26
Mar
HOW DO INSURANCE COMPANIES DEFEND CAR ACCIDENT CASES?
A common question I get is how do insurance companies go about defending cases. As we all know, we must carry automobile insurance. That insurance includes liability coverage, which protects us up to a certain amount in the event that we are responsible for a crash. When an automobile accident occurs, insurance companies hire attorneys to represent the person responsible for the accident. The liability portion of the insurance policy represents the amount of coverage the person responsible has in order to pay for damages caused by the accident.
Once an attorney is hired by the insurance company, a response to the plaintiff’s case is built. The attorney answers interrogatories with the potentially responsible party. Depositions, or transcribed question and answer sessions, occur. Eventually, the attorney or the insurance company will set up an exam by a doctor of the attorneys’ choice or the insurance companies’ choice. These doctors tend to be the same from case to case and they frequently make a significant portion of their income consistently claiming people were not injured in car accidents. Typically, even if your treating doctor believes you were permanently injured in an accident, this “insurance” doctor will find no permanent injury.
Often the defense lawyer a juror sees at trial is actually a direct employee of the insurance company. While juries are not told this, probably half the time in auto accidents the lawyer and his law firm are not independent counsel, but employees of the insurance company. Great care is taken by the companies to make sure that insurance is never mentioned and that the business relationships between the companies and the experts they hire are not disclosed. The Court rules typically prevent disclosure of this information in the trial as it might be prejudicial to the insurance company for the jury to know that insurance is controlling. Thus, the perception is often created that the individual is going to be responsible and that the case is a burden on them, when this is far from the truth.
In the end, if your case is tried, the attorney hired by the insurance company many times will admit that the accident was the fault of the responsible party, but try the case with the insurance doctor. These doctors sometimes make very good witnesses as they appear quite regularly in court. In the end, a jury is asked to determine whether or not you have proven that you were injured as a result of the accident. If you have the limitation on lawsuit, the jury must determine you have a permanent injury. However, the insurance doctor is often the crux of the responsible party’s case.