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Originally Posted by daswig
Pain and suffering is normally valued as twice your medical bills.
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Sorry, but that is a complete falsehood. I spent several years handling these types of claims for one of the largest insurance companies in the nation. There is no formula for "pain and suffering"...it's totally subjective.
Miko:
Here's the thing...you were in an accident. The company is paying your property damages. You have admitted that you only sustained a bruise on your thigh and sought medical treatment with a chiropractor (often considered a bit of a "witch doctor" in the medical community) because you
anticipated that there
might be issues later.
Often these chiro bills will not be paid in full because the treatment they render is often excessive. There are a large number of chiros that will inflate their bills and treat patients for durations that are substantially longer than is deemed necessary by the watchdogs that supervise them. If the company is agreeing to pay all these bills then you are already ahead of the game and they are
not trying to screw you as most people will assert.
If you missed work you are entitled to
reasonable lost wages. If I understand correctly however, you did not miss work and your leg healed properly...in addition the chiro treatment you sought could potentially be deemed related to a pre-existing condition should someone care to travel down that road.
The insurance company is offering to cover all your losses and offer you a "little something" in addition to make up for the inconvenience of the accident. As such, your "pain and suffering" sounds pretty minimal and the settlement for this should be too.
You can get all worked up thinking that she "could have killed" you, but she didn't. If you get an attorney involved in this understand that any insurance company worth it's weight will defend their position with tenacity and will be more willing to spend twice as much money in defending the principle of the matter than paying you off. There was a time when the insurance companies would just throw money at people to make them go away, but the litigious nature of today's society makes that financially impossible. The rules have changed.
You may decide that you are "entitled" to this money and get an attorney to represent you but do so knowing that I couldn't count the number of times claimants have hired a lawyer and ended up getting less than was offered to them by the adjuster...granted, there are many times when they get far more, but a case like this doesn't fall into that category.
Take an insider's advice: Let the insurance company pay for your property damage, medical expenses, and if they offer your $1000 pain and suffering then consider yourself lucky and take it. I'd have looked over your chiro bills with a magnifying glass and, if I even paid them all, offered you $500 max and would have felt generous doing so.
Hope everything works out for you.