Bernard Tully Personal Injury Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700
Sometimes insurance companies sneak silent agreements into releases that can impact you as the victim of a settlement. I have been doing this for about 40 years now, you think that I have seen it all. However, as I was looking through a client’s workers comp agreement we were about to settle, I discovered something new.
Silent Agreement Release
Their worker’s compensation case was related to our truck accident, and I saw in the agreement that the other attorney expected our client to sign something called a silent agreement memorandum. A silent agreement memorandum is when you as the victim who’s going to get an offer on a case agree that you’ll keep silent and not tell others what happened to you, what your injuries were, and what the defendants did wrong. In the context of a worker’s comp case, a lot of times that’s a huge thing to the worker’s compensation carriers because they don’t want other employees of their company to then make similar claims. So they snuck it into our agreement so the parties understand that there’s a silent agreement where the person who’s signing this release will not mention it to anyone.
What can you do if you still want to settle the case, but you don’t necessarily like this silent agreement memorandum? My advice to you is if you want to get the case resolved, try to turn this situation to your advantage. Allow your attorney to contact the insurance representatives and say that you will sign the silent agreement memorandum if they increase the offer on the case by a five to ten thousand dollars.
If you have a situation where you’re negotiated and you got the settlement worked out, it would not hurt if your attorney would then go to the other side and say you’ll sign this silent agreement for more money. Then you can negotiate how much more you can get. A worker compensation/truck accident injury case can get you a lot of $.
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 Pittsburgh Attorney Truck/Car Accident Lawyer. Phone: 412-281-8700 and 1-800-518-0050