you think you've been injured, or if you think there's going to be a dispute in liability. Get the police down there. And, filing a police report a few days later is not really helpful. It's just you going down to the station telling your version of the story. It doesn't really help very much. So you should do it right there at the scene. The officers will ask you over the phone, "Was anybody injured?" If you say no, they're not coming. But if you say, "I think I may be injured," which might be true if you feel something. Because sometimes these injuries don't manifest themselves until the next day. And so you should always err on the side of caution, in my opinion. Tami: So to protect yourself, if there are no injuries, but there's some damage, because a lot of times you can have quite a bit of damage but no injuries, and they're not going to send someone out, should you go directly to the police department then and file it there? Robert: If you feel that the other side is going to change their story, you might want to preserve it. But again, it's really not of much importance if you go down to the police and tell them what you think happened ... Tami: Okay. Robert: ... versus an officer investigating at the scene ... David: Right. Robert: ... and talking to everybody ... Tami: Okay. Robert: ... and writing everything down. Tami: So get the police department there on scene? Robert: I think that's a good idea. Tami: Okay. Robert: Especially if you feel that you might have been injured. If you need help with your personal injury case, call Robert Mansour at (661) 414-7100 to see if he can help. Robert will let you know if he can bring value to your case. Also, if you have questions, don't hesitate to call. Robert serves Santa Clarita and its surrounding communities (Valencia, Saugus, Canyon Country, Newhall, Stevenson Ranch, Castaic, Palmdale, Lancaster, Northridge, Chatsworth, Granada Hills, North Hollywood, and beyond). One of my clients was recently in a car accident, and she asked me to assist her with her personal injury claim. We called the responsible party's insurance company to bring a claim on her behalf. Even though their client was clearly at fault (the police report was in my client's favor), they said they needed time to "investigate" the matter. That's part of the stall tactic - saying they need time to "investigate" when all signs show their client is at fault.
While my client was waiting for them to "investigate" and make the obvious decision, she needed to rent a car. She is a single mom taking care of two young kids. The kids need to go to school, she needs to get to work, so naturally, she needed to rent a car. Since she did not have rental insurance available on her insurance policy, she chose to pay out of her pocket for the rental and eventually we'd ask for reimbursement. Sounds reasonable so far. She rented a very modest car...a Hyundai Accent, one of the smallest cars you can rent. She didn't rent a Cadillac or Lexus. She paid for 30 days which turned in to 45 days because the body shop found more damage than they expected. Then the body shop had to order more parts which delayed the process another 30 days. Altogether, she ended up renting a car for about 80 days, through no fault of her own. It took their insurance company about 30 days to decide their insured was at fault. When we presented them with the bill for the rental, they refused to pay for any rental prior to them accepting fault for the accident! So here is the tactic - by delaying their decision to accept fault, their position is that they don't owe anything for the first 30 days because they hadn't accepted fault yet. They argued my client shouldn't have rented a car until they accepted fault. Really? This is the infinite wisdom I have to deal with on a daily basis. The insurance company is refusing to pay for reasonable consequential damages while they were deciding if they were at fault! As for the rest of the rental bill, they only wanted to pay for 30 days because anything beyond that was "unreasonable." I explained the parts delay but they wouldn't budge. I guess they've never seen anyone rent a car beyond 30 days? I tried to explain to the insurance adjuster that their policy was silly because it encourages all insurance companies to delay their liability decisions, and then conveniently argue they are not responsible for damages incurred during the delay! I asked if my client had been hospitalized due to the accident, were they going to deny payment for that as well since the hospitalization occurred prior to their decision? I further reasoned that if a jury found their client at fault, they would certainly hold him responsible for all reasonable damages that flowed from the accident. As I type this posting, this matter remains unresolved. I called my client's insurance company, and they agreed such a position was ridiculous. My client's adjuster is appealing to the other adjuster. The point of this posting is that even when you think everything is obvious and the law is on your side, a myopic insurance company (and its tactics disguised as "internal policies") can derail an entire case. It's a shame. Although they are somewhat rare, people can certainly get an eye injury from a car accident. Sometimes, eye injuries can be very serious. The eye is a very delicate yet important organ, and damage can occur which can alter a person's life.
