Car Accident Settlement Timeline

Answer:

Sometimes I’m asked by people who have very serious injuries from a car accident in Virginia, “How long is it going to take to resolve my case?” This usually means that this person has reached a point in their case where they’ve run out of patience with the delays or the ongoing course of treatment. I always tell those people that it’s very important that you be patient and allow your doctors to do their jobs, and get to completion of what we call maximum medical improvement before we try to finalize or wrap up your case through settlement or litigation. It is difficult to tell, in the most serious cases, how long it may take to resolve your case, but we never want to wrap your case up before you’ve completed treatment because there could be hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical expenses ahead that will be sacrificed if you don’t wait for a full evaluation of the extent of your injuries.Part of the recovery process that every person must go through after a car crash is to follow the protocol or the instructions and directions from your doctor. Once that process is completed, it’s relatively quick to resolve the case by simply presenting all of the medical history, and all of the ancillary losses that you’ve sustained, and put together a written package called “the demand.” Usually within 60 to 90 days of doing that, a reasonable offer is made.

In some small percentage of cases, the insurance company will try to layoff your medical history to some preexisting accident, or some other kind of condition that you have that is unrelated to the crash, and therefore they shouldn’t have to pay for it. In those cases, we have to go to litigation and present medical evidence to prove that that insurance company’s claim is bunk. It is increasingly frequent in Virginia car crash cases that insurance companies will try to play that game to minimize the value of the most serious accident cases. In those cases, it usually takes a year to three years to resolve your case. To wait that length of time means that you could recover five, ten, or even fifteen times more in the costs that are associated with your ongoing care than if you were to try to prematurely wrap up the case within six or nine months of the crash.