If you have been injured in an accident, you expect insurance companies to help you recover fair compensation. Isn’t that the purpose of insurance? However, insurance adjusters often are not on your side. They work for the insurance company, and their job can focus on minimizing payouts to bolster the insurance company’s bottom line. This can leave you struggling with medical bills, lost wages, and other financial hardships.
Many injury victims ask, “Can you sue your insurance adjuster?” While you typically sue the insurance company, not the adjuster directly, there are legal avenues to hold adjusters accountable if they act in bad faith. Below, we explore common tactics insurance adjusters use to undermine personal injury claims and how you can protect your rights.
5 Common Tactics Insurance Adjusters May Use to Minimize Your Claim
1. Lowball Settlement Offers
One of the first moves an insurance adjuster may make is to offer a quick settlement, often for far less than your claim is worth. They hope you will accept the quick, low offer before realizing the full extent of your damages. This can preclude you from obtaining the full value of your damages later if injuries or damages from your claim get worse.
How to Protect Yourself:
- Never accept an offer without reviewing it with an experienced personal injury attorney.
- Calculate your total damages, including future medical costs and lost earnings.
- Contact a personal injury lawyer to get an assessment of your case and whether it is worth pursuing through legal representation. The call should be free, since most personal injury lawyers work on something called a contingent fee agreement (meaning you only pay attorneys’ fees if they are successful in getting a settlement of the claim or a jury verdict at trial).
2. Delaying Your Claim
Insurance companies know that financial strain can pressure injured victims to accept less than they deserve. By delaying responses and tactics like requesting excessive documentation, dragging out negotiations, or asking for inconsequential background information, they try to wear you down.
How to Protect Yourself:
- Keep detailed records of all communications, both to and from the insurance adjusters
- Set deadlines for responses and follow up persistently.
- Contact a personal injury lawyer if delays become unreasonable or you believe the insurance adjuster may be tactically avoiding paying the value of your claim.
3. Denying Valid Claims
Some insurers may deny your claim without a legitimate reason, hoping you will give up rather than fight back. This happens frequently in cases where the insurance company can find any reason to put the responsibility for the incident on you rather than their insured, even if the insured’s responsibility for causing you injuries vastly exceeds your own.
How to Protect Yourself:
- Request a written explanation for the denial.
- Gather evidence, such as medical records and accident reports, to counter their claims.
- Consult a personal injury attorney experienced enough to challenge an unjust denial.
4. Using Your Statements Against You
Adjusters often ask for recorded statements, hoping you will say something they can use to reduce or deny your claim. Even a simple apology or uncertain answer can be twisted against you and taken out of context.
How to Protect Yourself:
- Politely decline to give a recorded statement without legal representation present for their questioning.
- Stick to the facts and avoid speculation when discussing your case.
- If the insurance adjuster asks to take your statement about what happened, it is a good indicator that the value of your claim may be higher than you think, and you should reach out to a personal injury lawyer for a consultation about your case before providing the insurance adjuster with any statements.
5. Disputing Medical Treatment
Insurance companies may claim your injuries are not as severe as you say or argue your treatment was unnecessary to reduce your payout. Insurance adjusters read and review medical records daily. Their job is to find little things in those records that creep doubt into whether they are responsible for paying for your injuries. They will often ask you to sign a release so they can access your medical records, saying you have to sign it to validate the medical conditions you claim were caused by their insured. Often, they have access to your records and will have reviewed them before you have gotten a chance to. This puts you at a serious disadvantage when talking about your medical treatment and history, since you did not write your own medical records, and most people never actually read them prior to giving statements to insurance adjusters.
How to Protect Yourself:
- Follow all doctor recommendations and keep copies of your records after any medical visits that relate to injuries from another person.
- Obtain written statements from your healthcare providers to support your claim.
- Do not sign releases without ensuring you get a copy of all records obtained by the insurance adjuster from those releases, and read them before talking to the adjuster again about your injuries or care.
- Follow up with your doctors about any misstatements in your medical records that you find.
- Contact an experienced personal injury lawyer to review your claim if the medical information and records are confusing in the slightest.
Can You Sue Your Insurance Adjuster for Bad Faith?
While you generally cannot sue an insurance adjuster personally, you can sue the insurance company for bad faith practices of its employees or agents, including insurance adjusters. A bad-faith insurance claim arises when an insurer:
- Denies a legitimate claim without an appropriate reason
- Delays payments unnecessarily
- Fails to investigate claims properly
- Uses deceptive tactics to avoid paying
In these cases, Garmey Law can help you take legal action to recover the compensation you are entitled to.
Why You Need an Experienced Personal Injury Lawyer
Taking on an insurance company alone can be overwhelming. Insurance is a machine that processes these types of issues every day, all day, with teams of lawyers and adjusters working to protect their bottom line. Without experienced legal representation, this fight is like trying to sprint up a mountain: it can be done, but it is too much for most people to handle.
At Garmey Law, our experience gives you a fighting chance to get the compensation your injuries deserve. We handle gathering the evidence, negotiating the claim, and fighting for the full compensation you are entitled to, all the way through trial. While we are fighting for you, you can then focus on the most important thing: getting better!
If you suspect your insurance company is delaying, undervaluing, or wrongfully denying your claim, do not wait. The sooner you call our office, the better your chances of securing the compensation you need. Call Garmey Law today at (207) 899-4644 for a free consultation, or contact us online to discuss your case. Let us take on the insurance company while you focus on healing.