Sometimes, an eye injury might affect someone's abilities to drive, or to even do their job. Injuries to the eye can sometimes be caused by trauma from the car accident, or perhaps the result of flying glass or debris resulting from the collision. Sometimes, an eye injury can occur during the airbag deployment which would strike someone with such force that it causes damage to the eye. In some cases, a traumatic brain injury can also result in a impairment of one's vision. If you've had an injury to your eye due to a car accident, it is important that your treatment involve ophthalmologist, optometrist, or other eye care professionals. The injury can be to the eye itself or perhaps to the eyelid, the retina, the cornea, the iris, or other areas of the human eye. It is important to document the injury early to make sure the insurance company understands the accident caused the injury, and that it did not occur later on. The absence of documentation may cause some insurance adjusters to doubt the claim. Or they might believe you have an eye injury but they may not believe it was caused by the accident. The doctors need to be very clear in their notes and in the reports that the accident caused the eye injury. Testing can also indicate whether or not the injury can be partially or fully repaired. I had a case once where flying glass from the windshield fell into the client's eye and caused a permanent scratch to the client's cornea. He did not know there was glass in his eye until he went to his optometrist to repair his broken glasses. She noted the glass lodged in his eye. As a result, the clients vision was impaired for the foreseeable future. Proper documentation is critical in cases like this. You need to get a doctor to write a report explaining in no uncertain terms that he or she believes the injuries resulted from the car accident, and whether or not the injury is permanent to any extent. If it is permanent, the doctor needs to explain how the injury might affect the person's life going forward. What exact deficits are expected? If you've been seriously injured in a car accident, call attorney Robert Mansour for a free consultation regarding your personal injury case. Call (661) 414-7100. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi, this is Robert Mansour. I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area. One of my areas of practice is personal injury. I wanted to spend a few minutes with you on this brief video to talk to you about things you need to keep in mind when treating with doctors and physical therapists after your personal injury case.
What you want to make sure you understand is that the insurance companies are going to be evaluating your case partly on what's called the diagnostic codes, which means that what the doctor writes down as your diagnosis is going to be considered by the insurance adjuster. That's why when you go to the doctor you have to tell the doctor everything that's bothering you and with great specificity. So you can't just go in there and say, “Oh, my neck hurts.” Well, what is it exactly? “Oh, I have radiating pain into my shoulder and between my shoulder blades or my middle back, my upper back and my lower back hurt me” rather than oh, my back hurts me. What is it exactly that you're feeling? What are your symptoms? The doctor has to write all this stuff down. It's transferred into a diagnostic code that is written in your medical records. The reason this is important is because if something is not in your medical records it's like it never happened. So, if there's a diagnostic code that is missing or some complaints that you have that are not documented in those medical records, then it's like it never happened. The insurance company will not consider it. You see, the insurance companies are using software more than ever to analyze their cases. So a lot of major insurance companies now are using software products in order to evaluate these cases. What they do is they'll type in your age, where you live. They'll type in all the diagnostic codes. They'll type in all the treatment codes, any treatment that you received from any place. Also, they look in the medical records to see what kind of complaints you had. This is why it's very important to indicate in your intake forms when you go to the doctor. When you talk to the doctor, every time you see the doctor, you've got to mention what you're going through, what you're feeling. I had a client. She called me and she said, “I'm having a really hard time at work. I'm having concentration issues and also my back is killing me when I drive for more than half an hour.” I told her, “You need to tell the doctors about this. It needs to be written in your records.” The reason once again, if it's not in your records it's like it never happened. So, once again, please keep in mind that you're got to tell the doctor everything that's going on. Those diagnostic codes are very important. The way the accident has affected your daily life you want to make sure you tell the doctors and the physical therapists about that. You know, every time you go to the doctor they ask you. They say, “How you feeling?” You go to the physical therapist, “What's going on? How are you feeling? What's been going on since the last time we saw you?” That's where you tell them with great specificity what's going on so they can document it. Of course, if it's not documented then it's not going to end up in the software and the software will not analyze your case and the insurance adjuster will just treat it like it never occurred. I hope you found this video helpful. My name is Robert Mansour, and thank you very much for visiting today. If you want to learn more about my practice, you can visit www.valencialawyer.com, or you can call my office at 661-414-7100. Thank you very much for watching this video. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi, my name is Robert Mansour, and I'm broadcasting to you this brief video today from my home office in Los Angeles, California. One of my areas of practice is personal injury, and I wanted to spend today's brief video talking to you about aunt Sally. Aunt Sally got $40,000 on her case many years ago, and this is the problem that I sometimes have. Clients walk in and they compare their case to their aunt Sally or to their cousin Bill or to their friend Jose or whatever the case may be. They say, well, I don't understand. Why is my case worth this, or why are you concerned about this when my aunt Sally or my uncle Bill got $40,000, $60,000, $25,000, whatever the case maybe.
