Civil Injury Lawsuits Can Take Many Curious Twists and Turns
Once the investigation of all liable parties and their solvency is done, it’s time to begin your quest for compensation. Your attorney usually kicks it off by filing any and all appropriate legal claims with each non-subscribing employer, or third-party defendant on your behalf. They allege that defendant(s) negligence led to an injury that harmed you and are owed damages. It will include the damage amount expected of each defendant.
Defendants with insurance underwriters will immediately dispute your allegations without consideration because that’s what insurance companies do. But some might submit a very low counter offer just to find out how serious you are, or in the hope that you’ll take this small amount of money and go away. You and your drilling accident lawyer have entered the “negotiation phase” of your case. It’s possible it will produce an acceptable settlement for you, especially if the insurance company fears your very strong case. But your petroleum job injury claim will most likely be contested, which means you must seek legal relief in court through a lawsuit. The burden of proof is yours and your attorney’s against that defendant(s) negligence. Here is where the strength of your case lies in the quality of your lawyer’s investigative powers and ability to persuade a civil jury.
Sometimes an employer or third-party defendant’s insurance carriers will firmly oppose paying your injury claim, even if the defendants want them to. These insurance companies want to protect their money and strong-arm them into standing firmly against you. Many times they’ll threaten their liable policyholders with higher premiums if they want to pay your damages. The simple reason for this is that insurance companies hate paying claims. In order to resist that, they will exert undue pressure on their defendants to behave as belligerently toward your claim as the insurers do.
When it comes to denying your damage claims in court, the insurance companies’ lawyers use a customary defense of personal injury law. That primary strategy is to charge the plaintiff with sole proximate cause. This means the victim is the only responsible party for his drilling or pipeline injuries and no one else had a hand in the mishap. In order to invoke the sole proximate cause defense, the defendants say and do anything in order to reinforce their claim that you were careless or irresponsible and caused your own injuries. They’ll soil your reputation as a worker to make their point. They may call you a drug addict or a drunk, even if it’s not true. They try to enter evidence that has no bearing on the case to confuse the jury. Insurance companies are very experienced in fighting claims, and their attorneys are very sharp in carrying their fight into the courtroom. So you must expect any and every trick short of their breaking the law that they can come up with to change the argument and shift the liability spotlight away from their side.
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