There are over 6 million car accidents in the United States every year and in Florida approximately 40% of car accidents result in injuries to people. Many of those injury claims settle and they settle early, sometimes with a lawyer, sometimes without a lawyer. Maybe the case was settled directly with the other vehicle, the other driver, or owner of the other vehicle at the accident scene. Here’s a couple hundred dollars to go away or they came to your house, or they called you and you dealt directly with the at fault party to reach some type of settlement. That doesn’t happen often, but it does happen. Maybe you didn’t get a lawyer, but you dealt with the other person’s insurance company, the insurance adjuster directly and you came to some resolution that at the time seemed like a reasonable outcome for you. Sometimes people also get a lawyer, that lawyer deals with the insurance company for the other person or the other person directly, and they’ve reached a settlement for you. As far as you know your case is resolved and that’s all the money there was to get.
Now, that is not always the case. Let me give you an example of a case we handled a few years ago. A young lady was a rear passenger on a motorcycle, the driver of the motorcycle started hot dogging around doing wheelies, threw her off the back of the motorcycle and injured her very, very terribly. She went and hired a lawyer, a big law firm that has lots of advertising, lots of commercials, lots of billboards, and lots of employees. By the assistance of that law firm, this lovely young lady was able to collect $10,000 of insurance that the motorcycle driver had and that was it. I was speaking with this young lady about 4.5 years after her accident and I asked her a couple of questions, a couple of key questions that should have been asked earlier by the other lawyers but were not. Fortunate for her, we were able to determine that there was more we could do for her, and we were able to actually get her $100,000. That’s right. Originally, they got her $10,000, we were able to get her another $100,000 because we asked the right questions, we pursued the right information, and we were able to get it for her within the appropriate time frame.
If you had an accident claim that has been settled and you think that’s all there was to get, maybe there’s more to get. If it’s been less than five years since you’ve had that accident and you want to know whether you might be entitled to more, give us a call. We’ll be happy to look at your situation and see if there’s not more there to get that perhaps you or some other law firm didn’t know how to find. You may actually be entitled to more compensation for the injuries that you’ve suffered as a result of your car or your motorcycle crash.