Auto insurance companies treat catastrophic injury claims very differently than claims involving minor crash injuries. The potential payouts are substantial, so insurers scrutinize every detail. It’s important to know how insurance companies view and evaluate these claims so you can take steps to protect your rights while seeking fair compensation.
At TSR Injury Law, our knowledgeable car crash lawyers in Minneapolis have seen firsthand how insurance companies operate in catastrophic injury cases. We know their tactics and case evaluation methods well. We also recognize when they’re attempting to undervalue legitimate claims. Our experienced legal team is ready to work tirelessly on your behalf to counter insurance company strategies. Our goal is simple – and it aligns with yours: Secure the full compensation you deserve.
If you’ve suffered catastrophic injuries in a Minneapolis car crash, there’s no need for you to deal with the insurance company or navigate the legal process alone. Contact us today for a free, no-risk consultation. We will review your case, answer your questions, explain how insurers are likely to view your claim, and discuss strategies to protect your rights.
Ready to get started? Call TSR Injury Law for your FREE case review: (612) TSR-TIME
How Do Insurance Companies View Catastrophic Injuries?
Insurance companies view catastrophic injuries through a financial lens, which makes sense from their perspective. Their primary goal is to protect their bottom line, and these claims represent some of an insurance company’s largest potential losses.
Here are some factors insurance companies consider when dealing with a catastrophic injury case:
- Higher Financial Risk: Catastrophic claims threaten significant losses for insurance companies.
- Greater Likelihood of Litigation: Severely injured victims almost always hire attorneys, which means they are more likely to take cases to trial.
- Complex Damage Calculations: Lifetime medical care, permanent disability, and lost earning capacity are complicated. To ensure accuracy, these cases typically involve an experienced attorney and other medical and financial experts to properly assess and evaluate.
- Regulatory Scrutiny: High-value claims attract attention from insurance regulators who monitor how companies handle large payouts.
- Potential Bad Faith Exposure: Mishandling catastrophic claims can result in punitive damages that multiply the insurer’s losses exponentially.
These factors force insurance companies to assign specialized teams, conduct thorough investigations, and implement multi-level approval processes. They’re protecting themselves against massive financial and legal exposure.
Why Do Insurance Companies Handle Catastrophic Injury Claims Differently?
A single catastrophic claim can cost millions, while typical injury claims settle for thousands. This difference in exposure changes everything about how they approach your catastrophic injury case, which is why they seek fundamentally different resources, higher levels of expertise, and increased oversight.
- Specialized Adjuster Assignment: Senior adjusters with extensive experience in complex claims take over these cases. They have higher settlement authority and report through different management chains.
- Comprehensive Investigations: Insurers hire crash reconstruction experts, medical consultants, and private investigators. They conduct surveillance and scrutinize every detail of your claim.
- Multi-Level Approval Requirements: Settlement decisions require sign-off from supervisors, legal departments, and often executive management. Single adjusters cannot authorize large payouts alone.
- Substantial Reserve Allocations: Companies must set aside significant funds and report these reserves to regulators. These financial commitments appear on balance sheets and affect corporate planning.
- Extended Claim Timelines: Catastrophic claims take months or years to resolve. Insurance companies prepare for lengthy negotiations and potential litigation from the outset.
These procedural differences mean your catastrophic injury claim will face more scrutiny, require more documentation, and take longer to resolve than standard car crash claims.
What Factors Do Insurers Consider When Evaluating Catastrophic Claims?
When evaluating catastrophic injury claims, insurance companies use a comprehensive analysis that goes far beyond reviewing medical bills. They carefully examine every aspect of your injury, treatments, and life circumstances to determine potential liability exposure. The intense scrutiny of these cases helps adjusters to identify any factor that might help them reduce their payout obligation.
- Injury Severity and Permanence: Insurers assess whether your injuries are truly permanent or if recovery is possible. They review medical records, diagnostic imaging, and physician prognoses to determine the degree of any long-term impact.
- Medical Treatment History: They scrutinize every treatment you’ve received for your injuries. This includes any gaps in care, missed appointments, or delays that might suggest injuries aren’t as severe as you claimed.
- Pre-Existing Conditions: Insurers search your medical history for any prior injuries or health issues. If they find any, they may try to attribute your current condition to pre-existing issues rather than the crash.
- Life Care Plan Requirements: They evaluate projected future medical needs, including surgeries, therapies, medications, and assistive devices. Insurance companies often challenge these projections as excessive or unnecessary.
- Lost Earning Capacity: Insurers analyze your age, education, work history, and career trajectory. They calculate your lost wages and diminished future earning potential, often hiring economists to dispute your projections.
- Quality of Life Impacts: They assess how injuries affect daily activities, relationships, and independence. Non-economic damages significantly influence settlement valuations.