One of the biggest dangers that you can get involved in when either doing a case like this, a personal injury case, is comparing your settlement or your result to other people in your friends and family circle. The reason is that they might not live in the same region as you do. Their accident may have been more severe than yours. Their accident occurred in a different time. Frankly, as I record this video insurance companies don't like to part with their money. They used to part with their money a few years ago a little bit more readily. Now, not so much. In these economic times everybody is watching their bottom line, including the insurance companies. So while it might have been worth x ten years ago, not so much today. Frankly, in my region of the country juries are very stingy for the most part. Another variable is the insurance adjuster that you're dealing with. Sometimes, you deal with an insurance adjuster who's very reasonable, willing to talk about the big picture. Other times you get an insurance adjuster who's not so reasonable and very difficult. Some of them maybe had a bad childhood. I don't know. The point is that you have to deal with the variables that are involved in your case, and don't get hung up on whether so and so got this much or so and so got that much for a similar case. That's going to lead you to a road to nowhere. You need to evaluate your case under your circumstances in the time and region that your case is being handled. Then try to fashion the best result that you can, given the scenario that you have. You can't always control it and there are many variables that you cannot control, but at the very least one thing you can control is your tendency or the propensity, rather in many cases, to compare your result with the results of others. My name is Robert Mansour, and I thank you very much for watching this brief video. If you need help with your personal injury case and would like to discuss your options, feel free to call my office at (661) 414-7100. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi, this is Robert Mansour, and I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area. One of my areas of practice is Personal Injury Law, and I'm broadcasting today from my office in Santa Clarita, California which is in northern Los Angeles County. I want to spend a couple of minutes with you talking about this letter that I got from Mercury Insurance. The reason I like this letter and I think it's a terrific letter and I want to share it with you is because it is very demonstrative of how insurance companies deny claims.
This is an accident case. It was not a big accident. My client knew that going in. Here's the letter. I think this letter just sums it all up really well. I'll show you exactly what I'm talking about. So here's the letter that I'm going to read to you. This is from Mercury Insurance. It says, dear Mr. Mansour, we have evaluated the specials. Now, the term specials means the damages, the economic bills, et cetera. It says, this loss involves a minor impact to the driver side rear of your client's vehicle. They're using the fact that it was a minor impact to try to minimize the case. So the severity of the impact is very important. That's something that you should keep in mind. It says here, there was no police report filed. So here they're using the absence of the police report as an indication that this was not a major accident which, of course, is silly, but here's how insurance companies work. If the police are not called to the scene, then obviously it was a minor accident, but if they are called to the scene they generally presume well, maybe there was an injury. So again, very interesting. No police report filed, it says. Your client did not receive emergency treatment on the date of the loss or subsequently. So the fact that my client never went to the emergency room or wasn't taken away by ambulance or anything like that, the lack of emergency treatment is being used against my client. Now, maybe my client is stoic. Maybe my client wasn't hurt all that badly, but what they are doing is they are using the absence of emergency treatment against her. Also it says here, your client sustained soft tissue injury. That means pulls, muscle strain, sprain, that kind of thing. She was treated by a chiropractor which is interesting. That is the reason that they are using to minimize this claim, the fact that she was treated by a chiropractor. Now, in some minds of some insurance adjusters, the chiropractic treatment is not as valued as an orthopedist treatment which is very interesting because many chiropractors provide terrific relief for their clients, here it is being used against my client. The fact that she went to a chiropractor. It says here, the treatment charges are excessive in relation to the injuries and the impact sustained. Basically, they are using the size of the impact to dictate how much treatment she should have gotten. So if it was a low impact she should not have gotten this kind of treatment. Again, they don't take any individuality into consideration. They just look at the amount of the impact and determine, gee, does that make sense? Did they go treat for too long or not too long? You'll notice in this letter it doesn't say anything about my client's medical condition, what the actual doctor had to say, what my client's reported injuries were, whether she is a frail person, whether she has any pre-existing problems, nothing like that. This denial, well actually it's not a denial. They offered her $2,000, but we suspected that in the very beginning. Here's the thing. This letter is full of all the classic arguments. No police report, no emergency room treatment, minor impact, chiropractor. All of this being used against my client. I just wanted to share this letter with you as a demonstration of how some insurance companies, especially Mercury, just my opinion, use to deny and minimize these kinds of personal injury claims. Thanks again. My name is Robert Mansour. You can learn more about me by visiting my website valencialawyer.com or calling my office at 661-414-7100. Thanks a lot for watching. VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hi everybody, my name is Robert Mansour, and I'm a lawyer in the Los Angeles area. One of my areas of practice is personal injury, and I want to spend a couple of minutes with you this video segment talking about the importance of uninsured motorist coverage.
