Speaker 1: How do I negotiate a settlement with an insurance claims adjuster? Well, what you do is you communicate with the insurance claims adjuster about liability, about how the accident happened and why it is the other side's fault and you tell and provide documentation and support and proof of what your damages are. I'm Gary Berger of Berger Law. So you would be talking with a claims adjuster and you communicate with the claims adjuster about why you're not at fault and the other side is and you provide the insurance claims adjuster with your ER, emergency room bills and records, urgent care bills and records, your primary care doctor's records and bills, then the PT, the physical therapy, the chiropractic treatment that you went through. You may provide evidence of your wage loss damages, provide them the off work slips and provide them a pay stubs when you're missing work. Put those numbers together and don't forget pain and suffering and disability or disfigurement. What about the pain you're in for a month or two? So add some money for that. So if you're, let me give you an example. Let's say your ER bill is 500 bucks, I mean, I don't, is that unrealistic? They don't do a bunch of diagnostic tests, but if you go to the ER and they do CT and MRIs and stuff, your ER bill could be $10,000 and then you go to your primary care, that's a hundred, 200 bucks. And then you go to PT or chiro for a month, that's going to be two or three grand, right? Two or $3,000, add those up. And then, you know, you add $5,000 for pain and suffering or something like that. So that's, that's a hypothetical. This is an example. Every case is different. I've done thousands of cases for people taking thousands of depositions. Every case is different. The liability is always different. Who ran the red light? You rear-ended someone, but did they stop suddenly? Or the damages might be different. You know, you may go to an urgent care, but you're trying to save money. So you only went to three or four PT visits, but you still have a radiating pain down your neck. Well, you should go get an MRI because you have a herniated, you may have a herniated disc in your neck and that's a lifelong problem. So then the damages are much higher. So, so, but I wanted, I wanted to do a, I wanted to do a video providing an answer with not just an, it depends, but the answer is it depends. I mean, that's, that's the damages you are. Now, the other part of this question is how do you negotiate? And I, this video may be a little bit long here, but so the problem with negotiating with insurance companies and why insurance companies keep lawyers like me in business, I'm a personal injury lawyer. My name's Gary Berger of Berger Law, is that, is that, is that they, they, they threw a bunch of stuff at you. They say, here, here's the bogus things that claims of justice are going to say, well, you're partially at fault. So we're going to take damage of that. Well, that's not true. You don't pay wage loss damages because your employer paid you that. Well, you can still get it from the insurance company. That's not true. We only pay six weeks of pain and suffering because that's all, six weeks, excuse me, we only pay six weeks of medical care, Cairo or PT, because you shouldn't need to treat that longer. Well, that's not true. You can pay for more than that. You didn't have any property damage. So a jury's not going to give you damage. We don't, your property damage wasn't enough to support all this care. That's not true. Property damage doesn't inform us as the level of force, force equals mass times acceleration. Sometimes there's a lot of force that goes straight to someone's neck in a car crash and they have a whiplash or herniated disc injury. You're maybe only a few thousand dollars in property damage and your car's not total, but that doesn't mean you weren't hurt. You had prior problems in your neck or your back or your knee or whatever, so we're not going to pay you. Well, that's not true. Everybody who's my age or younger than me, I mean, your knees hurt, your back hurts, your neck hurts. You can have little problems with your back or your neck or whatever part of your body, but that doesn't mean if you get in a car crash, that doesn't mean the car crash didn't injure you. And it probably made the injury worse. It probably is not anything related to the degenerative problems you had in your back or your neck before. And even if it did, it made it a lot worse and now you need surgery. So they are responsible for that. So that's not true. And then sometimes they'll say, well, you need to do this quickly. You need to take this money now, blah, blah, blah. You don't need to take anything now. You have time limits to a couple of years in Illinois, five years in Missouri to file a lawsuit for your personal injuries. So you have time to do that and you don't want to settle that case quick. And then three months later, call them up and say, hey, now I need neck surgery. And they say, too bad you took the $2,000 and signed the release, sorry. So you don't want to sign those releases and do that stuff. Or they may say, hey, we only have a certain amount of money for that. Well, did you really get a document from them telling you what the insurance limits are? So I've tried to take a short video here to explain the types of damages you're entitled to, metal expenses, wage loss, pain and suffering, disability or disfigurement. And I've also tried to talk to you about some of the negotiation tactics. But the point, too, is the bigger picture is if you have a lot of damages and these insurance companies are throwing this stuff at you, call a lawyer like me. Go to burgerlaw.com, fill out a thing, we'll talk to you for free. We'll tell you whether or not you're getting a good deal. If I can't add value to your case, if the insurance company is paying you enough and you've negotiated well and you want to get it done and I can't add value to your case, I won't take your case. I'll say, take it, or I'll say, ask for a little bit more and take it. It's only the cases that I, as a trial lawyer, someone who goes and tries cases and gets great verdicts for people, we're also, you know, sometimes their great verdict doesn't necessarily mean a million dollars every time. Somebody with $50,000 in damages, we go trial and we get them $50,000. That's a good verdict. But hopefully you'll never need to go to trial. No one wants to go to trial. I get that. We settle a lot of cases in the claim stage. I hope this video was helpful in terms of how to negotiate with a claims representative, what to do. But if you end up stymied, if they're putting too many roadblocks, you're not getting full value for your injuries, call a lawyer like me and we can help you. We can add value to your case. Remember, you only have one case and one chance to recover for your injury. Thanks.