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If a car accident case is settled out of court, the amount of the settlement and case details are not public record. Most car accident claims are settled out of court, so odds are that your case is not public record.  However, cases arise where the plaintiff and defendant ca ot agree on a settlement, and the case goes to court. If you file a personal injury lawsuit in court and the case is decided by a judge or jury, the results ARE public record.  Whether the result of your case will be private or public record can be a factor when you are thinking about settling or filing a lawsuit. Most insurance companies and plaintiffs want to settle out of court. This can happen in arbitration or mediation, rather than going to court because more flexibility is allowed and costs less. Settling also keeps your name out of the public record.  Your attorney can advise you on whether to file a lawsuit or not. If you want to keep the details of the case and settlement private, filing a lawsuit may not be a good choice for you. Your attorney also can rely on his previous litigation in car accidents and determine whether it is likely you could prevail in a trial. 

While individual states may differ slightly in terms of tort laws governing negligence and personal injury claims such as those stemming from auto accidents, generally speaking any state will award reasonable settlements based on evidence presented in court by both parties demonstrating their losses due negligence or other wrongful conduct by another party following an auto collision. However some states do have partial fault and comparitive negligence laws in place, meaning if fault is questionable or shared by multiple parties involved in the crash, you may be entitled to much less car accident compensation, or possibly even none at all. 

The simple as yes, you can negotiate a car accident settlement. In fact, most car accident injury lawsuits are settled by the parties before a trial is held. Only a small fraction of court cases ever go before a jury. Instead, the parties to the case most often agree to settle the case and avoid the need for a jury trial. In most cases, an insurance company can save thousands of dollars by negotiating a settlement to a car accident case, rather than going to trial and letting a judge or jury decide how much an injured party should get. For an injured party, negotiating a car accident settlement can provide a faster way to receive financial compensation they are entitled to without risking a long and expensive trial, which may not come out in their favor. For these reasons, negotiating a car accident settlement is a common practice. Negotiating your car accident settlement may be common, but it can be complicated. Most of the time, you’ll want a qualified motor vehicle accident attorney on your side, helping make sure that your legal rights are upheld while you negotiate your car accident settlement. Your attorney can help make sure that you are fairly compensated for your injuries, including medical bills, lost wages, pain and suffering and other damages. 

Having pre-existing injuries can make collecting a car accident settlement tricky, and in some cases can really hurt your chances at getting enough compensation to cover your medical bills. The key questions to ask here are:

1. What was the scope and location of the pre-existing injuries?
2. What was the location and scope of the new injuries caused by the car accident?

As a general rule, if the injuries that pre-dated the crash were not made worse, don’t expect to be compensated for those injuries. If there are new injuries in the same area as the existing ones, you’ll need to prove that they were not there prior to the crash for them to be included in the car accident settlement offer. However, as with most things involving auto accident law, this is not a black and white issue. In some cases, it may be possible for an injured party whose pre-existing condition was worsened or prolonged as the result of an accident to claim compensation for the degree which the pre-existing condition was made worse as a result of the accident.

How your car accident settlement will be paid out depends in part on the status of the other driver who hit you. If the person you are settling with is uninsured, make sure your agreement is in writing and signed by both parties, not just a verbal agreement between you and the other driver, which may not stand up in court. Depending on the laws in your state, you may be able to file a lien on the at-fault party’s property or pursue a judgment against the driver either through small claims court or local civil court. If you are dealing with the other driver’s insurance company, it’s a more straight-forward process. Typically, once you’ve agreed to a settlement amount, the other driver’s insurance company will send you or your attorney a “release” for your signature. In this legally binding document, the insurance company agrees to pay you a stated amount in exchange for your giving up the right to pursue the insurer, or the insured other driver, for any future damages arising out of this particular car accident. In most cases, the insurer will not pay you the amount until it has received back the signed release. But once the release is returned, the insurer will send a settlement check. If you are represented by an attorney, the check from the insurance company will usually be made out to you and your attorney. Your attorney will deposit the check in a law firm account and will write you a separate check after taking out any of his or her attorney fees and costs. It’s important to note that in most states, lawyers, doctors and others who are owed money for working on your case get paid first before the balance of the settlement amount is paid to you, the injured party.

