By: Russell Keener  —  August 2, 2011
 

There are three key ways to be pre­pared to max­i­mize your per­sonal injury claim or work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claim in Geor­gia. First, there is what I’ll call “finan­cial prepa­ra­tion.” Sec­ond, what I’ll call “cov­er­age prepa­ra­tion.” Third, what I’ll call “legal prepa­ra­tion.” I will dis­cuss each of these in turn below.

Be Finan­cially Pre­pared to Max­i­mize Your Per­sonal Injury or Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Claim

Insur­ance com­pa­nies are increas­ingly trend­ing toward the tac­tics of “deny, delay, and defend” in han­dling injury claims. That is, deny lia­bil­ity, delay rea­son­able pay­ments for dam­ages, and then vig­or­ously defend against the inevitable law­suits that are filed due to their tac­tics. Their goal is to make more money for their share­hold­ers and investors by pay­ing out less to injury vic­tims — even if it means delay­ing or deny­ing pay­ment to those with legit­i­mate claims for insur­ance proceeds.

When an indi­vid­ual suf­fers a seri­ous injury, he or she will have lots of new and unex­pected expenses at the same time he or she also suf­fers a loss of earn­ings. It is a vicious double-whammy. The fol­low­ing are exam­ples of finan­cial chal­lenges that often befall per­sonal injury victims:

• Lost time from work
• Med­ical bills
• Deductibles and/or co-pays
• Car rental and/or other travel expenses
• Nor­mal liv­ing expenses remain con­stant, includ­ing reg­u­lar bills like tele­phone, util­i­ties, rent or mort­gage pay­ments, car payments
• Penal­ties, such as inter­est and attorney’s fees added onto unpaid bills
• Evic­tion or fore­clo­sure, mov­ing expenses and dis­rup­tion in liv­ing arrangements

These finan­cial chal­lenges can be very seri­ous for injury vic­tims and their fam­i­lies. Insur­ance com­pa­nies know this. Thus, they may seek to string along an injury vic­tim as long as pos­si­ble in order to allow the weight of the finan­cial bur­den of injury to coerce the vic­tim to accept an insult­ingly low set­tle­ment offer.

Geor­gia Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Act Encour­ages Quick Set­tle­ment of Work­ers’ Comp Claims

For those who have suf­fered work injuries in Geor­gia, there are three major, addi­tional chal­lenges pre­sented by the pecu­liar­i­ties of the Geor­gia Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Act.

1. First, if you have been injured on the job in Geor­gia, you must wait a full seven days before you are eli­gi­ble for “indem­nity ben­e­fits.” Indem­nity ben­e­fits are those ben­e­fits paid to an injured employee to cover a por­tion of that employee’s lost income while he or she is out of work. Georgia’s seven-day wait­ing period for the com­mence­ment of indem­nity ben­e­fits is the longest wait­ing period in the United States as of May 2011.
2. Sec­ond, if you have suf­fered a Geor­gia work injury, the amount of your ben­e­fits is “capped” by Geor­gia law at $500 per week, no mat­ter how much you earned before the injury. This amount is among the low­est in the nation, as it places Geor­gia within just the 25^th per­centile of all states’ ben­e­fit caps.
3. Third, Geor­gia work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claimants also face a limit on how long they can receive ben­e­fits. In Geor­gia, ben­e­fits expire after 350–400 weeks. Many states place no cap at all on the length of time ben­e­fits may be payable to an injured worker.

Because of these finan­cial issues and the insur­ance industry’s tac­tics, one of the best ways to max­i­mize the value of a per­sonal injury or work­ers’ com­pen­sa­tion claim is to be finan­cially pre­pared for a cat­a­strophic event. Unfor­tu­nately, many Amer­i­cans — as many as 6 out of 10 by some accounts — live “pay­check to pay­check.” Nearly half of Amer­i­can house­holds do not even have one month’s expenses saved for emer­gen­cies. Of those, nearly one in five house­holds do not have suf­fi­cient reserves to cover even two weeks’ expenses. Source: The 2010 MetLife Study of the Amer­i­can Dream.

A May 2011 report by the Fed­eral Reserve esti­mated the num­ber of US house­holds car­ry­ing credit card debt at 54 mil­lion house­holds. Of those, the aver­age amount of debt is $14,743. Source: Creditcards.com.

Experts rec­om­mend that indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies have at least three to six months worth of liv­ing expenses reserved as their per­ma­nent sav­ings. If putting that much money away into sav­ings is not fea­si­ble right now (it usu­ally isn’t), then an emer­gency fund of $1,000 to $2,000 is bet­ter than noth­ing. Source: Michael Farnsworth, The Emer­gency Fund, Money Mus­ings Blog.

