At the start of negotiations, the insurance adjuster proposes a value for the potential settlement. How do adjusters come up with that value?
A question that each adjuster must answer
What was the total cost to the victim for having his or her injury assessed and treated? Insurers place a higher value on a painful injury. That means that a larger number gets placed in the slot for the multiplier in the insurance company’s standard formula. That formula multiplies the total for the medical expenses by the value for the victim’s pain and suffering.
Insurers also use a method that is known as typecasting.
That is not like the typecasting that is done when actors try out for different roles in a play. Instead, it involves assessing the type of injury suffered by each claimant. There are 2 main types of injuries: soft and hard.
What are the characteristics of a soft injury?
If it produces pain, the patient must describe the pain; it cannot be measured.
Normally, a soft injury is not permanent of dangerous.
What are the characteristics of a hard injury?
The existence of hard injuries can be discovered by means of a medical exam. The hard injury’s severity makes it more debilitating than a strain or a sprain. When doctors try to treat hard injuries, those medical professionals might need to use an intrusive medical procedure.
Once a victim has sustained a hard injury, that severe condition could have a permanent effect on the victim’s body. A Personal Injury Lawyer in Kingston might emphasize that effect, if it has threatened to reduce a client’s chances for pursuing a particular career path.
That is why a client searches for a lawyer that is familiar with the client’s medical condition. For instance, a victim with a ventricular shunt should find an attorney that knows something about a shunting device that has originated in the head. Its performance can be affected by the repeated climbing of stairs.
In other words, if a shunt has malfunctioned while a client was holding a job that called for the repeated climbing of stairs, the client’s lawyer might have grounds for seeking workmen’s compensation. Still, not every personal injury lawyer would achieve success, by going after that workmen’s comp money.
It would have to be an injury lawyer that had made a point of studying the different conditions that might be caused by a head injury. At the same time, the attorney’s training should have focused on workmen’s compensation issues.
Examples of hard injuries
• Open wounds
• Broken bones
• Head injuries
• TBI (traumatic brain injuries)
• Separations within tissues or between layers of tissue
• Dislocations within the skeletal system
• Injury to the vertebrae, or to a spinal disc
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