The car accident settlement process can range from quick & painless, to long and drawn out, depending on the details of the accident, the complexities of the case, and the insurance companies & attorneys involved. In general, here is the timeline for the car accident settlement process:

1. Claim gets filed with the “at fault” party’s insurance company
2. Insurance company investigates the claim, gathers evidence, and speaks to witnesses & experts, etc. 
3. Initial settlement offer is made to the plaintiff
4. If satisfactory, the settlement is reached and the matter is closed. However this is usually not the case, as insurance companies will often times try to lowball the initial car accident settlement offer. 
5. If the initial settlement offer is not satisfactory to the injured party, there is a negotiation process that can involve many rounds of back & forth, usually with both parties presenting evidence and arguments as to why their position is correct. 
6. If a settlement amount that works for everyone is reached, the process is over. If not…
7. The process of filing a car accident lawsuit can follow, which will then take many more months, if not years, to litigate. As such, it’s usually in everyone’s best interest to reach a fair settlement for the car accident. 

While many factors along the way can affect the time and outcome of a car accident settlement, documenting everything, knowing how to deal with insurance companies, and hiring a good car accident attorney can all help make the process smoother and faster. 

In a best-case scenario, a car accident settlement will take a few weeks. This however, rarely happens. Insurance companies are known to try and offer lowball initial settlement offers to save money. Adjusters will often play on the lack of knowledge of most people injured in car accidents, and the desire of the plaintiff to get the situation resolved quickly, to get away without paying the total amount of damages.  This is why it’s so important to document everything – take pictures, talk to witnesses, and hire a good car accident lawyer. In most cases, the initial car accident settlement offer is just a starting point for negotiations… then it’s up to the plaintiff to document medical bills, lost wages, and lifestyle adjustments made due to the injuries caused as a means of proving the monetary value of their claims.  As the evidence gathering, witness statements, and back & forth negotiations all take time, the car accident settlement process can take many months and in some cases years, to reach a fair auto accident settlement. In more contentious car accident claims where neither party is willing to accept responsibility or agree on the circumstances surrounding the accident, legal action may be unavoidable. At this point the claim may go into arbitration, or a car accident lawsuit may be filed so that the parties can argue their side of the story in front of a neutral 3rd party and have them make the final decision. Please note that this time frame is extremely variable and each case will be unique. There are many factors to consider, such as severity of injuries suffered in the crash, share of liability amongst drivers involved, type of vehicles involved and insurance coverage (for example, commercial vehicles such as delivery trucks are required to carry higher insurance policy limits, making the average settlement for commercial vehicle accidents higher than a normal car on car collision), conflicting medical opinions from doctors involved in your care, etc.

There are 2 parts to this – the negotiation, and the process of getting your check. Once the settlement is agreed upon, the process usually takes 2-3 weeks for the insurance company to issue a check. However the negotiation prior to the agreement can take months, sometimes years, depending on the severity of the auto accident and the amount of ongoing medical treatment associated with the injuries.

The good thing about auto accident attorneys is they only get paid if they win. Their fee is a percentage of the amount of the money they recover for you, known as a “contingency fee”. Think of a contingency fee like a commission. Just like a salesperson only gets paid if they close a deal, and then gets a percentage of the sale they made, contingency fee lawyers collect their fees as a percentage of the settlement. This allows you to select the best car accident attorney for your case without worrying about upfront fees. This also ensures that the lawyer is incentivized to settle the car accident claim quickly and for as much money as possible. This stands in stark contrast to many attorneys who get paid high hourly rates, who become incentivized to work slowly and let things drag our while they bill their clients hundreds of dollars per hour.  Contingency fees can range from 25%-40% of your settlement, with average contingency fees for personal injury attorneys usually falling in the 33%-35% range. This may seem high, and in some cases it might be easier and more lucrative to settle the car accident claim yourself. However there are 2 very important considerations when deciding whether to hire an attorney for your car accident settlement or negotiate yourself: 

1. Will the attorney’s expertise and experience in negotiating car accident settlements with insurance companies result in a settlement that’s at least 30% higher than what I’d be able to negotiate myself?
2. How much time am I willing to put into writing car accident settlement demand letters, sitting on hold with the insurance company, getting frustrated about lowball settlement offers, etc.

nDepending on your faith in your negotiating skills and the amount of free time on your hands, you may or may not decide hiring an attorney for your auto accident settlement is a good idea. In smaller claims where there aren’t a lot of damages or serious injuries, saving on the legal fees might be the better option. However in more complex car accidents, commercial vehicle accidents, or motorcycle accident settlements where there are usually more serious injuries and higher insurance limits, the attorney fee usually pays for itself and then some, while saving you a lot of time and headache.

