Settlement of Maryland Injury Accident Claims

     Make no mistake, the goal for a personal injury lawyer in Washington D.C. and Maryland (or anywhere) in an accident case is to obtain the best possible settlement for their client(s). Typically, this means maximizing the monetary value of the case and reducing the medical liens/bills as much as possible. Our accident and medical malpractice attorneys have the same goal in every case: to get as much money as possible for our injured clients.

Lawyers with a History of Success at Trial

Tips on Each Insurance Company

     To get the best possible settlement, it is important to have a personal injury lawyer in Maryland who has a history of success at trial. The settlement negotiations between injury lawyers and insurance companies in personal injury cases are not unlike the interactions between two kids before they get into a fight. If you were a fan of television in the '70s, there is a great Happy Days episode directly on point: Richie Cunningham was being picked on by a bully. Fonzie revealed his secret to why he rarely got into fights: Sound tough, act tough, and people will think you are tough. "Stand up to the bully", Fonzie told Ritchie, "and he will back down". Ritchie prepared to fight the bully but the bully did not back down. Ritchie asked Fonzie why the bully was not backing down. Fonzie comically told Ritchie that he forgot to tell him one thing: once in his life, he would have had to hit someone for the "act tough, sound tough" strategy to work.

     This is the exact problem with most plaintiffs’ personal injury lawyers in Maryland. These lawyers talk a big game but the insurance companies know full well who is willing to try cases, who has tried cases and who has beaten them in the past. If your personal injury lawyer does not have a history of hitting someone, to use the Ritchie/Fonzie metaphor, the insurance company defending a motor vehicle accident or medical malpractice case is not going to blink.

Show the Insurance Company the Case is Ready for a Lawsuit

     Another related tactic is to show the insurance company you are ready to move forward not just in general, but in this particular personal injury case. A critical means to accomplish this goal that our personal injury attorneys expend in every case is to be prepared for the litigation process before initiating settlement negotiations. Our attorneys send with our demand packages the volumes of paperwork that they will need to respond to should the case become a lawsuit, along with our settlement demand package. It gets the insurance companies' attention when they see that your lawyers have already spent the effort to get the lawsuit started. Another benefit of early preparation of the lawsuit and the discovery is that if negotiations fail, a lawsuit can be filed with a simple stamp, without delay, at a time the client chooses.

Hire a Personal Injury Lawyer Who Believes in You and Your Case

     It is also imperative to find a personal injury lawyer in Maryland who you feel believes you and believes in you. If you get the sense when you talk to your personal injury lawyer that he does not believe in you, do not hire him/her. Insurance companies want to know how strong a personal injury attorney feels about their case. Most plaintiffs' attorneys focus on the problems with their client's accident case. This is not surprising; people by nature typically focus on the negative. Their bold talk notwithstanding, insurance companies' adjusters do the same thing: they are more worried about their own problems in the case than focusing on the plaintiff's weaknesses. Among these weaknesses is that their clients are often unsympathetic and unmotivated to make a good appearance at trial. Because most personal injury lawyers do not realize this and tend to focus on the negative, they invariably leave asettlement lot of their clients' money on the table. Our personal injury lawyers readily solve this potential problem: if you are contending your are seriously injured and our attorneys do not believe you, we will not accept your case. If our lawyers believe in you, we take you as a client and fight for you, and while we acknowledge the weaknesses, we focus on the strengths of your case.

Honesty in Negotiations

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     Moving on to the actual settlement negotiations themselves in a personal injury case, on axiom of personal injury settlement negotiations is to tell the truth about the facts of the case. If your lawyer fails to do so, he/she will have no credibility with the insurance companies. Insurance companies know that if we tell them something, it is so (or at least we believe it to be so, if subjective). Insurance adjusters reward honestly, believe it or not they really do. Our lawyers may not always agree with insurance companies on settlement values but they know we are not blowhards who are making statements we cannot back up. So many adjusters that we talk to tell stories of lawyers they deal with regularly who make bold assertions that they never can back up and deny weaknesses in their case any reasonable attorney would be able to see. Although complete factual disclosure may not be necessary or appropriate, unwillingness to acknowledge obvious weaknesses destroys a personal injury lawyer's ability to credibly convey the strengths of his/her client's case. Again, that is what your personal injury case has to be about: the strengths of your case. Our personal injury lawyers are often telling adjusters: "Absolutely, that is a real weakness in our case. Here is how we intend to overcome it...."

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