Why You May Need a Lawyer for a Claim With Progressive
Without a lawyer, you have to face hurdles with Progressive, such as being pressured into accepting lowball offers, invalidating your evidence and injuries, being unable to calculate your full damages in the claim, and having to endure the overwhelming negotiation process.
If your medical bills are mounting and you’re struggling to unlock Progressive excess medical benefits to secure the full compensation, a lawyer ensures you’re compensated for every ongoing and future medical bill.
Progressive Uses Tactics Against You
Like any insurance company, Progressive has its own ways of pressuring you into accepting their lower settlements. Their main goal is to settle your case as fast as they can so they don’t have to pay your future medical bills.
They may try to shift the blame onto you or assert that you share responsibility for the accident in either case.
Their main goal is to pressure you into accepting their lowball offers when you are feeling vulnerable and overwhelmed, leading you to accept the offer simply to escape the stress.
A lawyer won’t let these tactics slide. They will counter every tactic that is used against you.
Negotiating Your Settlement Can Be Overwhelming
Besides tactics, you have to face numerous hurdles throughout the settlement process.
You may already know this is not a walk in the park, and at the same time, if there were any unique legal nuance in your case, you would need a lawyer’s help to navigate that.
Progressive insurers may purposely undermine your injuries and downplay your non-economic damages, claiming the accident left no serious psychological impact on you, as you think.
Without a lawyer’s help, negotiating will be so unbearable, and at one point, it will push you to the verge of giving up.
A professional lawyer has seen hundreds of insurers in their lifetime. So, they know how to negotiate properly and ensure you don’t make any decisions that can hurt you in the long run.
Validating Your Evidence
Progressive insurers will try to reject some of your evidence, claiming they don’t prove what caused your injuries.
Their adjusters sometimes use surveillance or go through your social media posts to suggest your injuries aren’t as serious as you claim, just because you smiled in one of your posts.
Common evidence they try to invalidate is
- They may argue that some photos of your injuries don’t fully reflect the seriousness of them, and they were caused by something else or already existed before the accident.
- Some of the medical bills were unnecessary, and they were avoidable.
- Even if the police reports prove you’re not at fault, they may claim you’re partially to blame for the accident from “their own investigation.”
- Some witness information sounds implausible, claiming they were biased or they didn’t have a clear view of the accident.
A lawyer counters these by
- Ensuring your evidence record is strong and admissible in court
- If the Progressive insurer is unreasonably denying your claim, a lawyer can prove they’re acting in bad faith.
- Challenging Progressive Insurance’s private investigators
- Hiring accident reconstructionists to reframe the exact events of the accident to devalue the insurer’s version of the events.
A Lawyer is Critical When Your Injuries Are Serious
If you have suffered serious injuries that require lifelong treatment, calculating your full damages can be challenging.
A lawyer can accurately calculate the full damages by foreseeing the future medical bills and loss of earning capacity.
Do Cases with Progressive Insurance Go to Court? How Does a Lawyer Help?
- Yes, though most claims are settled out of court. If Progressive denies your claim and the case gets contested, you need to file a lawsuit to resolve it.
- The lawyer will represent you in court until the dispute is resolved and get you a maximized payout.
Key Takeaways
- No matter if Progressive is your own or at fault’s insurance, they pressure you into accepting lower settlements either way.
- You may find the whole negotiation process overwhelming when you are incapable of facing every attack from Progressive adjusters; a lawyer, on the other hand, is skilled at it.
- They may say some of your evidence is invalid because it doesn’t prove what caused your injuries.
- If you’re dealing with serious and long-term injuries, a lawyer’s help is indispensable.
