How Will Your Lawyer Negotiate a Car Accident Settlement?
After a car accident that wasn’t your fault, you could be dealing with injuries and damages. The medical bills, repair costs, missed wages, and regular bills might be piling up and getting harder and harder to pay, especially if you can’t get back to work anytime soon. You shouldn’t have to worry about all those costs when you weren’t the one who caused the collision.
When you hire a car accident lawyer to help you with a legal claim, they’ll be there to help you get the compensation you need to financially recover from your collision. With their help, you won’t have to worry about all the bills that you can’t pay—they’ll get you the compensation you need to repay those bills and be set for future bills. Let’s take a look at how they’ll negotiate a fair car accident settlement for you.
Determining Fault and Damages
Before even thinking about negotiations, the first thing your lawyer will need to do is work on proving the fault of the other driver. Once they use the evidence to investigate and prove that the other driver was negligent and directly caused the collision, they can move on to calculating what you’re owed in damages.
Determining the exact amount of damages you suffered is the most important part of this process. If your lawyer doesn’t get a firm number of what you’re owed, then they won’t know how much you need in order to repay the bills that you have from the accident. Without this calculation, they could let you settle for less than you deserve, which is unacceptable.
Your attorney will include both economic and noneconomic damages when determining how much you’re owed in your settlement. The economic damages that they’ll take into account are medical bills, treatment costs, repair bills, living expenses, missed wages, future medical costs, and future missed wages. This will ensure that you get the compensation you need in terms of repaying and paying future bills.
Noneconomic damages consist of your more abstract costs, like pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life, and loss of consortium. Your attorney will calculate how much you’re owed in these damages so that you can ensure you get the payment you deserve for the emotional costs you incurred from the injuries and other damages.
With a firm number in mind, your lawyer will be able to fight to get you full and fair compensation through their negotiations.
The Legal Process and Negotiating
When it comes to the legal process, your lawyer will handle everything for you, but you still might be interested to know what they’ll do to negotiate your car accident settlement. Once they have proof of the other driver’s fault and a firm amount you’re owed in compensation, they’ll work with the other party to reach a fair settlement.
First, your car accident lawyer will send over your demands to the other party, whether that’s the other driver, an insurance company, or a negligent part manufacturer. They usually start out high with this number so that there is room if negotiations get lower. The other party will either accept or send back a counteroffer. If you didn’t have a lawyer, you might be tempted to take the first offer you get, but that could be shorting you.
The other party will likely start lower so that they force you to come down from your original offer. Most times, if the other party is an insurance company or part manufacturer, they will offer you much less than you deserve to protect their bottom line. But that’s not fair to you when you have real bills to pay.
Negotiations could go on like this for a while if the other party is offering less than what your lawyer thinks you are owed. Ideally, you can reach a settlement that both sides deem fair. If not, your car accident attorney is prepared to take it to court.
Our Car Accident Lawyer in Biloxi Won’t Settle For Less Than You Deserve
Negotiating a car accident settlement isn’t something you can do on your own. A skilled and fierce car accident lawyer from Corban Gunn, Attorney at Law won’t let you settle for less than you deserve. When you don’t have a lawyer from our firm, you might get bullied into taking a smaller settlement that doesn’t cover all of your piling expenses, let alone the emotional toll you’ve suffered.
Our car accident lawyer in Biloxi is here to support you throughout your legal claim and fight to get you the compensation that you deserve. We’ll handle the negotiations so that you can focus on healing. Get in touch with our office today for your free consultation where we can start the legal process and discuss your options.
