As if being injured in a car wreck isn’t bad enough, now you are bombarded with medical appointments and bills, needing time off work, enduring daily pain, needing a rental car, and so many other stresses. It’s just too hard! Trust me, we get it. No one ever wants to go through a situation like this, and that is why we do what we do—to help you get through it. At Queener Law we take care of the communications with insurance companies, juggling health insurance and liens, and negotiating your best available settlement amount while you focus on what is most important: your recovery.
If you’ve never experienced a situation like this and you are overwhelmed and scared, that’s ok! We are here to help. We can break down the steps of the process for you along the way.
What happens first?
Once you hire us to represent you, we immediately hit the road running. All involved insurance carriers receive letters of representation from us directing them to provide our office with the policy and limits information and preserve any and all evidence. What is the best part of this? We also direct them not to contact you. Let us deal with the insurance company while you rest and take care of your injuries.
Then what?
What happens next depends on your treatment plan. You keep us up to date with your appointments, and when you have completed treatment, we will request your complete files from your medical providers. Once everything is in, we create a demand package including a summary every appointment you attended, out-of-pocket expenses, medical bill ledger, mileage reimbursement, and a thorough description of the impact this incident made on your lifestyle. We want to make you a human in the eyes of the insurance adjuster, not just a run-of-the-mill claim number.
Once the demand package has been submitted and the insurance adjuster has had time to review it, negotiations begin. We will keep you updated with the offer amounts and explain what that number means for your in-pocket amount. With your permission, we continue negotiating until we have the absolute maximum offer possible for your claim! A few signatures here and there, and you’ve got yourself a deal.
How much is my case worth?
We frequently get asked at the beginning of cases: How much is my case worth? How long will my case take? These are very open-ended questions, and all vary on a case-by-case basis. Some factors that go into the value of a car wreck case are: seriousness of injuries, liability, cost of medical treatment, permanency, and of course, the insurance policy limits. It is in your best interest to not begin negotiations until after your treatment has been completed and all the medical records and bills are in. Insurance companies prefer to see treatment records and bills rather than recommendations for treatment. Unfortunately, this sometimes puts us at the mercy of the medical providers when it comes to a time frame. Our job is to do what is in your best interest, and that means not sending out your demand package until everything is in.
We know that this is not a fun process for you, but we do our best to make it as easy as possible. We will do our best to expedite this process as much as possible but will always keep your best interest first and foremost so all you have to worry about is healing, recovering, and getting back to normal life!
To car insurance companies, it makes more business sense to pay out a minimal settlement amount rather than work with you to resolve your claim. Insurance adjusters may try to coax car wreck victims into settling their claims quickly with low-ball offers or quick checks. Having your claim open costs the insurance company time and money. Bottom line: Don’t fall for a quick check from your insurance company. It may cost you later.
Unfortunately, what most car wreck victims don’t understand is this:
When car wreck victims sign a quick check, they have entered a binding contract representing themselves. They have settled both their bodily injury and property damage claim for one lump sum.
Often, car wreck victims will start seeing unresolved issues, like unpaid medical bills. They may begin to receive collection notices for past medical bills for which they are responsible. Their health insurance company may refuse to pay due to injuries sustained in a car wreck. Their medical treatment may be more intensive than initially thought.
When car wreck victims represent themselves, they may find themselves in a trap they didn’t know existed with car insurance companies. Even a minor accident with minor injuries can result in a financial downfall when uninformed decisions are made. Hiring a personal injury lawyer like Henry Queener will ensure that car wreck victims get the best outcome. Let our highly experienced legal team work for you while you focus on recovering.
Contact Queener Law today for a free consultation.
Hiring a Personal Injury Attorney After a Car Wreck
How Much Does It Cost?
Hiring a personal injury attorney after a car wreck should be the first thing you do. With Queener Law, you’ve got a great team who’s going to work for your best interest against the insurance company. When we take your case, we handle everything. We gather evidence and hire experts to prove your case. When finish your medical treatment, we gather medical records and bills to submit to the insurance company.
Don’t try to figure out the rules of the crazy insurance game by yourself when you can have a team of professionals that know how these insurance companies work.
