Bernard Tully Personal Injury Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700
It is important to get a judge involved in trying to move cases along because it can increase the value of your surgery trucking accident case. To put this into perspective, we had a case where we took depositions of all the witnesses so we were ready to go to trial. However, when the coronavirus hit, everything was pushed back for several months. The courts want to try to move it along a little bit more, so they scheduled us for a pretrial conference. A pretrial conference is when the judge who is involved in the case tries to get both parties together to reach a settlement.
Leading up to that, we already had an offer of 50 thousand dollars on the case that the insurance company had offered us; but we were asking for double that amount. They claimed that this was their top number and it was all they were going to give in this case. Since they weren’t going to offer any more money, they tried to cancel the pretrial conference with the judge. We said no to canceling the pretrial. Why? Because they know they can lose more money if the conference happens.
In terms of strategy, you want to make sure that the pretrial conference does happen because the judge can really force the insurance company to bend and give more money. The judge can make a phone call asking why the insurance company isn’t giving you more money to resolve the case. If you’re the adjuster, you’re thinking yourself, “I might have a trial in front of this judge in the future and if I show up not offering more money, they’re going to remember that and it won’t go too well for me or my future cases.” So then most times the adjuster will come up with more money. That is what happened in our surgery trucking accident case so our client benefited from it.
Our main focus is honesty. We always preach it. We are passionate about trying to help any injured person or family member with their case. Questions about the blog? CALL US!
Bernard Tully Allegheny County Surgery Case Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700 and 1-800-518-0050