Speaker 1: Were you involved in a car accident or other personal injury? Check out this short teen video with my 19 tips to increase your personal injury settlement. Hey everybody, Barry with the Lawful Channel. We passed over 300,000 views on YouTube this month, so thank you so much for watching. And we've also been able to help a lot of people with legal questions that they had. If you haven't already, please subscribe to our channel and if you have any questions for me, put them in the comments section below. Now let's jump into the video. Okay I've said it a thousand times, your interest is different than the insurance company. They want to pay you as little as they can and you want to recover as much as you can. So the question is, how do you maximize or increase your personal injury settlement? Okay tip number one, hire a personal injury attorney. I know it sounds self-serving, forgive me, but I guarantee you if you hire an attorney, you're going to get a better outcome than if you try to deal with an insurance company on your own. They're worth tens of billions of dollars and chances are, you've never filed an insurance claim. The odds are stacked in their favor. Tip number two, the insurance company is going to try and get you to settle really quickly. They're going to say, send us your medical bills and we'll give you $500 or $1,000 to compensate you for your damages and your pain and suffering. Never accept that first offer. This is a trick they use to get rid of claims. Always talk to an attorney if you can and if not, just make sure you reject that first offer. Tip number three, file an insurance claim immediately with both insurance companies. Yes, the insurance company for the car that hit you and your own insurance company. I've talked about it many times on this channel, I'm not going to go into it in detail here, but you will be better served if you file a claim with your own insurance company than if you do not. Tip number four, get medical treatment right away. I don't care if it's your primary care physician or if you go to an emergency room, it's critical that you get medical attention right away. If you delay in getting medical attention, it just gives the insurance company ammunition to try and diminish your claim. Okay, tip number five, do not stop seeing your doctor, do not stop seeing your physical therapist until they discharge you and don't allow a gap in treatment to occur, meaning you start treating and then you stop for six months and then you start again. These are more tools that the insurance company is going to use to deny or diminish your claim. Okay, tip number six, tell all your medical providers about all the pain you're going through and all your injuries. So for example, if you go to the emergency room and you don't tell the ER doc about the pain you're having in your right leg, when you try to recover for it in six months, the insurance company is going to deny that claim. I say it all the time, if it's not in the medical records, it doesn't exist. Okay, tip number seven, be prepared for the insurance company to try and limit your recovery based on pre-existing conditions. Most of us have something, back pain, a disc problem, leg pain, whatever it is from our past. Your insurance company is going to have access to every claim you've ever filed. There's no hiding anything from an insurance company. And if your claim is big enough, they're going to seek your past medical records too. So have a plan for how you deal with pre-existing conditions. Tip number eight, as a follow-up to that point, you can argue that your pre-existing condition was aggravated or exacerbated as a result of the injuries you suffered in the accident. However, that's a tough argument to make. If you're going to try and do that, I strongly recommend consulting with an attorney. They're going to know how to handle that situation better than you. Tip number nine, keep everything. Keep the prescriptions you were written for Advil. Keep the clothes you were wearing at the time of the accident. If it's a slip and fall, keep the shoes you were wearing at the time of the accident. Keep a mileage book of the miles that you drove to and from appointments. I always tell people the same as medical records, if it's not documented, if you can't prove it, it doesn't exist to the insurance company. Tip number 10, be careful what you post on social media. They are watching. The insurance company and the insurance adjuster is checking you out, I guarantee it. And if you have a serious claim, they may even hire an investigator to follow you around or to interview people that you interact with on a daily basis to see how you've been. I know it sounds a little far-fetched, but these are the tactics insurance companies can take to try and diminish your claim. Okay, tip number 11, focus on the future. Focus on your future medical expenses if you're going to have any. Focus on future lost wages if you're going to have any. And focus on permanency. So for example, if you were involved in an accident and you're going to have a limp for the rest of your life, well that's a permanent injury. Or let's say you were bitten by a dog and you have a scar on your face, well that's a permanent disfigurement and that is hugely compensable. So focus on the future. Your attorney is going to, you should too. Tip number 12, exhaust all the benefits that are available to you. What do I mean by that? A lot of people are hesitant after an accident to file a claim with their own uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage. Yes, your own auto coverage. People are concerned that their rates are going to go up. Well nobody can guarantee that your rates aren't going to go up. But chances are, if you're not responsible for the accident, you're going to be fine. In addition, you may have other types of coverage that might come into play. So for example, you may have med pay or medical payments coverage that will cover the first $2,500 or $5,000 in your medical bills. So exhaust all the resources available to you. Tip number 13, take photographs of everything, starting at the accident scene to the end of treatment. I've had so many cases where photographs made the difference between a small recovery and a large one. Tip number 14, a follow-up to the photographs comment I just made. There's a concept you may not be familiar with and that is called severity of impact. And it's something that insurance companies and personal injury attorneys look at. So for example, an insurance company is going to argue that in a minor car accident, there's no way there could be severe personal injuries. Well that's totally false and medically it's been proven to be totally false. But the severity of impact is really important. It is an issue that's going to come up. So if you can, make sure you take good photographs of your vehicle to show how severe the impact was. Tip 15, create a journal to document what you're going through. It could just be a piece of paper or a little book. Document the pain that you're suffering. Is it a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10? Document if you couldn't sleep last night because of the pain, that you can't have sex with your significant other. Anything that you're going through, it's going to be really helpful if you document it because chances are, your case is not going to be resolved for 6 or 9 or 12 or even 24 months. Well in 24 months when you go to trial or you have your deposition, you're not going to remember any of this stuff. So it really helps to have a journal that's documenting what you're going through. Now one caveat, that journal may be evidence and you may have to turn it over. So be careful about what you say. But journal what you're going through. Journal your experience. Tip number 16, document everything you do with the insurance company. They are notoriously difficult to deal with and their interest is not your interest. If you leave a voicemail, follow it up with an email. Follow it up with the facts. They'll tell you they didn't get your voicemail, they'll tell you this, they'll tell you that. It's because their interests are not the same as yours. So document everything you do with them. Tip number 17, be patient. This is a very long process. People always want to know how much is my case worth and how fast am I going to get my money. This is a very long process, especially this last year with COVID. So be patient. Let your attorney build your case from the ground up. If you try to settle too quickly, you're going to reduce the amount of compensation that you deserve. It happens quite often. So just be patient and let your case run its course. Tip number 18, research the timeline you're dealing with. You do not want to miss the statute of limitations. That's the time limit within which you have to file a lawsuit or you lose your right to compensation. And a tip for you, if you're dealing with a governmental entity, you may have to file a separate claim and you may have a shorter time to file a lawsuit. So do that research right after the accident. Finally, tip 19, file a lawsuit. I get people who contact me all the time, the insurance company is dragging their feet on my property damage or they're not paying me enough. You really have no leverage in this situation. The insurance has all the money. The insurance has the compensation that you want. If you want to use the only piece of leverage you have, file a lawsuit, either through an attorney or do it on your own. Most people who contact me have very small claims and they can file their own lawsuit in small claims court. So you really want to use your leverage? File a lawsuit. Listen, if you do get in an accident, I created an accident scene checklist and I put the link to it in the description for this video. Click on it and download it and put it in your glove box. God forbid you'll never need it, but if you do, you'll have all the information you need for what you should do at the accident scene right after the accident. Okay, were you in an accident and you want some help increasing the value of your personal injury settlement? Tell us about it in the comments section below. And listen, if you haven't subscribed to our channel, would you please do so? And if you need a referral to an attorney anywhere in the country, please reach out to me. I have a huge network of attorneys that I work with and I'm happy to make an introduction.