Learn The Process Before Trying To Settle Your Personal Injury Claims

Brooks Schuelke

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Anchorage, Alaska personal injury lawyer Michael Schneider has a great post today featuring a story about a client who lost a personal injury case because the client spoke to the insurance adjuster, trusted the adjuster, and apparently followed the adjuster's bad advice, which ended up hurting the claim.

Mr. Schneider doesn't have specifics but only says that at trial the client couldn't explain to the jury why the client did and didn't do certain things because to do so would violate a rule of evidence that prohibits the parties from mentioning that the defendant has insurance. (Just speculation, but I suspect the plaintiff wanted to tell the jury that the reason he didn't immediately seek treatment is because the insurance adjuster told him he didn't need to go see a doctor because the pain goes away after a few days, etc)

Sadly, this all could have bee prevented if the personal injury plaintiff had spent a little time and done a little research about the process of making a personal injury claim.

In this day and age of the internet, plaintiffs have access to all types of resources that can help them protect their claim or even pursue their claim on their own. For example, I have interviews from News8 Austin from earlier this year that describe how a person can handle their own property damage claim and how to protect their personal injury claim.

But I'm not alone. There are literally hundreds of websites (such as injuryboard.com) offering free advice about all aspects of personal injury claims. If an injured person just takes a few minutes, they can learn a lot of information that will minimize the amount of damage that they do to their own claim.