Category: Uncategorized

The short answer is that the check goes to your attorney first, and then to you. But that one-sentence answer leaves out almost everything that actually matters when you are sitting at home waiting to find out when you will see your money. The mechanics of how a settlement check moves from the insurance company […]

The general rule that most people have heard is that personal injury settlements are not taxable, and in most cases that rule is correct. But it is a rule with enough exceptions, qualifications, and fact-specific variations that accepting it without understanding where it applies and where it breaks down can produce a significant and unexpected […]

The demand letter has been submitted. You have documented every aspect of your claim, presented the medical evidence, established the liability, and stated a number. Now you are waiting, and the waiting has its own particular quality when money you need is sitting in someone else’s hands. How long the insurer has to respond depends […]

A demand letter is the document that formally opens settlement negotiations in a personal injury case, and the quality of the one submitted on your behalf will influence the settlement outcome more than almost any other single document in the process. It is addressed to the at-fault driver’s insurance company, it presents the full factual […]

Pain and suffering is the component of a personal injury claim that compensates you for the human experience of what happened, as distinct from its financial costs. Medical bills, lost wages, and future treatment expenses are economic damages, measurable in dollars with relative precision. Pain and suffering is non-economic, which means it compensates for things […]

The value of a personal injury settlement is not a number that exists somewhere waiting to be discovered. It is a number that gets constructed, contested, and negotiated by parties with opposing financial interests, using a set of inputs that each carry their own weight in the final calculation. Most people who have been injured […]

The honest answer is that it depends on factors that vary significantly from case to case, and the range is wide enough to be genuinely unhelpful without context. Minor accidents with clear liability, limited injuries, and cooperative insurers can settle in weeks. Serious injury cases involving disputed liability, multiple parties, significant medical treatment, and contested […]

Most personal injury claims resolve through a settlement rather than a trial, and most people who are in the middle of one have only a partial understanding of how the process actually works, what determines the number they are offered, what happens when they accept it, and what they are giving up when they sign. […]

If your personal injury claim has reached a size that the insurance company considers worth defending seriously, there is a good chance you will eventually receive a request to attend what the insurer calls an independent medical examination. The request will arrive through your attorney if you have one, or directly from the adjuster or […]

Subrogation is one of the most consequential things that can happen to the money you recover after an accident, and most people have never heard the word until they are in the middle of a claims process that has become more complicated than they expected. You may have encountered it in a letter from your […]