Once you have been injured, you will be sur­prised at how quickly your out-of-pocket costs can mount. Hav­ing a small reserve of cash or sav­ings avail­able may be an impor­tant fac­tor in weath­er­ing the ini­tial storm that inevitably results for vic­tims of per­sonal injuries and work accidents.

Have Suf­fi­cient Insur­ance Cov­er­age to Max­i­mize Your Per­sonal Injury Recovery

Besides finan­cial pre­pared­ness, an indi­vid­ual may pro­tect his or her­self and his or her fam­ily from finan­cial ruin in an acci­dent by plan­ning out insur­ance cov­er­age. Often, cer­tain add-on cov­er­ages can turn out to be sur­pris­ingly affordable.

Med­ical Pay­ments (“Med Pay”) Coverage

Gen­er­ally, you may pur­chase med pay cov­er­age as an added cov­er­age when­ever you pur­chase an insur­ance pol­icy for a vehi­cle you own, such as a car, truck, boat, or motor­cy­cle. In the event you have been injured, you may be able to use this cov­er­age in lieu of — or in addi­tion to — your health insur­ance or pay­ing cash out of pocket. Typ­i­cal lim­its of med pay cov­er­age may be $1,000 or $2,000 for a small pol­icy, or $5,000 or $10,000 for a more sub­stan­tial pol­icy. Accord­ing to insur­ance agent, Tommy Schlosser,

The cost of med­ical expense cov­er­age varies depend­ing on a mul­ti­tude of fac­tors which include; the amount of cov­er­age, the type and loca­tion of the vehi­cle, the customer’s dri­ving his­tory, credit his­tory, and dis­counts. At Amer­i­can Fam­ily Insur­ance, an Atlanta dri­ver of a 2007 sedan, with a good dri­ving and aver­age credit his­tory, can add med­ical expense to their auto pol­icy with $2,000 of cov­er­age for approx­i­mately $26 per six months. For a for­mal quote please con­tact your insur­ance agent for spe­cific costs.

Med pay cov­er­age is quite afford­able and can prove to be invalu­able in case of an injury.

Unin­sured / Under­in­sured Motorist (“UM”) Coverage

Like med pay cov­er­age, UM cov­er­age is an added cov­er­age to vehi­cle lia­bil­ity cov­er­ages. How­ever, unlike med pay, the driver’s insur­ance com­pany must offer him or her UM cov­er­age. UM cov­er­age applies when any of the fol­low­ing is true:

(1) A dri­ver causes a col­li­sion in which you are injured and flees the scene before being iden­ti­fied.
(2) A dri­ver with absolutely no insur­ance cov­er­age causes a crash in which you are injured.
(3) A dri­ver with with some amount of insur­ance cov­er­age causes an acci­dent in which you are injured and your med­ical bills, lost wages, and other dam­ages exceed the amount of his or her insur­ance pol­icy limits.

To pro­tect one­self and his or her loved ones, every dri­ver should con­sider obtain­ing the “add on” UM cov­er­age — and specif­i­cally the non-traditional “stack­able” type. By law, the insur­ance com­pany can­not increase a driver’s rates for using UM coverage.

Rental Car Coverage

One sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge many peo­ple face after their car has been totaled or dam­aged to the point it requires exten­sive repairs is trans­porta­tion. The at-fault driver’s insur­ance com­pany may take days or even weeks to decide whether they will take respon­si­bil­ity for the dam­age. Dur­ing that period, the injured per­son may be seri­ously incon­ve­nienced by being left with­out a car. Insur­ance agent, Tommy Schlosser writes:

Com­ing from the Car Rental indus­try I can say that peo­ple should really con­sider rental car cov­er­age. Do not get sold on a pol­icy that cov­ers less than $30 a day. You would need even more if you need some­thing like a mini-van or truck. With Amer­i­can Fam­ily add-on cov­er­age for a rental vehi­cle gen­er­ally cost less than $5 a month.

In sum, often these add-on vehi­cle cov­er­ages are avail­able for rates of just a few dol­lars a month. This is a small price to pay for the knowl­edge that you will be able to weather the ter­ri­ble finan­cial storm that can arise imme­di­ately after an accident.

Regard­ing insur­ance cov­er­age, Edmunds.com offers this good advice:

Know What Your Insur­ance Cov­ers. The whole insur­ance process will be eas­ier fol­low­ing your acci­dent if you know the details of your cov­er­age. For exam­ple, don’t wait until after an acci­dent to find out that your pol­icy doesn’t auto­mat­i­cally cover costs for tow­ing or a replace­ment rental car. Check your pol­icy for specifics.

Short-Term Dis­abil­ity Insurance

Dis­abil­ity insur­ance pur­chased through an employer or in an indi­vid­ual plan may prove help­ful in the case of seri­ous injury.

