- so today we'rewith john kelly. john kelly is a personalinjury attorney. he's located in phoenix, arizona. today he's helping us out by answering some questions that were posted online specifically related to car accidents. if you were in a car accident, some of these questions are pretty broad in scope, so these may be applicable to you.
and if you're one of the people that asked questions, obviously you're gettingyour answer right now. in addition, john has volunteered that at the end of the video,after you watch it, if you have additional questions, you can post them in the comments, and he's actually gonna come back and answer those. so with that said, i'm gonna ask the questions directly from the web to john.
so john, the first question was from darrell. he says he was in a wreck two months ago with minor injuries, the insurance company is offering to pay him a settlement, which is covering more than his actual expenses. does he still need an attorney? - thank you, ryan, for having me have these questions. as far as darrell's concern, i get this question quite often.
someone has been negotiating with the insurance company for any particular amount of time, they may have a settlement offer made, and it may cover all their expenses, so they're wondering, do i need to hire an attorney? what the considerationsthey need to have is that insurance companies want to minimize the amount of moneythat they're paying out. so they're not necessarily gonna inform darrell
if there's any other areas of compensation that would be available to him. what isn't mentioned in his question is whether the insurance company had provided any monetary valuefor his pain and suffering. they haven't taken into consideration whether he missed work from the accident, or what other avenues inhis policy he may have, such as medical payments, what we call med pay,
or other avenues thatmay be available to him if the insurance company is either not necessarily letting him know or informing him of. so, one of the things he can do is at least have a consultation. and at the kelly law team, i always sit down with clients, i look at their policy, it's a free consultation, and i give them advice about
whether or not they could possibly do better. a lot of times they can, but sometimes i say look, you've got a good settlement here. so it never is a bad thing to at least talk to an attorney, to determine if there's more money out there available. - okay, well that makesa lot of sense actually. okay, next question was from janet. she said her car had a blow out and ended up running into a light pole.
she said no one was hurt, but she's asking if she can sue the tire manufacturer. - yeah, so, a lawsuit against a tire manufacturer, and actually, the person that sold the tire to them, also could be in play in this. and that's gonna be aproducts liability case. and there would have to be negligence on the part of either the tire manufacturer or the retailer.
but the interesting thing isthat there wasn't any injuries, so we're talking about property damage only. so there's also the consideration, if there is damage to the vehicle, if it wasn't significant damage, it may be a lot of effort to go after a tire manufacturer to get them to pay for, you know, say it was $1,000 in damage. you may have a hard time
pursuing that claim andhaving the value there. but when taking productsliability cases, i get these a lot wherethere are tire defects, and in those cases, a lot of times in truck accidents, we're looking at the manufacturer of the tire, the insurance companies are going to want to say, look, this is a maintenance issue. that tire should've been replaced
at a certain amount of miles. so we have to do a little bit of investigation. but absolutely, anytimethere's a wreck, there's always the possibility of a products liability case that kind of goes along with the personal injury case or property damage. - okay, all right, that makes sense. next question was from jim. said "my wife and i were in a car accident
"and the insurancecompany is attempting to "negotiate a settlement. "why would i need to pay an attorney?" - right, so, kind of along the same lines there. insurance companies, i've had several cases where the insurance companies will call the injured party immediately, want to get a statement, want to try to settle the claim as soon as they can.
the concerns are many there. we don't know what the extent of the damages are to the individual. how hurt they are. a lot of people don't realize, they could be in an accident, they feel okay the first day, the (audio cuts out) day iswhen they start (audio cuts out) and you need be evaluated by someone, a doctor,
to determine what the extent of their injuries are before they go and settle the claim. and the underlying thing that i'm kind of talking about already is that these insurance companies, the big insurance companies, they're there to minimize their costs. they have attorneys hired for them to try to prevent people from getting settlements,
that are, you know, of large monetary sum. so, you know, you think that your insurance company is on your side, trying to (audio cuts out) process, a lot of times they're trying to get admissions from you, trying to find ways that they can minimize the amount that they're going tohave to pay out, so it's a good idea to at least consult with an attorney
to make sure that they're negotiating fairly with you, and from there you kindof have the decision of whether to hire an attorney or to pursue this (audio cuts out.) - mm-kay. alright. let's see, next one, and youkinda touched on this slightly, but, i guess this is, bruce asked "if you handle my case, "how long would it takefor me to get paid?"
- okay, so, this is a question that i, believe it or not, get asked a lot, people want to know when they're gonna get their money from the accident. and it's understandable, they're going through a lot at the time, they're injured, they'velost, presumably, their vehicle is potentially totaled in the accident, so they need that income to be able
to get into another vehicle for transportation just to get to the doctors. and, yet alone, they need to pay their doctors, some of them, so, the settlement, actually, can take a significant amount of time, you know, and if it's minor injuries, we may be talking abouta couple of months, if it's major injuries it can be years.
a lot is driven by the actual injuries that an individual has. the good news is, is we always make sure that we get providers that would work on a lien basis, and what a lien basis means is that, there's no money out of pocket for the injured party to get that treatment. and then the provider just takes part of the settlement when it comes out.
so that can help with that time delay. once the treatment is done, usually the attorneys can work very quickly to get a settlement at that point. so it's not really on the attorney to determine how long it goes, it's actually the person who's injured, to see the extent of their damages, and one concern is,
if you try to settle the claim too quickly, you're gonna sign a release that basically says that you cannot go back after any further claims for injuries, (audio cuts out) monetary value. so you don't want to settle your claim before you know theextent of your injuries. - gotcha, okay, that makes sense. and last question we have here,
was from fan, fan asked, "i was hit by a truck last year, "and ended up in thehospital for two weeks, "and insurance covered my expenses "excluding my lost time at work. "but now i'm having back issues again. "is it possible to get these new expenses covered?" - and that kind of also, with fan, that question dovetails into
what i was justtalking about with the, settling your claim. my question for (audio cuts out) has she negotiated and settled her claim? if she has, it's very likelythat she had to sign a document that releases the insurance company from any further liability, which means that she may be out of luck. (audio cuts out)
on the other hand, if she hasn't settled that claim, if it's still an outstanding claim, and the statute of limits hasn't run, which is another issue your attorney can kind of walk you through, then there should be (audio cuts out) you should be able to get that treatment and make a claim to the insurance company, so, it should beavailable to her
depending on what state she is at through the process. - okay, and, assuming she didn't sign off an anything, i guess. ok, well, those were the questions that were posted, like i said, if anyone, if you have been in a car accident or auto accident, just post your questions below,
john has volunteered to answer these, john, is there anything else you'd like to add to that? - yeah, i'd be available to answer any further questions, any follow up questions, and broadcast again, and ryan i appreciate the opportunity to answer the questionsof your callers. thanks.
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