You were involved in an accident in which someone else’s negligence resulted in you suffering serious injuries in Louisiana, like a slip and fall. You have been treated by doctors. You have substantial medical bills and lost wages, and you’ve endured significant pain and suffering and emotional turmoil since getting hurt.
You’ve been doing some research into how to handle filing an insurance claim on your own as opposed to with the assistance of a personal injury lawyer in Baton Rouge. While the process seemed “involved,” it all made sense to you until you got to the part about the demand letter you may need to send in to secure compensation. Now you’re stumped.
What are the components of a personal injury demand letter? Keep reading, and we’ll provide you with an answer.
Injury Incident Details Demand Letters Should Cover
Each personal injury attorney may have their own preferences for how to format and what to include in a demand letter. However, information that it’s common to include in them are:
- Details regarding the incident that injured you: This narrative may capture what happened in the moments immediately preceding your accident and how it unfolded once in progress.
- Your theory on how your injuries occurred: It’s necessary for a plaintiff to show how their involvement in an accident led to their injuries. So, it’s important that you share a description of how the accident directly caused the harm you suffered.
- A description of injuries you suffered: Generally, personal injury lawyers’ demand letters go into great detail describing the injuries their clients suffered, including the medical treatment they required for them. Attorneys may also detail if a client has reached maximum medical improvement (MMI) and what their prognosis looks like (i.e., will they have any lasting impairments).
- A summary of your economic losses: Attorneys like ours generally detail all the actual financial damages an injury incident caused. We do this by reviewing and summarizing your medical bills, pay stubs showing your lost wages, and invoices for car repairs. We also account for future expenses you may incur if you have permanently disabling injuries, such as spinal cord or brain damage.
- A detailed outline of noneconomic damages you have: The adverse impact of an incident that injures someone often affects them more profoundly than just a physical one. We take an accounting of factors such as pain and suffering, mental anguish, loss of enjoyment of life, scarring and disfigurement, disability, and other losses you suffer and assign a monetary value to them.
- Information about your pre-accident life: When crafting a demand letter, personal injury lawyers like to paint a clearer picture of what your life was like before and after the onset of your injury. In other words, we like to show how, had it not been for your accident, life may have continued looking like for you.
- Discussions about liability issues: Near the end of the letter, injury lawyers like ours tend to prematurely defend against any potential claims an insurer or actual negligent party may make that may lead to a denial of liability or a low-ball settlement offer. We often cite accident reports, photographic or videographic evidence, medical records, eyewitness accounts, etc., when substantiating those arguments.
- Details about how much in financial compensation you’re seeking: This section of the demand letter often includes a reiteration of the economic and noneconomic losses you have as justification for why you deserve a certain settlement amount.
In addition to the narratives above, it’s not uncommon for personal injury lawyers to include evidence like records and reports as part of a demand packet, as the letter is sometimes referred to, that they send to insurance companies as well.
Why Should You Leave the Preparation of a Demand Letter to Attorneys To Handle?
While, with the list of information described above, you may feel more confident in crafting your own demand letter to send to an insurer, don’t. Why? It’s because it’s too risky to do so.
It’s in many ways like “showing your hand.”
Once you send that letter to an insurance company adjuster, you’ve made your version of events about how your injury accident occurred and why you believe the other party is liable.
If there are any errors in your explanation of things, that mistake could easily cost you a settlement in your case or simply result in the liable party shifting some blame to you, meaning you would receive a lower payout than you deserve.
Instead, leave drafting personal injury demand letters to skilled, experienced legal representatives like our personal injury lawyers at Bianca | Matkins. We can make sure it includes all the components it needs to and that any supportive evidence cited backs up theories set forth.
We offer free consultations so you can determine if our law firm is the right fit for your case.
