Should I Give the Insurance Company a Recorded Statement or Medical Records Release After an Accident?
We have a lot of people call our personal injury lawyers at McMahon, Kublick, & Smith PC when they are involved in an accident. More often than not, one of the questions that comes up is when the insurance company of the other driver that caused an accident is requesting they give a “recorded statement” about the accident and their injuries. Often these questions also involve the issue of the other party’s insurance company telling them that they must sign a medical release that gives the insurance company the authorization to obtain our callers medical records. These callers want to know if they have to give a recorded statement and medical release to the insurance company in order to get paid.
The truth is, the other driver’s insurance company will never be required to pay out anything unless you go to court and win. The complex question is simply: Can anyone really get a proper settlement from the other driver’s insurance company without going to court and without providing them with a recorded statement or a signed medical release so they can examine your medical records?
Why would the other party’s insurance company ask for a Recorded Statement or Medical Records Release?
The simple answer is that the other party’s insurance company is trying to build a case against you with that recorded statement and trying to dig up some embarrassing medical condition totally unrelated to your personal injury case in an attempt to embarrass you into settling for a smaller amount than you probably deserve.
At McMahon, Kublick, & Smith PC. our Syracuse personal injury lawyers NEVER allow our clients to give any recorded statements or signed medical releases to the other driver’s insurance company just to aid them in building a case against our clients. It is also with noting that we are usually able to settle without going to court. How do you do this when, as we mentioned earlier, the other driver’s insurance company may not pay out to you what they really should.
The answer is that the insurance companies play be two different sets of rules. One is for persons injured who are not represented by personal injury attorneys, while the other is a set of rules that represents those who do specialize in personal injury cases like our firm at McMahon, Kublick, & Smith PC.
If you do have an accident or are injured through the fault of another, it is important that you talk to your own insurance company to report it. You have an obligation to do this and failure to do so can result in your insurance company voiding your insurance coverage and that most likely would result with them refusing to pay anything out of your insurance policy.
At McMahon, Kublick, & Smith in Syracuse, we make sure our clients make contact and report claims with their own insurance company. We work to handle their case from start to finish and with our experience we make sure that you get the serious compensation you deserve in a personal injury case.
Everyday we are contacted by people across Syracuse and Central New York who settled their own case only to find they didn’t get a settlement that pays all the things they didn’t contemplate at the time. We are rarely able to do anything for those callers after they sign on the dotted line and accept the small settlement check.
In fact, it was revealed recently that a very large, well known insurance company told people hurt in an accident not to get a lawyer because it would reduce their settlement when, in fact, the insurance company’s own statistics showed that people represented by lawyers specializing in personal injury law obtained much larger settlements even after deducting attorney fees.
We invite anyone who is hurt in a personal injury accident to call our Syracuse law firm for a free initial consultation to learn whether their particular case is something the caller can handle themselves or whether their case involves more complex issues which really requires the knowledge, skill, and expertise of a dedicated Syracuse personal injury lawyer with deep experience and commitment to our client’s well being.