If you have been injured by someone in Los Angeles who uses State Farm insurance, contact us today for a free and confidential consultation. We have filed claims against State Farm multiple times in the past.
State Farm is the largest auto insurance company in the United States. Its friendly television commercials depict it as a good neighbor, but it's a business. Businesses need to profit to flourish, and State Farm's business is indeed robust. It was ranked as being in the top 50 American companies in revenue. It writes about 30 million insurance policies a year while processing nearly 40,000 claims a day. One of the reasons for that ranking is its business model of taking in as much as possible in premiums and paying out as little as possible or nothing on claims.
The claims process when insured by State Farm
If you're insured by State Farm, there's nothing mystical about reporting a State Farm injury claim. Report it right away by email or certified mail return receipt requested. Either way, there's a record of you reporting the claim. Since you have a duty to cooperate with your insurer, don't do anything to impede its investigation of a claim. State Farm retains every right to investigate claims. Failure to cooperate with your insurer can be a valid reason for denying your claim. If your accident involved an uninsured or underinsured motorist, State Farm turns into your opponent. You'll quickly learn that you're not with a very good neighbor at all. You'll be serving yourself well by retaining us before you prejudice your position without even knowing it.
When State Farm is your opponent
If you were injured as a result of a careless and negligent driver in Los Angeles who was insured by State Farm, or if your claim is pursuant to your uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, don't try to represent yourself. If you do that, State Farm has you right where it wants you, and you might end up painting yourself in a corner. You're likely to be far better off by retaining our experienced and respected law firm to represent you from the start.
The request for a medical authorization
State Farm will ordinarily acknowledge receipt of a claim by letter, and enclosed with that letter will be a medical authorization for signature and return. The law doesn't require you to sign and return that authorization, so don't do that. You'd be giving State Farm full authority to obtain every medical record since your birth. The insurer's adjuster will be looking for a prior injury to the same part of the body that you injured in the accident. It's an attempt to argue that you were already damaged goods, regardless of the fact that you fully recovered from the injury many years before.
The request for a statement
Don't be surprised if the adjuster assigned to your claim contacts you and wants to know "how you're feeling." Then he or she will want a recorded statement about how the accident happened and how you feel. Politely refuse to give it, and then call us. No law in the State of California requires you to give that statement. You'll be asked leading and confusing questions that the adjuster wants you to answer inconsistently. In the future, that adjuster or an opposing attorney will want to use your own words against you. Prior inconsistent statements are admissible in court. All information in connection with the accident is in the police report, any witness statements or your medical records. There's no reason to give a recorded statement that the opposition intends on using against you, especially when the law doesn't require you to give it.
Delay, deny and defend
The defense strategy of delay, deny and defend creates obstacles for claimants that are intended to discourage both them and their attorneys from filing claims and lawsuits. The strategy involves:
- Delaying low settlement offers and putting claimants in untenable positions
- Denying liability to stall and strengthen the insurer's settlement position
- Defending lawsuits and attempting to make them cost prohibitive
Most personal injury cases take about two years to go to trial from the date of filing. Lawsuits can be expensive to maintain, and it's almost always the attorneys representing the injured person who advance the litigation costs. On the low end, litigation costs might total $3,000. Costs of $10,000 aren't at all unusual, and in a case involving complex liability and damages issues, the costs of litigation can run into six figures.
It could be quite complicated if the passengers wants to sue but the driver dies. Delay, deny and defend can chill the enthusiasm of some attorneys when significant sums of money are tied up in even a moderate volume of cases. Cases that injury attorneys previously took aren't being taken by some of them anymore due to delay, deny and defend coupled with the cost factor. That operates to force many claimants into low settlements that ultimately saves State Farm millions.
The delay, deny and defend strategy has been tremendously successful for State Farm, but it has been more than a headache for claimants and some attorneys. It saved the insurer hundreds of millions of dollars on claims made by Hurricane Katrina victims. Expect the same strategy with Hurricane Harvey in Texas with delay, deny and defend being put in the spotlight again. Revealing lawsuits are certain to follow.
