Car Accident in 2007 - Ogden,UT

Depending on what state you were in while having your accident will have a lot to do with what you might be entitled to. I would do some more research. Your attorney should know the limits on the other party's insurance policy. Did you have medical payments (or some equivalent in your state) or underinsured motorist coverage on your policy? If you haven't filed with your insurance, you may be too late for any coverage you might be entitled to from them. I would call your company immediately and find out your options. If the other party doesn't have large limits on their policy, you might be out of luck. The insurance company may be offering policy limits already and then you would have to go after the other party in court which would be an even longer process. If the other party has large limits, such as $100,000, then you might want to consider holding out for more. If the state where you had your accident has no limits on medical payments by the person that hit you, you definitely want to have your attorney push for more. It's hard to determine the best course of action without knowing more about the insurance side of it. I definitely think your injuries have merit, but time wise and policy wise, you might be getting the best offer you can. Also, your attorney should be able to find similar cases and get a reasonable expectation of what you are entitled to. Have you spoken to him/her after seeing more doctors? Sounds like your attorney should be doing more legwork, especially since they're going to be getting a lot of that money.

Everyone's case is different. I'm not just saying that either, it really is. The "worth" of your case fluctuates with the circumstances and I promise you there isn't a magic formula used. Some people believe that they are entitled to 2-3x their medical expenses, this is not the rule of thumb. Settlements depend on a lot of things: the venue, the circumstances surrounding the accident (DUI, comparative negligence, etc), pre-existing or aggravated injuries, marital status, and most importantly, the policy limit of the person at fault. You can not recover more from the person than the policy limit (unless a legal issue prevails), so if the person only has 30k in limits and they have offered you 27k, there is not much more room to go higher. However, if there limit is 100k, there's more room. Your attorney might know, but highly doubt it as most states do not require insurance companies to release that information. The insurance company would as a courtesy, however, inform your attorney that you should file an underinsured motorist claim on your own policy if they felt that the exposure was greater than the policy limits they were working with. If your attorney has not put your insurance company on notice, you can be assured that either the person has high limits and/or the insurance company feels they can handle your claim with what they have.

I don't know all of your medical history, but just on the surface, I would imagine the insurance company will be questioning the "delay" in care and surgery. Not saying it wasn't warranted, but your attorney should be working like a dog to gather all of your medical records to support causation. "Typically" when it comes to shoulder/clavicle and even rib injuries, there isn't much that can be done. However, I know this isn't always the case. But I am almost certain that the "delay" and the changing of careers will have an impact on how much they consider as reasonable. And after all of this, your attorney is probably going to take a good chunk of it (usually 33%) - make sure you check your contract and consider that as a factor.

Your attorney is really the only one that can advise you on this. My husband was in an accident, as a passenger, in 2009. The first thing we did was get an attorney and the first thing they did was send a cease & desist notice to the insurance company. Any and all correspondence from the insurance company was to go through our attorney. If we had accepted their offer, the case would have been over. The best thing you can do is sit with your attorney & have them help you figure out how much further you want to go. Good luck.

Call your attorney and your insurance agent. The insurance agent may know a lot about the accident and what you are entitled too. They usually can tell me almost to the dollar when I have a claim, even if it goes to court.

Well, I hope it's a lot. Ow.