- Liability Strength: Insurers evaluate fault percentages under Minnesota’s comparative negligence rules. They look for any evidence that could help them shift blame to you or other parties.
How Do Insurance Companies Try to Minimize Catastrophic Injury Payouts?
Insurance companies use many strategies to reduce what they have to pay on catastrophic injury claims. These tactics are deliberate, well-practiced, and very effective against victims who are not protected by legal representation.
These are some of the methods insurers may use to try to devalue or deny your claim:
- Surveillance Operations: Insurers may hire investigators to follow you, photograph your activities, and monitor your social media accounts. They are looking for evidence that may suggest your injuries are less severe than you claimed.
- Independent Medical Examinations (IME): Insurance companies send you to doctors they choose and pay. These physicians conduct brief exams and frequently conclude that injuries are less serious; treatment is unnecessary, or recovery prospects are better than your doctors indicate.
- Disputing Causation: Insurers may argue that your injuries resulted from a pre-existing condition or causes unrelated to the crash. If granted full access to your medical records, they will scrutinize your entire medical history looking for alternative explanations.
- Challenging Treatment Necessity: Don’t be surprised if the insurance company questions whether your surgeries, therapies, or even medications are truly required. They often try to claim treatments are experimental, excessive, or outside standard medical protocols.
- Dispute Future Care Projections: Insurance companies may dispute life care plans developed by your medical team. They hire their own experts who will of course project lower costs and shorter treatment durations.
- Early Settlement Pressure: Adjusters may attempt to make you a quick lowball offer before you fully understand your injury’s long-term impact. They know injured victims are often struggling financially, something they shamelessly exploit and hope you will accept – even when the compensation is grossly inadequate.
- Delay Tactics: Insurers drag out investigations, request excessive documentation, and postpone negotiations. They know financial pressure increases over time and it may help them to get a victim to agree to a lesser settlement.
What Role Do Insurance Company Doctors Play in Catastrophic Claims?
Insurance companies routinely require catastrophic injury victims to undergo Independent Medical Examinations. Despite the name, these exams are neither independent nor conducted for your benefit. The insurance company selects the doctor, pays their fee, and expects findings that favor their goals to diminish the value of your claim.
Insurance Companies Choose Favorable Doctors
Insurers maintain lists of physicians who consistently produce reports that help them reduce high-value, high-risk claims. Future referrals depend on providing insurance-friendly opinions.
Examinations Are Brief
IME doctors typically spend 15 to 30 minutes with you. They don’t review your complete medical history or consult with your treating physicians.
Reports Frequently Downplay Injuries
These physicians often conclude that injuries are less severe than your doctors determined. They may even try to claim that you’ve reached your maximum medical improvement (MMI), or that future treatment is unnecessary.
Findings Contradict Your Treating Doctors
The doctor who sees you once for 20 minutes will dispute conclusions from physicians who’ve treated you for months.
You Cannot Refuse to Attend
Insurance policies require cooperation with IMEs. Refusing can jeopardize your claim. However, you may be able to bring someone with you and have the exam recorded.
Their Reports Become Negotiating Tools
Insurance adjusters use IME findings to justify lower settlement offers and dispute your claim’s validity.
How We Counter Insurance Company Tactics in Catastrophic Cases
After managing countless catastrophic injury cases over the years, we are extremely familiar with how insurance companies operate.
Our approach is to dispute and neutralize their tactics while protecting your best interests and legal rights. Here are some of the steps we take to counter insurance company tactics in catastrophic injury cases:
- Strong Medical Documentation: We work with your doctors to make sure they document every critical aspect of your injuries, prognosis, and future care needs.
- Qualified Medical Experts: We retain respected physicians to counter insurance company doctors with credible, thorough opinions.
- Detailed Life Care Plans: We calculate the true cost of your lifetime medical needs, accounting for inflation and realistic care requirements.
- Accurate Economic Analysis: We hire economists and vocational experts to accurately assess and document your full lost earning capacity.
- Trial Preparation: We build every case as if it will go to trial. Insurance companies know we won’t accept inadequate settlements, which may make them more likely to negotiate a fair offer.
- IME Protection: We prepare you for insurance company medical examinations and ensure the process follows proper protocols.
Our goal is to protect your interests and secure maximum compensation for your medical costs and other current and long-term damages.
Call TSR Injury Law for Legal Help After a Minneapolis Car Crash That Caused You Catastrophic Injuries
Catastrophic injury claims are complex and challenging to navigate alone. Insurance companies have experienced teams and extensive resources working to protect their interests. You deserve the same level of representation working for you.
At TSR Injury Law, our highly qualified legal team understands how these claims work. We offer free consultations to review your case and explain your options. Contact us today. Since we take injury cases on contingency, you pay us nothing unless we recover compensation for you.
Call our Minneapolis law firm for legal help after a car crash. (612) TSR-TIME
