The adjuster starts the negotiations, but only after reading the demand letter.
What should the lawyer-client team put in the demand letter?
• Each of those letters should offer details on the client’s injuries.
• Each of them should explain why the other party has been viewed as the person responsible for the accident’s occurrence.
• Each of them ought to include facts about the type of treatment prescribed for the client’s injuries.
• Each demand letter should close with presentation of the amount of money that the client is demanding from the defendant.
What might happen, after the insurance company had received the written demand?
The insurance company might issue a reservation of rights letter. That would serve 2 purposes. First, it would make it clear that the insurance company had a right not to pay the claimant any money, until it had completed an investigation of the submitted claim.
At the same time, the letter’s contents would explain the meaning of the company’s agreement to take part in negotiations. That agreement was not supposed to be seen as an acknowledgment that the claimant’s policy did indeed cover this one particular accident.
Another possible deviation from the negotiation process
Negotiations can only proceed if both sides have chosen to take part in the communications between the representatives for the 2 parties. A personal injury lawyer normally acts as the claimant’s representative. Such lawyers are skilled negotiators.
The lawyer would help the client/claimant to arrive at the best response to any offer that was made by the adjuster. Still, the lawyer could not force the adjuster to issue a quick reply. Sometimes the adjuster fails to come forward with a counteroffer.
When that is the case, then the personal injury lawyer in Cambridge needs to contact the claims’ department. The lawyer’s call should send a message: The other party is waiting for a response. Indeed, the lawyer should ask for a date when a response might be expected.
If the insurance company did give a date over the phone, then it would be the lawyer’s job to seek confirmation of that date. Obviously, that same date should be marked on the lawyer’s calendar.
If no response had arrived by the promised day, then the lawyer should call and find out why. If necessary, the personal injury lawyer’s next task could entail asking to speak with the supervisor. The lawyer’s experience should guide that member of the legal profession from that point on.
That experience might become motivation for the filing of a personal injury lawsuit.
Ideally, the filing of such a lawsuit would push the insurance company to permit a continuation of negotiations, in order to make agreement to a settlement all the more likely.
