What the Insurance Company Won’t Tell You: Car Accident Settlements in Fort Worth

No. The large majority of personal injury claims settle before trial, once a properly documented demand is presented and negotiated. Cases that do proceed to a filed lawsuit still mostly resolve during the litigation process itself, well before trial. Only a small fraction of my overall caseload ends up being tried in front of a jury.

Get medical attention right away, even if the injury doesn't feel severe at first, since some injuries, including traumatic brain injuries, aren't obvious in the first hours after a crash. Document the scene with photos. Get contact details from witnesses. Avoid recorded statements to any insurer, including your own, until you understand how those statements can be used to shape what your claim is worth.

Personal injury attorneys, including my firm's Fort Worth personal injury team, usually work on a contingency-fee basis. That means an injured person pays nothing upfront, and my fee is only collected as a percentage of the amount recovered. If there's no recovery, there's no fee owed.

Being partly at fault doesn't automatically bar a Texas claim. Under the state's modified comparative-negligence rule, covered in Chapter 9, a recovery is still available as long as the injured person is found 50 percent or less at fault, though the recovery is reduced in proportion to that percentage. Being found 51 percent or more at fault, however, bars recovery entirely.

My firm represents injured clients in car accidents, commercial truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, rideshare accidents, pedestrian and bicycle accidents, slip and fall claims, traumatic brain injury cases, and wrongful death claims throughout Fort Worth, Euless, Houston, and the surrounding Texas communities I serve.

An early recorded statement is usually taken before you fully understand the extent of your own injuries. Adjusters are trained to use that statement, and any inconsistencies in it, to limit what your claim is worth later. I tell clients to speak with an attorney before giving a recorded statement to any insurer, since that protects against unintentionally undercutting a claim before it has even been evaluated.

Uninsured motorist (UM) coverage, if you carry it on your own policy, is designed for exactly this situation. Underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage does the same job when the at-fault driver's policy is too small to cover the full harm. Without UM/UIM coverage, recovery options against an uninsured driver directly are usually far more limited.

Some firms, including my own, 1-800 The Wolf Accident Attorneys, publish a selection of past case results as a matter of transparency. Read them for what they are. The value of any individual claim depends on that claim's own facts. You cannot predict it from a different case's outcome, however similar that case looks on the surface.

A demand letter is the formal document I send to an insurer laying out the injured person's damages, liability argument, and the amount being sought to resolve the claim. A demand letter backed by complete medical documentation is what resets an insurance adjuster's low opening number, per Chapter 10, and a poorly supported demand letter can undercut a claim's value before negotiation even begins.

Usually yes, an injured person can change representation during a case, though doing so can affect timing and, depending on the fee agreement, how fees are ultimately divided between the prior and new attorney. It is worth raising concerns with a current attorney directly before deciding to switch, since many issues can be resolved without starting over.

No. Consultations are free and come with no obligation to hire my firm, which is consistent with the contingency-fee structure described throughout this book: I'm not paid unless and until I recover money for the client.