About 3 years ago I was involved in an accident when I was hit by a car while crossing the street, this resulted in me needing surgery. I decided to go to a lawyer and was told my case could take up to 6 months to settle. This of coarse was not true, the lawyer handling my case ended up quitting her job and my case was handed off to another lawyer. The same thing happened with this new lawyer so my case was passed off again. After a year or so I think I wrote a testimony of what happened. A few months ago was when I had my deposition and a few days ago I had my mediation.
The representative from the other insurance company could not be there and she was contacted via phone by her lawyer which was in a separate room from my lawyers. My medical bills were around $160k. My lawyers seemed confident so I felt comfortable and they asked for 500k. However the mediator came back and said the representative offered 170k as a counter offer.
I was confused at this point because the offers were so far apart. After about 3 hours of my lawyers going down 10,000 and her side going up 10,000. The mediator pulls the lawyers out of the room, they come back and i'm told that the representative from the insurance company did not have the authority to release anything over $250,000 and they would have to find someone higher up in the company.
At this point i'm quite upset, I don't see why we even wasted time with this representative if she didn't even have the authority to give us the money we demanded and why she didn't say this when we 1st demanded 500k. This just sounds strange to me. The mediator mentioned something about contacting someone in the insurance company the following week. My lawyer said he would send an email to the insurance company so at 1st i'm thinking, this is something that can be handled by next week. But when my mother asked him how long it would take to have a conversation with this person about a settlement my lawyer said he didn't know.
Do I have the option to accept the 250k offer? I didn't have much say in the negotiation process because they did all the talking, but I really don't want to wait longer than the end of this month for them to chase some mystery person from the insurance company and I don't want to wait another 2 months for them to schedule another mediation. I'm really considering scheduling an appointment with my lawyer and talking about this because it's bothering me greatly.
The representative from the other insurance company could not be there and she was contacted via phone by her lawyer which was in a separate room from my lawyers. My medical bills were around $160k. My lawyers seemed confident so I felt comfortable and they asked for 500k. However the mediator came back and said the representative offered 170k as a counter offer.
I was confused at this point because the offers were so far apart. After about 3 hours of my lawyers going down 10,000 and her side going up 10,000. The mediator pulls the lawyers out of the room, they come back and i'm told that the representative from the insurance company did not have the authority to release anything over $250,000 and they would have to find someone higher up in the company.
At this point i'm quite upset, I don't see why we even wasted time with this representative if she didn't even have the authority to give us the money we demanded and why she didn't say this when we 1st demanded 500k. This just sounds strange to me. The mediator mentioned something about contacting someone in the insurance company the following week. My lawyer said he would send an email to the insurance company so at 1st i'm thinking, this is something that can be handled by next week. But when my mother asked him how long it would take to have a conversation with this person about a settlement my lawyer said he didn't know.
Do I have the option to accept the 250k offer? I didn't have much say in the negotiation process because they did all the talking, but I really don't want to wait longer than the end of this month for them to chase some mystery person from the insurance company and I don't want to wait another 2 months for them to schedule another mediation. I'm really considering scheduling an appointment with my lawyer and talking about this because it's bothering me greatly.