All you need to do is focus on your medical care so that you can get back to where you were before the car wreck happened. Hiring Queener Law after a car wreck allows you to not worry about dealing with lost future earning capacity or the reduced ability to earn a living for yourself and your family. Remember, the insurance adjuster only wants to close your claim as quickly and cheaply as possible. This could be very detrimental to your physical, mental and financial health.
Leave it to Queener Law to play the car wreck game and take care of the insurance companies for you.
We work on a contingency basis, meaning that we handle all the upfront costs and only get paid when you receive a settlement. This depends on the amount of the settlement and case expenses. Contact us today for a free case evaluation and with any question.
Distracted driving has become an epidemic across the country with Tennessee leading this unfavorable distinction. A recent study identified Tennessee as having the highest rate of distracted driving deaths in the nation, suffering nearly five times the national average of collisions due to distraction. Even with fewer drivers on the road during the Covid-19 pandemic, Tennessee reported over 9,000 distracted driving accidents. Distracted driving is not only texting while driving. It could also be setting your GPS, talking on your phone, eating or even applying makeup. Any activity behind that wheel that takes your attention away from driving is a distraction. A two second text could result in a serious crash causing injuries and fatalities. April has been designated Distracted Driving Awareness Month. It’s a great opportunity to take a minute to evaluate our driving choices and responsibilities. NHTSA has provided drivers with helpful tips listed below.
Tips to Avoid Distracted Driving
Need to send a text? Pull over and park your car in a safe location. Only then is it safe to send or read a text.
Designate your passenger as your “designated texter.” Allow them access to your phone to respond to calls or messages.
Do not scroll through apps, including social media, while driving. Cell phone use can be habit-forming. Struggling to not text and drive? Put the cell phone in the trunk, glove box, or back seat of the vehicle until you arrive at your destination.
Tennessee Law
Tennessee has taken steps to educate drivers and curb distracted driving by passing legislation in 2019 called the “Hands Free Law”. According to Public Chapter No. 412, it is illegal for a driver to:
(a) hold a cellphone or mobile device with any part of their body
(b) write, send, or read any text-based communication
(c) reach for a cellphone or mobile device in a manner that requires the driver to no longer be in a seated driving position or properly restrained by a seat belt
(d) watch a video or movie on a cellphone or mobile device
(e) record or broadcast video on a cellphone or mobile device
Texting while driving is considered a “primary” offense in Tennessee, meaning law enforcement officers can pull you over without having to witness any other violation if they see you texting. Furthermore, the Department of Safety and Homeland Security has stated that the District Attorney’s Office has the authority to check phone records if distracted driving is suspected after a serious injury or fatal crash. Distracted driving is dangerous, irresponsible and most importantly, preventable. The consequences can be deadly or leave those involved with serious lifelong injuries to deal with. If you were hurt in a crash by a distracted driver, you may be eligible for financial compensation. Contact our office for a free consultation or live chat with us today.
You have just been rear ended by a distracted driver. Your injuries are typical with this type of wreck and you seek medical attention. Fast forward a few days, you start to get phone calls from the at-fault driver’s insurance company offering you a check. You just need to sign a release. What do you do? Take the money? The offer is pretty good and the holidays are just right around the corner… Attorney Henry Queener recently took on a seemingly simple case that went downhill fairly quickly. In the beginning, the client felt competent enough to deal with the insurance company on her own. This is a common mistake that we see quite often at Queener Law. Below is just one example of how “representing” yourself can go wrong.
Case in Point:
“We recently had a very nice lady call our office for help. She was concerned because the deadline for filing paperwork in the courthouse, also known as a statute of limitations, was only one month away. A heating and air-conditioning company truck had rear ended her at a stoplight. This particular business’s insurance company was offering her $25,000 and was really starting to hound her with phone calls, begging her to take the check. She was starting to feel uneasy. She finally called us wanting to know what her case was worth. Should she just take the $25,000 or hire an attorney? I explained to her that first and foremost, we needed to know the total of all the medical services she has received. She did not know, but she had a guess.