Uninsured motorist coverage is perhaps the single most important piece of auto policy coverage you can have on your insurance policy, and here's why. If you get involved in a car accident with another party, there is a 20 to 25 percent chance that party had no insurance, either because they forgot to pay their premium or they just don't want to pay for insurance, or they just don't believe in that, whatever the case may be. Now technically you can go after that person in court, sue them. You have to win the lawsuit in front of a judge, or a jury, and then you get a judgment, and then you have to enforce that judgment. Now to get a judgment, at least, now in California you're looking at a year to two years in court, and that assumes you even win. Then you have to get that judgment, and go enforce it. So you have to hire a lawyer, or a collections company to go after this person, and recover the money that you are owed. What if you have something called uninsured motorist? That would be my preferred method because it's much faster, and that's what you're paying for. You're paying for that benefit, so you might as well use it. If you can't get insurance from the other party, you can at, least, go to your insurance company, and recover under your UM policy, uninsured motorist. Basically, you'd be presenting your case to your insurance company rather than to the other fellow's insurance company. The other thing that's important to note about uninsured motorist is that most cases it's equivalent to something called underinsured motorist. That means the other party has insurance, but it's not enough. Let's say, the other party has $15,000 of insurance which is the minimum currently required in California, and your injuries happen to exceed $15,000. Well, in that case you can turn to your insurance company for the excess, but here's the thing. If you only have $15,000 of uninsured motorist, and you recovered 15 from the other party they negate one another because your insurance company gets credit for whatever you were able to get from the other party. In the first example, they have zero so you can get up to 15 from yours, but in the second example they had 15, so you better have more than 15 on your side of the equation, and that's why I always tell people get as much as you can. Let's say you have $30,000 of UM coverage. That means you can recover an additional $15,000 from your own insurance company. Let's say you have $100,000 of uninsured motorist coverage, or under insured motorist coverage, that means you can recover an additional $85,000 because you got $15,000.00 from the other party, you have a $100,000 policy. Your insurance company gets a credit of $15,000 because you were able to get that from the other side, and therefore you have $85,000 available to you. Again, of course, you have to assume that your case is worth well over $15,000 for any of this to apply, but it's a very important piece of insurance coverage that you should have. Some people think they have it, but they actually don't. People tell me all the time, "Oh, I have full coverage." I say, "Well, do you have UM coverage?" They look at me, and say, "Well, I don't know what that is." So make sure you review that with your insurance policy broker, or your insurance agent, or your insurance company. Take a look at something called your declarations page. That will list all the different insurance that you have. You want to make sure that you have this thing called uninsured motorist, and try to get more than 15 if you can afford it. Thank you very much for watching. This has been Robert Mansour broadcasting from Los Angeles. Thanks again. Call our office at (661) 414-7100 for help with your personal injury case. Robert Mansour serves Santa Clarita, Valencia, Newhall, Canyon Country, Castaic, Stevenson Ranch, and surrounding communtieis. Hiring an attorney won't magically help your case. You must work together. We always tell our clients that we need their help while we are representing them.
