There are two good reasons why you will never achieve a fair injury settlement or fatality settlement from a private auto insurance company in Alberta acting for yourself without a lawyer after a motor vehicle collision.
Firstly, personal injury compensation is a complex area of law with many, “heads of damages”, depending upon the nature of your injuries. In other words, there are various types of damages you can claim in addition to the claim for pain and suffering, which, when added all together, can result in a substantially larger sum than you would expect. As well, the claim for pain and suffering itself is complex as it is based upon precedent law; and yet you will never find a previous precedent with the exact same injuries as yours. Thus the art of practicing law requires a lawyer to review your particular injuries and compare those injuries to existing precedent case law with similar, but never exactly the same injuries, to arrive at a legal opinion as to what the amount should be awarded for pain and suffering.
The second reason why you will never be able to obtain a fair injury or fatal collision settlement from the Alberta auto insurance company is because any negotiation, to be successful for both parties, requires a level playing field. Another way of saying this is that both parties must have equal power in a negotiation or else one party will be able to use their superior power to take advantage of the other party in the negotiation. This is just common sense. Remember the Alberta auto insurance company in Peace River, Alberta or anywhere else in Alberta does not act for you or have a duty to advise you as to what is a fair settlement amount.
When it comes to an automobile collision and compensation for your injuries as an unrepresented individual you are up against a private multi-million dollar auto insurance company in Alberta with unlimited resources. How are you going to make that multi-million dollar auto insurance company pay a fair amount if they are unwilling to do so? The answer is you can’t, because as an unrepresented individual you simply have no power to force that private multi-million dollar auto insurance company to pay a fair amount.
However, when you hire an injury or wrongful death lawyer the lawyer has the ability to take the case to trial and have a Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta in Edmonton or Calgary or Red Deer order, by way of granting a Judgment, the private multi-million dollar auto insurance company to pay a fair amount. It is this leverage or this power to take the case to court that gives your lawyer, and thus you, an equal playing field and thus a fair bargaining position with a multi-million dollar car insurance company.
Therefore to obtain a fair settlement you simply must obtain representation from a competent and experienced personal injury or fatal accident lawyer to force a reluctant multi-million dollar private auto insurance company – who is trying to limit expenses such as claim payouts – to pay a fair amount to you through your lawyer.
Yes this will cost you money as you have to pay your lawyer, but the increased settlement amount will more than off-set the legal fees. Indeed, our firm has never had a case where our client, after trying to settle the case themselves, has ended up with less even after paying our contingency fee amount. Our firm obtains exceptional results with the most difficult cases and those results directly benefit you in a personal injury or fatal collision case.
