How Long Does It Take to Receive a Offer of Compensation?
Does it Take a Long Time to Receive a Fair Settlement Agreement?
After an accident, you may have a million things running through your mind. At the top of the list might be how you are going to recover from your injuries, including who is going to pay for medical bills, take care of you, and more. And how long does it take to receive compensation.
To ensure you receive fair compensation in any kind of personal injury claim or personal injury lawsuit, you want to make sure you have an experienced injury lawyer by your side. At Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys, our personal injury lawyers have been fighting on behalf of victims for more than 60 years. Our team of lawyers have received settlement funds in the millions for our clients. We will use our skills to negotiate with insurance company to ensure you receive a fair offer of compensation so you can recover from your injuries.
Why Does the Settlement Process Take a While?
The National Safety Council reports that “based on new injury statistics, an American is accidentally injured every second and killed every three minutes by a preventable event.” If you or a loved one has been injured in an accident due to someone else’s negligence, you are entitled to pursue compensation. However the reality is the settlement process in a personal injury claim can be long and cumbersome. How long it will take is up to the specifics of your case, from the details of your injury to the insurance company and insurance adjusters working on your claim. But the same is true of all cases: Dealing with an insurance company is a battle you do not want to fight alone.
Your insurance provider or the negligent party’s insurance company will want to settle your personal injury case as quickly as possible. Talk to a lawyer first. We can ensure you receive a fair settlement offer of compensation. Contact us today for a free consultation.
Accidents and injuries can happen anywhere, at any time. According to the CDC, more than 200,000 people suffer from unintentional injuries a year. There are a variety of factors that could impact how quickly you could receive a fair settlement in your personal injury case.
For instance, if you have serious injuries, it could extend the time frame of your settlement. You will want to make sure the offer of compensation you accept covers what you need to recover, so with more serious injuries, it may take longer to quantify what recovery looks like.
Here are just a few factors why your case may need additional time to come to a settlement agreement:
Extent of Your Injuries
If you walked away from your accident with only minor injuries, you could have a settlement payment paid within a few months. However, the more catastrophic your case is, the more complexities there will be, and the longer it will take to reach a settlement.
Pennsylvania law considers a serious injury to be one of the following:
- Permanent disfigurement
- A serious impairment of a body function, such as blindness or hearing loss
- Death
In serious accidents like those above, your case can take longer because you might not realize the full extent of your injuries and long-term impact. For example, if you are injured in a fall where you severely hurt your head, you will likely want to wait to see how you progress before accepting a settlement offer. You could also experience chronic pain, but it might not become apparent until your injuries progress. Waiting means you are getting an offer of compensation from an insurance company or negligent party that will be enough money to fully cover expenses, treatment, and more.
For these reasons and more, severe injuries often demand higher settlement agreements. In these cases, an insurance company may want to negotiate even more to avoid having to pay the full amount you are due. This will of course extend the settlement process, but a good attorney will help you with a counter offer (or multiple) and ensure you receive the right settlement amount in the end.
Building Your Case
An insurance company or insurance adjuster will be doing everything they can to put liability back on you. An experienced personal injury lawyer will be able to counter this by building your case to prove your accident was not your fault and was directly responsible for damages to you and/or your loved ones.
This argument must be backed up my evidence. In any case, it’s much easier to build a case as close as possible to the time frame of when the accident occurred. Don’t delay in reaching out to a lawyer. Some of the data they will need to investigate and gather to build your case include:
- The police report
- Photographs of your injuries
- Statements from witnesses
- Information on other parties involved, including driving or employment records
- Medical records and prescriptions, bills, travel costs, and more
- Proof of lost wages
An insurance company or negligent party will do everything they can to refute your claim to avoid a payment. To avoid this, you must document everything as thoroughly as possible so your attorney can build a foolproof case against them. Nothing is too much or too frivolous to save. Your injury lawyer would rather have too much information than have a need to reconstruct or fill in gaps.
Negotiating With the Insurance Company
An insurance company will do everything they can to avoid a fair offer of compensation. Instead, insurance companies will try to delay your claim and drag out your case as long as possible. This is particularly true if your case involves very severe injuries that demand more money and compensation to cover the extent of your damages. This is when having a personal injury attorney with the experience in negotiating these cases is critical to the success of your case. Your attorney will fight for you with insurance companies or anyone else trying to delay the process and ensure you receive the settlement agreement you deserve.
What Damages Can I Receive an Offer of Compensation For?
