Q: Settlement Question
I received a demand amount figure from my attorney for my case that we will be asking for. Which is 250K. But, we tried settling a couple years ago. In which we demanded for 275K. Im just curious to know why, we'd be asking for less now. I was hoping we'd be asking for more. For more negotiation room. Plus for all the more added hardship's i've endured, since the last time we tried settling 2 years ago. Thank you.
A: you will pay your lawyer over $30,000 so you REALLY NEED to insist this person explain very clearly why she is no longer insisting on the $275,000. If you do not get an explanation you can understand clearly, do not be embarrassed, tell the lawyer you do not understand her words and that she must use different words you can understand, or you will be obtaining a lawyer who DOES use terms you can fully understand. YOU GET ZERO, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING for enduring hardships. THAT should have been reviewed by the attorney at the outset; workers comp has no 'pain & suffering'. Workers comp provides a little reimbursement for inability to complete Activities of Daily Living and job performance. So if you tell the doctors you can bathe yourself, clothe yourself, go upstairs, do all the housework, do all the shopping and food prep, do all the cleaning and the laundry but you are in horrific unbearable pain, YOU GET ZERO. A Demand (by you and your lawyer) or an Offer (by the insurer) can go way down when a doctor writes that you won't need much future medical treatment or that you can no longer benefit from surgery or that most of what is wrong now is not related to the work injury but is instead the result of non-work related deteriorating (and nobody took the doctor's deposition to get him to change his mind). FROM THIS fact pattern, it is completely impossible to tell why YOUR demand was cut nearly 10%.
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