Let’s talk about a question that we get asked often. That is: How long will it take for you guys to settle my case. The amount of time it takes to settle your case is directly correlated with how much medical treatment you get, how much time off work you take, and how long that treatment and time off lasts.
A lot of times big law firms, or any firm, might try to push your case forward to try to settle it as fast as possible to get that settlement and move on to the next case. That is doing you a disservice.
To settle your case before your treatment is done, before you know what your future treatment might be, cuts off that claim before you maximize it. In other words, if you’re settling your case within a few weeks, or a few months even after your car accident, and you haven’t completed the full extent of your treatment, everything after the date of that settlement will probably not be considered by an insurance company. You’ve settled your claim, they’ve paid you, they’re done.
The best course of action is to wait until you have completed your treatment. So every case is different and every person is different. Every injury is different and each round of treatment takes less time or more time for each individual person. So the amount of time it takes to settle your case will take a different amount of time.
For each different person, there’s no one set rule of how long it takes. It can take as little as a few months if you are simply treating for a few months and you feel better. It can take half a year if you’re doing six months worth of treatment and we’re getting the medical records as we go get the demand off.
However it can take years if you have years of treatment ahead of you. Sometimes there are circumstances where the injuries are just so very bad and the damages are so high that within a couple months the insurance company says: “you know what take our policy limits because we know the damages are going to well exceed our policy just based off of what we’re seeing so far.”
There are times where there’s a significant amount of treatment, but the case is able to be resolved fairly quickly because the damages are just so high. But most often the amount of time it takes to settle your claim is going to depend on that treatment process.
Once the treatment is figured out, once the loss of income is figured out, once we figure out how much billing you have, and when we know how long you’re going to suffer from how long your pain is going to last, that is when we can then get a demand off to the insurance company. Then we can negotiate with them and see if we’re able to resolve your claim.
Sometimes we’re not able to come to a resolution and your case enters into a litigation stage which takes even longer. So the original question is almost impossible to answer. Generally you’re looking at a few months to under a year, but there are circumstances where cases can be settled quickly or cases can last for years if the treatment lasts for years and we want to make sure we’re capturing all that treatment.
So the answer to the question how long does it take to settle a case is: It depends on how much treatment you have what your injuries are, what your loss of income is, and how much time you’re taking off work. There is a whole bunch of variables we look at and that’s why it’s important to treat every single case differently and make sure you’re hiring attorneys that will spend the time to individually look at your case to determine when the appropriate time is to resolve your claim. If you have any questions whatsoever please reach out to us. (720) 588-9120, staff@frederickganderton.com.