I then asked her who had been paying for the medical care she had been receiving. She told me that the at-fault driver‘s insurance company had used $5000 they had available for medical payments and then her own auto insurance volunteered to use $5000. After that Tricare, which is health insurance for those who have been in the military, and Medicare started paying for her medical care. Boy, was she surprised by what I told her next. I explained that she would have to open an account with both Tricare and Medicare to find out exactly how much they had paid out. By accepting the settlement money from the heating and air-conditioning‘s insurance company (you know, the quick check) she would automatically become obligated to pay Tricare and Medicare back. (Most likely this would eat up the initial offer of $25,000. What about future medical costs, loss of earnings, pain and suffering?)
She then had a dawning of realization. She had been getting letters from Medicare asking about the status of her settlement and did not really understand why she was getting them. Now she understood and it was so clear to her! Medicare was asking about the status of her settlement because Medicare was expecting payment out of her settlement. I then told her the news is worse than that. Her own auto insurance company did not do her any favors by using its $5000 for medical payments. Under Tennessee law, she has to pay them back too. She would’ve been better off if her auto insurance had never paid anything at all! She began to realize that she should have hired an attorney earlier in the process. AND, this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are several other things that have occurred in her case that are not helpful.
Unfortunately, insurance companies ARE NOT obligated to work together for your best outcome. Furthermore, many insurance agents and insurance adjusters often have a very poor understanding of insurance law and even their own insurance policies. She has now hired us. We are diligently working for our client, so that when her case is settled, it will be her money free and clear.” If you are ever faced with the aftermath of an accident, DO NOT attempt to deal with an insurance company alone. Your job is to focus on your recovery, our job is to deal with the insurance companies. Let Queener Law work for you. Contact us for a free case evaluation.
Over the years, Queener Law has been trusted to work with brain injury survivors across the country. The Queener Law family has our own personal experience with brain injuries, and we have felt our own great losses and fought through our own great survivals. We understand what it means to have your life forever changed in an instant by a head injury. We also know what it means to feel like no one understands. For brain injury survivors who are suffering because of the negligence caused by someone else there are two major phases of understanding beyond the hurdle that all head trauma survivors face – relearning your life with your family and friends. For victims of negligence, you also have to compete with the medical treatment phase and the litigation phase.
Phase 1: Medical Treatment Phase
You know your body better than anyone. Even doctors. Doctors may have a list of letters after their names, and they may be at the top of their fields. But unless they are specifically trained and experienced in working with brain trauma, no matter how hard they try, they just won’t get it. They can run every test in the world, prescribe every anti-anxiety or anti-depressant medication, send you to therapist after therapist, or tell you to get more rest. And all of those things may take the edge off. But does that make you feel like you again? You need a specialist. You need someone who will listen. And someone who will understand. You need help finding the right medical team that can hear what you describe and allow it to set off light bulbs in their minds from their experience. You need the team that is equipped with the latest technologies, therapies, and treatments for the specific trauma you have – a team who will treat the injury, not the symptoms.
Specialists in traumatic brain injuries should also know that you are not the only person they should hear from. Sometimes you don’t even know how to articulate what’s going on or how you have changed since your injury. True brain injury specialists know that they must also reach out to your family, your friends, your coworkers, even your favorite coffee barista or mail carrier to get a full and complete picture of the uniqueness of your life. Only then can they craft the proper treatment plan for you.
Phase Two: Litigation
The second, and often most trying phase, negligence victims face is the litigation phase. Think about how difficult it is to get through to your family, friends, and physicians about your injuries. Now try to express how you feel to a suit hired by the person who is trying not to be held accountable. Or to a box full of strangers you are asking to award you money for all you have gone through and the fight you have ahead of you. It cannot be understated the importance of having a team behind you who has learned through experience how to articulate to the opposition the concrete changes you have experienced, to paint a clear picture of what your life used to look like and hang it next to one of what it looks like now.
Queener Law has decades of experience working with families as they navigate this phase. We have helped them find the right medical teams and helped them learn how to express themselves to their community in a way that sets them up for the compensation they require to face their future. We have also faced these same phases in our own lives. There is no part of this process that we have not experienced on a personal level ourselves. What makes us uniquely capable of working with brain injury survivors is that we live amongst them every day. Some of us grew up with them, some of us are growing and learning with them now. We will not ask you do to anything alone, and we will not recommend to you anything we have not experienced ourselves. You are a negligence victim and a brain injury survivor. Let us help you become a survivor of both.
