$2500 Offer Turns Into $100000 Policy Limit Settlement Against Allstate

In some very rare cases, there are situations where are a person injured in an accident does not feel comfortable telling their attorney about the medical treatment he or she has received following a car accident. In order to obtain maximum financial recovery following an accident, a client must disclose all medical information with their attorney. Failure to share important medical information can impact your personal injury claim by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Let’s take a look at a case in which our Sunrise car accident attorney was able to increase an initial offer from $2,500 to $100,000 based upon a client sharing all relevant information with us.

Sunrise Auto Accident Results in Severe Lower Back Injuries

Our client, a 35 year old woman, was driving in Sunrise and arrived at the intersection of Sunrise Boulevard and University Drive. Suddenly and without warning, her car was rear ended by another car at a high rate of speed causing heavy damage to the rear of the vehicle. The police arrived on the scene and issued a citation to the other driver for careless driving. Thinking she was ok, our client went home after the accident. However, a day later our client felt a sharp pain in her lower back.

Our client drove herself to a nearby hospital. The doctor at the hospital diagnosed our client with sprain/strain and ordered an MRI. The MRI taken the same day at the hospital showed multi level herniations. The hospital doctor recommended our client see an orthopedic surgeon who was also located in the hospital.

Our client saw the orthopedic surgeon located in the hospital and the surgeon recommended surgery of the lumbar spine. Our client underwent the surgery—a one level lumbar fusion of the lumbar spine at L3-L4. Fortunately, our client had Medicaid which paid for the entire surgery.

Approximately 3 months after the surgery, our client hired the Sunrise Auto Accident Attorneys Dell and Schaefer. During the interview our firm asked her if she had sought any medical treatment for the accident. Our client responded that she had not sought any medical care, but that she had some pain in her neck (not the area where she had the surgery). The client began treating with a chiropractor and after several months of chiropractic care, our client informed us that she was pain free and wanted to file the claim with the insurance company. She told us she did not see an orthopedic surgeon and she did not do an MRI. As a result our firm filed the claim with Allstate Insurance Company. The original offer was $2,500.

Sunrise Auto Accident Attorneys Dell and Schaefer Further Investigate and Discover Our Client Did Have Surgery

After the low offer of $2,500 was made by Allstate, our firm contacted our client to relay the offer. We reiterated to her how important it is to be 100% honest with us if she had any treatment during the first three months after the accident. She finally admitted that she had the surgery. Our firm requested the medical records from the surgery and re-filed the claim with Allstate Insurance. Two weeks after re-filing the claim, Allstate tendered out their policy limits of $100,000!

Our client was absolutely thrilled that she received a life changing settlement! She learned an extremely important lesson that keeping valuable information from her lawyers is a bad decision. Had she accepted the $2,500, she would have been forever barred from receiving compensation for her surgery! It would have cost her $97,500!