Knowing how to negotiate with an insurance claims adjuster isn’t a life skill most people need on a daily basis. But when you’re suddenly faced with the task, you realize how important—and frustrating—it can be.

Below, we offer experience-based tips on how to successfully negotiate a settlement with an insurance company. If you’re going into the process for the first time, however, keep in mind that you are dealing with experts trained in negotiation tactics. Insurance claims adjusters can be ruthless, and they aren’t always honest.

If you were seriously injured in a personal injury accident, becoming a skilled negotiator overnight might be the last thing on your to-do list. That’s why many people turn to the trusted advocacy of a personal injury law firm like DiPiero Simmons McGinley & Bastress, PLLC. We use our experience to make sure our clients are never taken advantage of by the aggressive negotiators representing the big insurance companies.

A deposition is a vital part of what is known as the discovery process. Discovery is a formal investigation to learn more about the facts of a case. All named parties involved in a civil lawsuit have the right to conduct discovery.

Part of the investigation process is interviewing witnesses and officially obtaining their testimony. One way that is done is through a procedure called a deposition. You may have heard of depositions in both civil and criminal cases. But just how does the deposition process work in a civil lawsuit?

When a person is injured by the wrongful, reckless, or negligent actions of another person or entity, they may be entitled to financial compensation in a personal injury lawsuit. Many civil claims here in West Virginia center around the idea of gross negligence.

Since this concept is critical to the overall success of most personal injury cases, it is important to understand how gross negligence is defined in West Virginia.

When you are injured because of another person’s negligent, reckless, or wrongful actions, you may be owed compensation for the harm you suffered. Any money you receive from a car accident, truck accident, premises liability, or other type of personal injury claim is intended to compensate you for your damages. 

There are three main types of damages for which you may receive compensation in a personal injury case: economic, noneconomic, and punitive damages. Punitive damages are only awarded in rare cases, so most injury victims only ever need to worry about economic and noneconomic damages. 

Any time that someone is injured through no fault of their own, they face an uphill battle to recovery. While physical recovery certainly has its challenges—and some victims may never fully recover from their injuries—the financial side of an accident or injury can be just as devastating. 

Whether you were hurt in a car accident, slip and fall incident, or in a case of medical malpractice, you deserve financial compensation to make the best recovery possible. We know that the insurance company’s first offer is never what’s in your best interest—it’s in the interest of their own bottom line. 

You and your lawyer have worked together to reach a settlement after your car accident or other type of personal injury case. But after your personal injury case has been settled, you may be asking: How long does it take to get a settlement payment? The answer to how long it takes to get money after a case is settled will depend on several factors. While rough estimates usually put the amount of time to receive settlement money around four to six weeks after a case it settled, the amount of time leading up to settlement will also vary. There are multiple factors to consider when asking how long it takes to get a settlement check.

After being injured by another negligent party, you might be interested in filing a legal claim to hold them responsible for the damage they’ve caused you. But if you’ve never done that before, you might be hesitant because you don’t know how to go about it or don’t know how long it will take.

When you’ve been in an accident that was caused by someone else’s negligence and it caused you harm in the form of physical and emotional damages, then you could hold them accountable for those costs with the help of a personal injury lawyer. Their job will then be to prove the other party’s negligence in what happened and calculate exactly what you’re owed in damages.

There are two main types of damages that you can recover in a personal injury claim, and those are economic and noneconomic damages. Let’s take a look at the latter and how your attorney will calculate what you’re owed in those types of damages.

When you’re preparing to see your personal injury lawyer, you might not know what to expect. You’re likely gathering all of the documentation you have so you have all the proof you need to show them what your case entails. While this is a great way to prepare for your meeting, you should also prep yourself to be asked some questions that could be upsetting, or that you might not immediately know the answer to.

While these questions could upset you, that’s not your lawyer’s intention. They just want to get to the bottom of what happened, so any question they ask, your full honesty is important. Let’s take a look at some of the questions your personal injury lawyer might ask you at your first meeting.

After an accident, physical injuries sometimes aren’t the only kind of damages that you can suffer from. You also might suffer from emotional damages that are more abstract, but you still deserve to recover compensation for them. When you have a lawyer on your side, they’ll have to prove these damages and will use different kinds of evidence to do that.

At DiPiero Simmons McGinley & Bastress, PLLC, we’re here to ensure that you have the strongest case possible. We have experience building cases for clients and getting them the compensation that they deserve for all the damages they suffer. We’ll look into everything that happened so we can make sure you don’t settle for less than you’re owed.