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If another driver injures you and damages your vehicle, his insurance company might ask you for your medical records related to the accident. Should you provide your records to the driver’s insurance company? Should you talk with the other driver and his insurance company at all? What should you do if you are injured? How can you protect yourself after you’ve already been hurt? Find more information here.
If you are hurt in a car wreck, after seeking medical attention the first thing you should do is call a lawyer. Car, truck, van and other vehicle accidents seriously injure tens of thousands of Texans every year. On average, someone suffers serious injuries in a car wreck in Texas once every few minutes, every hour of the day, all year long. If you are wounded in a car wreck, call our Law Offices. We’re ready to help you enforce your civil justice rights.
Your medical records will form some of the most important evidence in your lawsuit against the driver who hit you. Records from doctors, nurses and EMTs are the best way to reliably prove the harm done to you in an accident. And proving the harm done to you is the best way to achieve a fair recovery.
A common tactic by insurance companies in lawsuits is to ask people for medical records. If you send your medical records to the other driver’s insurance company, you are taking risks. Some of those risks are as follows:
The records you send may or may not be accurate.
They may or may not relate to the injury you suffered in the wreck.
They may or may not help you achieve a fair result.
Another reason insurance companies ask you for your medical records is trickier. If the other driver’s insurance company asks you for records and you send them yourself, you are showing the insurance company you do not have an attorney. You are also showing that you do not know what you’re doing. These are great reasons for the insurance company to take advantage of you as much and as quickly as possible. Insurers make fair offers to injury victims when those insurers are forced to. When you do not have a lawyer, you do not force insurers to do anything. You are at their mercy. Get a proven personal injury lawyer to protect your rights. Your lawyer is best qualified to make the important decisions about your records.
You do not need to send insurance companies your records in order for those companies to get your records. All an insurance company needs is for you to sign a simple authorization form, and the company can go get your records itself. These authorizations are called many different things: sometimes “HIPAA” authorizations, meaning they comply with a federal law known as the Health Insurance Protection and Accountability Act of 1996. If you sign a medical records authorization, a healthcare records authorization, a HIPAA authorization or anything else like that, you risk the insurance company getting your full medical records, even those unrelated to the accident.
San Antonio car accident lawsuit attorney
Do you have a legal issue or question?
The Bottom Line
Your attorney is the one who should make the decisions about any documents to turn over to anyone when it comes to your injury. Let the attorneys at our Law Offices bring their decades of experience to work for you and your loved ones. Call our Law Offices at 1-(210) 820-3434 to visit with our staff members right now.
Chat with a San Antonio Lawyer
Did You Know?
Our Attorney has been fighting for car accident victims` rights for over 20 years. Call us to discuss your case. 210-820-3434.
Our firm is often contacted by prospective clients who have been injured in a car accident, who are fed up to deal with an insurance adjuster on their own. The problem is that many of these people have already said all the wrong things to the adjuster, and have damaged their case beyond all repairs. To help you avoid the same fate, this article will explain what you can say to an insurance adjuster.
All the situations that you make the experience when you are involved in an accident cannot all be discussed throughout this article. The most important piece of advice that we can offer you is to hire an attorney from the beginning.
The role of an insurance adjusters
Insurance adjusters aren’t there to help you; they are not your friend. They are there to help the insurance company. Thousands of our former clients and other individuals have told us stories of insurance adjusters lying or misleading them, resulting in a lot of lost time, heartache, and money. Every dime they give you is money directly out of their profits; they will find all possible ways to limit the money they payout.
Things you can say
There’s nothing wrong with telling an insurance adjuster were, the date, and the time of day the accident happened. There is nothing wrongful with telling the insurance adjuster what kind of car you drive, and who your insurance carrier is. You just don’t want to tell them anything about your injury. Insurance adjusters will use all the information that you give them to create a defense to your recovery efforts, don’t be subject to this.
What if the info I’m telling the insurance adjuster is harmless?
Do you have a legal issue or question?
If we had a dime for every time we were told something was harmless but wrecked their case, we’d be rich. Most of our clients are intelligent, hard-working people. However, since you’ve likely never experienced a legal case such as this, don’t make the assumption you can wing it. Every word that you say is significant to an insurance adjuster. The questions that they ask are designed so that they elicit information that is only helpful to them.
The last thing you can and always should tell an insurance adjuster is that they’ll have to talk to my attorney. Our best cases for our clients are where we’re hired from the beginning and client doesn’t have to talk to the insurance adjuster at all. If you have been injured as a result of an accident don’t just hire an attorney, hire the attorneys with experience, past success, and the ability to win your claim. The attorneys at Grossman Law Offices are here to help you through the recovery process. To schedule, your appointment with us call. We would like to schedule a time to discuss the merits of your case with you.
Insurance Policy Inapplicability
Some Insurance Carriers Will Simply Argue that They Don’t Cover Your Accident Rather Than Disputing Liability
A secret weapon in the insurance industry’s arsenal is a defense that we refer to as insurance policy inapplicability. In a nutshell, if the insurance carrier can allege that the actions of their driver were outside the scope of what the policy covers, then they are able to not pay you even though their driver caused the accident. This article will explain what an insurance policy is, how insurance companies can manipulate the policies, and what we can do to help. Please visit our website.
We all understand that not all insurance policies cover the same issues. For instance, if you cause a car accident, you wouldn’t expect a claim filed your home or life insurance because those two policies only cover certain situations. When an insurance carrier can argue that the scope of a policy does not include the type of situation on which your grievance is based, then you are literally barred from receiving compensation for that policy. So when a car insurance carrier can explain that the situation surrounding your accident is not covered, they are often essentially saying “sorry but you have the wrong type of coverage.”
An Example
Our firm was contacted by a woman who suffered from minor injuries in an accident when her car was sideswiped by a fellow commuter. Her claim had been denied and she contacted us hoping we could remedy the situation. She explained that the person that hit her was probably in a rush and not paying attention, but in order to make her story sound more compelling, she explained to the insurance adjuster that he hit her in a fit of road rage.
She thought this would frighten the insurance adjuster into making a quick settlement because she figured, who would want to defend someone like that. Her plan backfired and the insurance carrier denied the claim on the basis that they do not cover intentional torts (deliberate acts), the policy only covers negligence, and if he hit her on purpose the insurance policy does not apply. She admitted she exaggerated thinking would help, and since we cannot in good conscience help someone who was being dishonest we could not represent her in her case.
How Insurance Policies are Supposed to Work
As you have probably gathered insurance policies cover negligent acts that are mistakes or derive from ordinary recklessness. An insurance policy, may not apply when an insured driver is racing, either on track or street, or when the driver is driving drunk.
The Problem
Insurance carriers love nothing more than to argue that it doesn’t apply because they don’t have to argue that their driver wasn’t liable, only that his actions aren’t covered so you only have recourse against him. The problem is that insurance carriers will unfairly claim that the circumstances of your accident fall outside the scope of what their policy was designed to cover.
Our Attorney has over twenty years of experience and have dealt with literally thousands of car accident cases. We know how to deal with the insurance companies to make sure that they accept responsibility for their driver’s actions. We will help you through the entire process and deal directly with the insurance company on your behalf and get you the fair settlement that you deserve. Call today for a free consultation at
