Insurance adjusters have negotiated repeatedly with various victims of different accidents. Each of them has become familiar with their company’s tactics. Unfortunately, few claimants know much about the tactics that might be used by any one insurance company.
The tactics’ purpose seems quite obvious. It focuses on the desirability of a decision that limits the amount of money that the defendant/policyholder must pay for damages.
The tactic that calls for denial of the need for coverage
The injury lawyer in Hayward is aware that the basis for the denial could be a claim that the victim had failed to provide proof of the defendant’s negligence.
There are certain essential elements to such a proof
—Evidence that the defendant had a duty of care
—Evidence of the defendant’s performance of an act that breached that same duty of care
—Support for claim that the defendant’s breach harmed the victim
—Proof that the victim suffered a measurable loss, as a result of the accident-linked harm
The tactic that seeks to minimize the level of risk that was introduced by the responsible party
This tactic’s usefulness becomes most obvious if the victim was harmed while taking part in a sporting event or a recreational activity.
A defense team cannot use this tactical approach, if the plaintiff’s lawyer has shown that their client had carried out an act of egregious negligence. After all, who would assume that someone else had intended to use outrageous behavior in order to harm that unassuming individual in some way?
Claiming a lack of evidence
The evidence must show that a given party’s claim was more likely than not true.
The insurance company realizes that a claimant that has not hired an attorney is not apt to question the adequacy of the evidence for any of the adjuster’s allegations.
This particular tactic could provide an insurance company with a means for delaying the expected flow of the claims’ process. It could force the opposing party to spend time searching for better, more verifiable evidentiary materials.
Why would insurance companies want to delay that process? Because that could keep the opposing party from filing a complaint before the deadline that had been set by the statute of limitations. If one party has missed that deadline, then it cannot sue the opposing party.
The courts would not look kindly at proof that the insurance company had forced a delay in the claims’ process. Still, a court would not agree to respond to any filed complaint, if the filing procedures had not been carried out before the established deadline. That is why an insurance company might utilize delaying tactics, when it has been asked to compensate an accident victim for performance of careless and neglectful actions.
