Tips for Plaintiff's Attorneys from an Insurance Manager
I had lunch the other day with an attorney who had worked as both a Plaintiff's and Defense attorney and had also worked as an insurance manager, coordinating their large cases. His advice on the high dollar cases was as follows:
Plaintiff's normally leave a lot of money on the table.
The purpose of mediation is to see how strongly a plaintiff's attorney feels about their case. You can't tell the exact problems they have with their case, but you can tell how they feel about their case. An insurance company can tell whether the plaintiff's attorney feels their case is strong or not. Moral: Don't be afraid to walk away from the mediation if you need to.
Plaintiff's attorneys focus on the problems with their case. Defendant's are much less worried about the problems with the Plaintiff's case as they are with their own. The problem that Defendant's have are unlikeable clients, difficult and unruly clients and bad facts. Moral: Focus on the Defendant's problems. Pay attention for problems the Defendant's might have when dealing with the insurance adjuster or the defense attorney. Probe and develop this information in depositions.
Insurance companies are risk adverse. The higher the insurance employee, the more adverse to risk they are. Moral: If a vice president of the insurance company is involved in your case, the value just went up.
The more insurance involved, the more likely it is to settle. If there's only a $1m in coverage, it's much harder to beat that out of them than if there was $20m in coverage. The greater exposure the insurance company has, the less chance they want to risk a large verdict. According to my lunch buddy, many plaintiff's attorneys don't even think about additional coverage until close to trial. Moral: Use discovery to find all of the insurance policies, including any business coverages and see if you have any facts that can bind in additional coverage. The ability to pay is a very important factor in determining the ability to settle.
when you go too settle with the insurance company how do you determine how much you can ask for? is it a percentage of medical bill or what? thank you
