15 www.lawyer-monthly.com Lawyer Monthly Legal Awards 2024 Could you describe a challenging personal injury case you’ve worked on and how your approach led to a successful outcome for your client? One of the unspoken strategies insurance companies use to evaluate a claim is by evaluating the claimant’s (aka our client) biographical background. When I am talking about our client’s “biographical background”, I am talking about their socio-economic standing, race, or the primary language they speak. For most of our clients, the “default” background is a low-middle-class worker of Asian or Hispanic origin who does not speak English. While this deviates from one client to another, this is the most common set of characteristics. In one particular case, I represented a middle-aged Asian woman who was rearended in traffic while she was stopped at a red light and suffered neck and back injuries. A classic fender-bender, if you will. While this is by no means the biggest case we have had in our firm, this was one of the cases I hold dear to my heart because it delves into the darker side of personal injury claims. After we made a claim for personal injury with the at-fault driver’s insurance company and our client began receiving treatment for her injuries, we were notified that the claim was assigned to a special investigation unit because the insurance company questioned her mechanism of injury. To put it bluntly, the insurance company questions whether she is injured and suspects she might be a malingerer, someone who is not injured and who makes an insurance claim for the sole purpose of getting a settlement. There was not a lot of insurance coverage available in this case, and the client was fine with enduring her Q
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk3Mzkz