It’s in the best interest of your insurance company, or the negligent party’s insurance company, to get your case settled as quickly as possible. So, you might hear from them immediately after your accident with an initial offer of compensation. However, it’s not guaranteed this initial offer will be fair compensation or what you need to truly recover from all of your medical expenses and injuries. If you have proper legal counsel then they can review the settlement amount and advise you on how to proceed.
Accident victims, particularly those who have suffered severe injuries, can face an uphill battle in their recovery. From medical costs to pain and suffering and other expenses, here are some of the types of damages an injured person could expect to receive compensation for:
- Economic: These include any financial costs that accrued after your accident. Think current and future medical expenses, lost wages, loss of earning capacity, funeral costs, and more.
- Non-economic: These are meant to cover compensation for less quantifiable things you are suffering from after the accident, like pain or suffering, mental anguish, and loss of consortium.
- Punitive: If the negligent party acted recklessly, fraudulently, or maliciously, you may be eligible for compensation for punitive damages. In these cases, the settlement is also meant to punish the other party to curb this type of behavior.
It’s important to know when deciding compensation it’s not just your current status that matters. Any fair compensation offer will also include any future expenses you could incur because of your injury. For example, if you suffered a head injury after a car accident, you could have months if not years of medical treatment and long-term care ahead of you. An offer of compensation will take into account if you cannot return to work, lose interest in life or daily activities, and more.
Who is Responsible for Paying for My Settlement?
Depending on where and how your accident occurred, there could be one negligent party or multiple parties who are responsible for your injuries. While you may think you can only bring a personal injury case against one party, a lawyer can help you identify all of the negligent parties who could be responsible for an offer of compensation.
Here are just a few of the people or parties from whom you could pursue compensation:
- Drivers: Whether you were in an accident with a truck, car, motorcycle, or other vehicle, the other driver in your accident can be held responsible for your injuries.
- Landlords: For example, spaces like apartment buildings, retail stores, shopping malls, and more have a duty of care they’re expected to upkeep. If you, for example, experience a slip and fall due to their failure to keep their areas free from hazards, you could have a claim against them.
- Medical professionals: In medical malpractice cases, your claim could be against a doctor, nurse, medical device company, and more.
- Employer: If your accident occurred while working, your employer or workers’ compensation insurance company could be responsible for payment settlement for your injuries.
- Manufacturers: Anyone who makes a product, like a cleaning solution, a toy, and more, must uphold certain safety standards.
How Can I Get Compensation Faster?
The reality is it might take a while to get fair compensation. In most cases, any initial offer you receive will not be what you need to cover medical costs, pain and suffering, and more. So while it might seem easier just to accept this initial offer and move on with your life, you could be sacrificing money your family needs to piece things back together.
The best thing you can do for your case, including speeding up the timeline, is to work with an experienced accident attorney. A lawyer has the experience and skills to negotiate a fair compensation offer in the most expedient way. It will take a much shorter time frame for them to build your case and negotiate on your behalf than if you tried to do it on your own.
A Personal Injury Lawyer Can Help Ensure You Receive Maximum Compensation
If you’ve been in an accident or suffered an unintentional injury due to someone else’s negligence, you may be wondering how long it will take to go through the settlement process. The truth is, it depends. It can take an accident case anywhere from a several weeks to a few years to reach a settlement or verdict. Every case is different. Without knowing the specifics of your case or parties involved, no one can really quantify how long it takes. However, working with a personal injury attorney ensures you will end up with a fair offer to help you recover.
At Munley Law Personal Injury Attorneys, our personal injury attorneys have been helping injury victims for decades. We believe in everyone’s right to fair representation and work hard to make sure our clients have a voice when going up against large insurance companies and other corporations. Not only do we have experience in negotiations to settle your case, but we also have trial experience if your case ends up in court.
We have won millions for those injured in a variety of personal injury cases, including in motor vehicle accidents, pedestrian accidents, truck accidents, workplace accidents, and more. And we don’t take any money up front. Instead, we work on a contingency fee basis, which means we only get paid if we win your case. Contact us today for a risk-free, free consultation where you can learn more about your options.
Marion Munley
Marion Munley has been practicing personal injury law for nearly 40 years. She is triple board-certified by the National Board of Trial Advocacy for Truck Accident Law, Civil Trial Law, and Civil Practice Advocacy. She currently serves as Vice President of the American Association for Justice, an organization dedicated to safeguarding victims’ rights. Marion has won many multimillion-dollar recoveries for her clients, including one of the largest trucking accident settlements in history. She has been named a Top 10 Super Lawyer in Pennsylvania since 2023, a Best Lawyer in America, and was recently inducted to the Lawdragon Hall of Fame.
Call us at (844) 686-5397 
