Motorcycle Accident Case Timeline

Answer:

How long is it going to take to resolve the claim? That’s a question that a motorcycle victim posed to one of our attorneys just the other day when they called our office. Here’s what our attorney said.

He said the first thing we’re going to do is the other insurance company for the driver who is at fault in Arizona does not have an obligation to tell us what their insurance limits are. They don’t have to if they don’t want to. We know it’s going to be at least a minimum, which has been raised to $25,000. For a serious accident $25,000 is like a down payment maybe. Even though they don’t have to tell us what the policy limits are, if you’ve got a lot of big medical bills just from the hospital alone, we normally can get the insurance company to say all I’ve got is 25 or 50 or 100. Let’s just take care of it. In that case we can get your case settled very quickly. The more difficult issue in that case is let’s say your medical bills are $100,000 or $200,000 or something like that. Then we need to negotiate not only with the other driver’s insurance company, but as the attorney explained when they called in, we also need to negotiate with the hospital. The hospital is going to have their hand out. If they can, we won’t let them do it, but they’ll take all your money if they can. We don’t let that happen. That’s where having a law firm represent you can actually put more money in your pocket even after our fees are deducted than if you handle it on your own. We tell the hospital and the insurance companies no. Here’s the offer we’re going to make you for repayment. We can usually negotiate that amount down significantly. If necessary, our lawyers can actually sue them and say we’ll have a judge tell you you’re not going to get this much money. All those things can influence how long it takes to resolve your claim. Best case scenario, you have high medical bills, as the attorney explained, and the insurance policy is not $1 million. We can usually settle that pretty quickly. You still need to negotiate with the hospitals and stuff. If there is a million dollars of insurance available, it may take longer to settle your case. If it’s the difference between $10,000 and $500,000 or $1 million, most of our clients are willing to wait a little longer. Remember, if you’re injured in a motorcycle accident, even if you’ve been told there’s no other insurance available, give us a call. The call is free. The information is free. We do care about people who are injured riding motorcycles. They have every right that anyone else has, even if some drivers don’t drive and believe it. Call us because we care about you.