What is a demand letter in a personal injury case?

Learn about how a demand letter is used in a personal injury case. Get answers from Personal Injury Lawyer Josh Rohrscheib. Learn out more about Personal Injury Cases → rohrscheiblaw....
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Transcript:
What is a demand letter? And how are demand letters used in personal injury cases? Hi, I'm Josh Rohrscheib. I'm a personal injury lawyer in central Illinois. And a demand letter is the letter that we send to typically the at fault party's insurance company to try to settle a case for our client. Now, we will typically wait until our client is finished treating and all of the client's damages are known, we like to wait until the clients fully recover from an injury or recover as much as they're going to recover. Then we gather all the client's medical bills and records, we gather any other evidence we might need to help us support and prove all the different damages that the client suffered. And then we'll write a letter to the insurance company and different lawyers do this differently. Different lawyers have different philosophies about demand letters. My philosophy is that we should write a very robust and comprehensive demand letter that explains first the case for liability and what happened. Next, the outlines the medical care and treatment, and the injuries that the client sustained. Next, we have a section that breaks down all of the different damages the client suffered, and we add supporting documentation for those damages. We also like to attach photographs, videos, any any kind of documentation or evidence that will help show the insurance adjuster, why it would be wise for them to make a good offer to our client, we try to, in a way empower the adjuster or provide them with as much support as we can to make it easier for them to get authority to make a good offer to our client. With that may or may not be successful that we may still end up needing to litigate the case. But the purpose of a demand letter from my point of view is to project strength. To make the best case we can for why the insurance company should offer as much money as possible to our client. And after we've explained the background of the case, the liability theory, the treatment our clients sustained and outlined all their damages. At the end of the letter, we will have a demand for money and we'll have a time limited demand for money. It's often 30 days will basically say that our client has authorized us to sell their case for X dollars. And we asked for a response within 30 days. And then typically the insurance company will respond to the demand letter which they will view as an opening offer, and they will make some kind of a counter offer. And at that point, we would typically negotiate with the insurance company to see if we can settle the case. And if we're too far apart, it's always the clients decision whether to settle the case or not. For too far apart and the insurance company stops moving. At that point, it's a client's decision about whether or not we would file a lawsuit on their behalf. Sometimes there are a few steps you can take before a lawsuit like mediation. But typically, the demand letter is a settlement offer or an attempt to resolve a personal injury case for our client. And I believe it's worth spending the time to put together a strong demand letter, because I think that can help help us obtain more value for our client and maximize the chance of getting a satisfactory recovery for a client prior to litigating the matter which can create a lot of added delay and a lot of added costs for the client. So that's what a demand letter is in a personal injury case. If you have any questions about personal injury claims in Illinois, please don't hesitate to reach out. I'd be happy to give you a free consultation and share more information and see what we can do to help you and thank you for taking the time to watch this video.