If you were in a car accident, you probably have a stack of medical bills, lost earnings, and emotional distress. Should you file a claim and try to get a car accident settlement? Below are some of the factors to consider if a car accident settlement is worth it: 

• How serious was the accident? If it was a fender bender with no injuries, filing a claim and getting a settlement may not be worth it. If your damages are more serious and you have injuries, you may want to negotiate a car accident settlement, especially if the other driver was at fault. 
• Who was at fault for the accident? If you were entirely or mostly at fault, you probably will not be able to collect money for your damages and injuries from the other driver’s insurance policy. Your own insurer will repair damages to your vehicle, and it may cover some of your healthcare expenses. 
• Was your injury entirely new and due to the crash, or did it aggravate a previous injury? 
• Was your treatment excessive? An auto insurance company will not give you the full value of your medical expenses if they determine the treatment was too expensive, especially if the care was physical therapy or chiropractic in nature. 
• Did you seek medical treatment right away? This is important so the insurance company knows that your injuries are related to the accident itself. 

Pain and suffering in a car accident settlement can include physical, mental, and emotional harm caused by the injury. This could take many forms, such as physical pain, loss of enjoyment of life, anxiety, depression, disfigurement or disability. In addition to these damages, pain and suffering settlements may also incorporate reimbursement for medical costs related to treatments and long-term care that result from the injury. Victims may also be entitled to compensation for emotional distress including anguish or grief, or loss of companionship due to the injury. As pain and suffering are subjective elements in the settlement process it is important to understand how these damages can be accurately assessed. When calculating pain & suffering in a car accident settlement, keep in mind it’s usually factored in as a multiple of total other damages. That number is usually on a scale of 1-5, with higher numbers indicating more pain & suffering, and higher payouts on the overall settlement. For example, if you got rear ended at a stop light and the crash caused a herniated disc in your back, you would file a claim with the at fault driver’s insurance company. They would ask you for proof of lost income/wages, receipts for medical treatments and doctor bills related to the accident, and a dollar figure for what your car will cost to fix. To keep math easy, let’s say that number was $10,000. Now if you had weeks or months where in addition to not working, you couldn’t train for the marathon you had been pla ing, you couldn’t pick up your young child, and you couldn’t sleep more than 2-3 hours per night. The insurance company might assign a multiple of 2 or 3 to your pain & suffering, considering the loss of ability to perform basic life and hobby related tasks. This would increase the size of your car accident settlement from $10,000 to $20,000 or $30,000. Because of this, pain & suffering can be the largest factor in getting a car accident settlement that’s adequate to not only compensate you for accident related expenses, but also for the distress it’s caused in your life.

The car accident settlement process can take months, sometimes even years to finalize because of the sheer amount of time it takes for lawyers and/or insurance companies to gather evidence, determine fault, and calculate a fair car accident settlement amount. It also takes time to see all the doctors necessary to determine the full scope of someone’s injuries and get a sense for how much their medical bills will be. For example, whiplash after a car accident can take days to set in, and chronic whiplash can last for over a year. If someone is dealing with a long term injury with unknown implications and months of physical therapy, it can take a long time to finalize the car accident settlement offer and get a check.  If one party is unwilling to cooperate, or has an unreasonable demand for compensation after the car accident, it might cause the entire process to stretch on even longer. Having a car accident settlement taking longer than expected is frustrating, but there’s no real way to speed up the process. You just need to be patient while the legwork is being done on your claim. It can be helpful to have an open line of communication to the insurance claims adjuster, who may be able to let you know where things are being held up or when the settlement is expected to be completed, so it’s usually a good idea to stay in touch with them throughout the process.