[O]ne third of all Amer­i­cans between the ages 35 and 65 will become dis­abled for more than 90 days…The loss of income can be so dev­as­tat­ing that it forces some peo­ple to fore­close on their home or even declare bankruptcy…Disability insur­ance replaces a por­tion of your income if you become dis­abled and are no longer able to work.

Source: Stacey Brad­ford, Do You Need Dis­abil­ity Insur­ance?, SmartMoney.com, Apr. 19, 2005.

These are a few of the ways you can be pre­pared, in terms of finances and cov­er­age, for the unfor­tu­nate cir­cum­stances of an injury. What­ever your lev­els pre­pared­ness in those areas, do not over­look the impor­tance of receiv­ing timely, per­son­al­ized legal advice soon after suf­fer­ing an injury. This leads in to the third area of pre­pared­ness for an acci­dent or injury:

Be Legally Pre­pared to Max­i­mize Your Per­sonal Injury or Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Claim

Even if you are not as well-prepared finan­cially or insur­ance coverage-wise for an injury, you can still obtain good legal advice and pro­ceed with con­fi­dence to max­i­mize recov­ery on your injury claim in Geor­gia. If you have been injured on the premises of a busi­ness, in a car acci­dent, or on-the-job, you need to hire a Geor­gia attor­ney to assist you in max­i­miz­ing the value of your claim.

Insur­ance adjusters have exten­sive train­ing in how to reduce com­pen­sa­tion to injured peo­ple. They have man­u­als that are lit­er­ally hun­dreds of pages long and filled with infor­ma­tion on how to reduce com­pen­sa­tion paid to injury vic­tims. They have lawyers on retainer, ready to advise them on how to pay less to some­one who has been injured. They have expe­ri­ence with prior claims, so they can reduce ben­e­fits on the next claim that comes across their desk.

The deck is stacked against the injury vic­tim. The indi­vid­ual who is hurt on the job or in some other acci­dent has prob­a­bly never dealt with the claims sys­tem before. He or she doesn’t have a man­ual of tips or tricks. He or she has no train­ing in the intri­cate work­ings of Title 51 of the Geor­gia Code or the Geor­gia Work­ers’ Com­pen­sa­tion Act.

For more dis­cus­sion on this topic and even some insur­ance claims hor­ror sto­ries, read our recent arti­cle Why You Need an Attor­ney if You Have Been Injured.

Pre­pare now for an unex­pected injury by putting the busi­ness card of a com­pe­tent Geor­gia per­sonal injury attor­ney in your wal­let or purse. Book­mark the web­site of a knowl­edge­able per­sonal injury firm. Oth­er­wise save the con­tact infor­ma­tion of an expe­ri­enced per­sonal injury lawyer — in the hope that you will never have to use it.

Atlanta Per­sonal Injury Lawyers

For more than 20 years, the Acci­dent and Injury Lawyers at the Keener Law Firm have focused their prac­tice on rep­re­sent­ing indi­vid­u­als and fam­i­lies cat­a­stroph­i­cally injured or killed in all types of injury inci­dents, includ­ing auto acci­dents, motor­cy­cle acci­dents, truck­ing acci­dents, wrong­ful death, work injuries, elder abuse and neglect, mis­filled pre­scrip­tions, child day­care injuries, nurs­ing home falls, bed­sores and infec­tions, slip and falls due to dan­ger­ous con­di­tions in busi­nesses, food poi­son­ing, DUI acci­dents, con­struc­tion acci­dents, prop­erty dam­age, worker’s com­pen­sa­tion, mal­prac­tice mat­ters, and insur­ance bad faith.

Aggres­sively Han­dling Injury Cases in Atlanta and Through­out Georgia

We rep­re­sent per­sonal injury and wrong­ful death vic­tims and their fam­i­lies through­out Geor­gia in Alpharetta, Atlanta, Can­ton, Cham­blee, Chat­ta­hoochee Hills, Clark­ston, Col­lege Park, Dal­las, Dal­ton, Decatur, Dorav­ille, Dou­glasville, Dun­woody, East Point, Fair­burn, For­est Park, Franklin­ton, Grif­fin, Hapeville, Johns Creek, Jones­boro, Lake City, Litho­nia, Lizella, Love­joy, Macon, Mari­etta, Mil­ton, Mor­row, Moun­tain Park, Nor­cross, Pal­metto, Payne, Pine Lake, Riverdale, Rome, Roswell, Sandy Springs, Sof­kee, Stone Moun­tain, Tucker, Union City, Walden, and Wood­stock, Georgia.

Call toll free at (800) 900‑2400 or locally at (770) 955‑3000 for an absolutely free and com­pletely con­fi­den­tial consultation.