Attorney Lauren Dayani breaks down what is “pain and suffering” in your personal injury claim.
In Part 1, Attorney Lauren Dayani shared her tips on how to include pain and suffering damages in your personal injury claim. In this post, Lauren explores pain and suffering damages and how insurance companies typically respond.
The arguments that an insurer or at-fault party will make to downplay your pain and suffering are mostly robotic and predictable. They will argue things like:
- “It was a minor impact or injury. It wasn’t so bad. You shouldn’t be complaining about ongoing injuries. Most people would be better after a couple weeks.”
- “The photos of the property damage don’t look so scary, it doesn’t look like anything so bad happened. So if it wasn’t such a major event, you could not have been hurt that badly.”
- “Everyone has back pain or neck pain in their life — it’s just not a big deal. Sure, it’s might be a little annoying, but the inconvenience to you is not worth that much money because pretty much everyone deals with it.”
- “You treated for too long. You could have been done much earlier with your care. You are dragging things out.”
- “You are trying to game the system to get more money for your case. You are exaggerating this.”
Insurance companies can be a real pain to negotiate with, especially if they have already received information and assumed a position about your case. It is difficult to get them to see things a different way.
So, as we normally do, we recommend consulting with a lawyer before you start any negotiations. A lawyer can prepare a presentation of your individual pain and suffering in a way that makes it more difficult for the insurer to make those automated arguments against you. An attorney can help to emphasize to them that you are a human being, which should seem obvious, but to an insurance company, it is not! Insurers tend to view claims like a claim number among thousands of other of claim numbers. They often do not consider the human being behind them unless they are persuaded to do so.
Call a lawyer, even if you don’t plan on hiring one. Your own pain and suffering is a challenging concept to navigate without guidance or help.
Lauren Dayani is lead personal injury attorney at Dayani Law Firm. She offers free consultations and speaks clearly and honestly about your options after a car accident. Send her a message below or call directly for a consult at (206) 777-5627