Here is exactly what we tell all our personal injury clients: By hiring a lawyer, your case won’t automatically be successful! We can’t guarantee anything, but without your help we will be at a deficit. To some extent, we have to be strategic about our approach. Unfortunately, insurance companies have created an atmosphere that demands such an approach. Here are some things to keep in mind. Please review this checklist on occasion as things may change as your case progresses. 1. Keep our office advised of your current address and phone number. 2. Please get back to us promptly by email or phone if we try to reach you. Sometimes we need time-sensitive information. 3. Inform this office and your doctor(s) of any prior motor vehicle accidents or medical treatments. If you have an aggravation or exacerbation of a previous injury, they should know about it. 4. Contact our office when you have any questions regarding your claim. Do not speak with a representative of the opposing insurance company. You may of course talk to your own insurance company regarding property damage issues but keep it confined to property damage. 5. Keep all medical/doctor appointments with your doctors, as well as any medical specialists to whom you are referred. Gaps in treatment will be used against you. If you miss an appointment, try to reschedule it. 6. If you are unable to work, do not leave your doctor’s office without written verification of your working status from your doctor – in other words, get a “note” from your doctor! Lost wages from work are dependent upon your doctor’s written verification of your work status. It is your responsibility to get this information from your physician. We cannot do so. Without such notes from the doctor keeping you off work, your claim for wage loss, if any, will be severely hampered. 7. If you are going to allege lost wages, we will also need verification from your employer of the dates missed and your rate of pay. If you are missing work due to the accident, your employer (the person offering verification) should know WHY you are missing work. They need to know it is accident-related. Provide us with the name/address/phone of the person who can assist us with verification of your lost earnings. If your claim is significant, providing tax returns from the past 2 or 3 years is helpful to show the decline after the accident. They won’t pay for lost wages unless they have verification from your employer AND your doctor. They don't pay lost earnings because you are a nice person. We may ask you for help if your company refuses to cooperate with our office. 8. If you see additional doctors after our initial interview you must inform us of their name, address, and telephone number. We don’t automatically find out about these things. 9. You may have sought treatment with facilities that have no relationship with my office (especially before hiring my office). We can obtain your records from these facilities, but in most cases, a direct request from you (their patient) is more effective. By law, they should comply. Please try to obtain the medical records AND billing from these facilities. Some may insist the attorney’s office obtain the records and bills. 10. Keep track of your mileage and prescriptions and submit them to us. It helps to keep a journal of doctor’s appointments and mileage (parking charges) incurred. This can be a simple sheet of paper and/or receipts from parking lots. If your mileage is very minor, this effort may not be worth it. 11. If you receive any documents by mail regarding your case (from ANYONE), please forward them to our office. This includes health care insurance, letters from insurance companies, collections agencies, etc. Keep our office completely in the loop. We are not necessarily copied on correspondence you receive from others. 12. Your “diagnosed injuries” may affect the evaluation of your case. Therefore, you MUST tell your doctors (written and orally) about ALL your injuries. Doctors cannot read your mind. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Break your injuries down to smaller components. For example, saying “my shoulder pain radiates into my neck” will simply be considered only a “shoulder” complaint by the insurance company. Your neck pain may not be considered. If you just say “my back hurt” that will count as “one” injury when in fact, you might have “upper back pain” and “mid back pain.” That’s two injuries – not one! Keep your doctors aware of your progress or lack of progress during each visit. The rule you should keep in mind is this: Most insurance companies are using software to analyze your case. If something is NOT mentioned in the medical records, it simply won’t be “inputted” and basically doesn’t exist as far as the insurance companies are concerned. The insurance company wants to minimize your complaints whenever they can. Also, mention ALL YOUR INJURIES to every doctor you see…even if they are not treating you for that particular injury. For example, your chiropractor and orthopedist should both be aware of ALL your complaints. Inconsistencies in their records/reports may be used against you. 13. How an accident affects your life may also affect the evaluation of your injury case. You must also report any daily activities (work, school, household, etc.) that are affected by your accident. The doctors MUST document these issues or they simply won’t be considered by most insurance companies. Just like in the previous paragraph, the insurance adjuster will not input your information into their software if the information is missing or unverified by the doctor’s chart notes and/or report. We know this is a lot to keep in mind. However, we truly believe that our clients are better off if they are “informed” participants in their case. After years practicing personal injury for the defense and plaintiff, I share these guidelines with you so we can truly work as a team. Of course, your health is the most important thing, but we also want to maximize your chances of having a successful personal injury claim. Call (661) 414-7100 if you want advice regarding your own personal injury case. |
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March 2024
by Robert MansourRobert Mansour is a personal injury lawyer serving Santa Clarita, Valencia, |