Transcription
No, actually I’d say it’s better to not take the first settlement they offer you for a variety of reasons. First of all, you have to keep in mind that the insurance company for the other side doesn’t have your best interest at heart. They are actually the other side. Their best interest is to either not pay you anything to compensate you, or to pay as little as possible. Their first offer, I’ve often heard said will be substantially less than what they’d be willing to pay in the case. That’s not necessarily true, but it often is. They may offer you 40% for example, of what they may actually be willing to pay out eventually in the case.
And also, your case hasn’t been worked on or developed, you should definitely contact an attorney who can help you to understand what exactly you can recover for, for example, what types of injuries you can recover for? And not just your pain and suffering, and your physical injuries, with your medical bills, and medical records, but you can recover for other things you might not expect, such as loss of enjoyment of life, where you used to be able to do physical activities, hiking, playing sports. Maybe you liked to play basketball, go running, do aerobics, yoga, and you can’t do things anymore because of the injuries you received.
Also, you can receive money for lost wages, loss of capacity to earn a living where you can’t work as much, or at all, as you used to, so you’re earning less money, and that’ll be for the rest of your life, potentially. So you would want to know all of these things, and there’s no reason to accept the first offer. In my experience, the offers usually get better not worse.