San Diego Auto, Motorcycle, Truck, Car, Pedestrian and Bicycle Personal Injury and Wrongful Death Accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson
San Diego Personal Injury and Auto Accident Lawyer
If you’re looking for auto, truck, or motorcycle accident lawyers in San Diego or for San Diego car, bicycle or pedestrian accident attorneys and haven’t found the right attorney in which you can be confident when retaining a lawyer for your personal injury accident in San Diego, Sebastian Gibson may be just the personal injury auto accident attorney you’ve been looking for.
With over thirty years of experience handling personal injury auto, motorcycle, truck, bicycle, car and pedestrian accident cases, with law degrees in both California and in Great Britain, and years of international experience in London as well as decades of experience in California, San Diego personal injury accident Lawyer Sebastian Gibson brings a wealth of experience to the table.
Whether you’ve had an auto accident on the 163 or the 805 Freeways, a motorcycle accident near the San Diego Zoo, a car accident on the 5 Freeway, a truck accident on the 8 Freeway, a bicycle accident near Sea World or the Beach or a pedestrian accident near USD, UCSD or San Diego State University, the personal injury Law Firm of Sebastian Gibson can help you.
However, car insurance companies are getting tougher each year with personal injury accident and wrongful death claims in San Diego and elsewhere. There have been three main ways in which insurance companies have managed to pay less and less to victims of personal injury accidents in San Diego. There will undoubtedly be more tactics used by auto, truck and motorcycle accident insurance companies in the future to reduce the payouts for car, bicycle and pedestrian accidents and wrongful death claims in San Diego in the future.
First, and for some time now, insurance companies have been discouraging injured victims from retaining a personal injury lawyer in San Diego. By cultivating the trust of auto, motorcycle, truck and pedestrian accident claimants in San Diego and the families of wrongful death victims, insurance companies have been able to settle car, motorcycle and pedestrian accident cases of unrepresented victims in San Diego for as little as one-third or less of what the insurance companies pay to victims of such accidents as well as bicycle, truck and auto accidents in San Diego who are represented by attorneys. If you’ve been injured in an auto, motorcycle, car or truck accident in San Diego and you hear an adjuster tell you that you don’t need a personal injury attorney or a bicycle, pedestrian or wrongful death lawyer in San Diego to receive fair treatment or a fair settlement, watch out. You’re about to be sold some snake oil. The insurance companies know well and good that they pay claimants with personal injury attorneys two to three times more to settle their claims.
If you’ve been told that you don’t need an auto, motorcycle or truck accident attorney in San Diego and that the insurance company will conduct a quick and fair investigation or make an appropriate offer of compensation, you can bet your house that the investigation will be fair in terms of what the insurance company thinks needs to be paid so they can increase their profits and that the appropriate offer of compensation will be what the insurance company wants to pay, not what your personal injury claim is really worth.
The second way in which insurance companies have been reducing the amount insurance companies have been paying over the last decade to car, pedestrian, and bicycle accident victims in San Diego is by using a highly sophisticated software program called "Colossus." Under Colossus, insurance company payouts for personal injury cases from auto, motorcycle, truck, pedestrian, car and bicycle accidents dropped more than 20 percent in the first few years according to documents released by one insurance company.
A nastier side to the guidelines put in place by one insurance company that adopted Colossus was to view claimants from minor-impact accidents as being suspected of fraud and to offer them only a nominal or much reduced offer, or deny the claim entirely to send a message to claimants in these low impact cases and their attorneys.
Colossus is a computer software program created for insurance companies whose primary goal is to devalue claims and reduce insurance payouts. The insurance companies using the Colossus software or similar programs have been using them for one purpose - to reduce the money a car, motorcycle, truck, pedestrian, car and bicycle accident victim gets for their injuries. As a personal injury attorney with over thirty years of experience, we’ve seen how this software program and others like it being used by insurance companies are being used to greatly reduce the amount insurance companies pay personal injury victims for their pain and suffering.
Take the car, motorcycle or truck accident victim in San Diego whose bills are primarily from an emergency room and radiology bills for X-rays and MRI’s. Even when those bills run into the thousands of dollars, auto, truck and motorcycle insurance adjusters using these software programs will offer claimants paltry amounts as the software programs take the position that emergency room and diagnostic charges are not bills that justify giving much if any additional amount for pain and suffering.
Consequently, these car and truck insurance companies promising victims of auto, bicycle and pedestrian accidents in San Diego fair and just settlement amounts are using a computer program that has no concept of the pain and suffering a human experiences to determine what is a fair amount to pay you for your injuries.
Without a personal injury attorney to fight the settlement values these software programs like Colossus are spitting out to auto insurance adjusters, unrepresented car, truck and motorcycle accident victims in San Diego are unlikely to be compensated for any loss of enjoyment of life resulting from their injuries or the pain one suffers as they continue to work despite one’s injuries. And if the personal injury victim’s medical records don’t contain the buzz words recognized by Colossus, they will be offered even less for their auto accident claim and for any pain and suffering.
So will a claimant without a car or motorcycle accident victim in San Diego at least be offered the amount Colossus tells the adjuster to pay? Not likely. An auto insurance claims adjuster who tells you they’ve given you their best offer, is often giving an unrepresented bicycle or pedestrian accident claimant in San Diego an amount that is even less than the amount Colossus or another software program has told the car insurance claims adjuster is the maximum amount they should pay an auto or truck accident victim in San Diego who has not retained a personal injury lawyer.
Why is that? Because auto, truck and motorcycle insurance adjusters who pay 20 or 30 percent below what Colossus pays out look even better to their claims managers. Unrepresented personal injury victims and families of wrongful death accidents in San Diego are not even offered the amount Colossus suggests they can pay, they are offered less. A car insurance claims adjuster who would suggest to their manager that they pay an unrepresented personal injury victim more than what Colossus suggests will probably not last long in their job or receive any merit increases in pay.
Keep in mind that personal injury accident adjusters are evaluated based on the amounts they pay out on the car and truck accident claims assigned to them. If one car accident insurance adjuster has managed to routinely settle motorcycle and auto accident claims for 30% under the already reduced amounts Colossus recommends, and another auto accident insurance adjuster is routinely asking a claims manager for authority to settle bicycle and pedestrian accident claims for 20% above the Colossus recommended maximum settlement amount, which car insurance adjuster is likely to be given a merit increase in salary?
Car insurance companies of course will deny that their personal injury claims adjusters are stuck with the amounts that Colossus spits out of their computers because in fact, the adjusters try as hard as they can to pay even less. Indeed, one leaked memo on the internet to claims adjusters at one company recommends settling cases in the lower range given out by Colossus or below, especially on small personal injury accident cases saying they are not worth much. The adjusters are also told to say, there’s no more, and to mean it as one of their star adjusters has been doing, and just to show what will happen if they do, they tell their adjusters in this memo that they intend to reward this star adjuster of theirs who has been settling claims for so little.
Another insurance company has been reported to urge its adjusters to increase profits by paying as little as possible on claims presented to them. Bonuses at this company were also awarded when objectives were met.
Remember these things when that auto accident insurance adjuster you spoke with told you how fair they intended to be with you. Now is the time to remember what interests that adjuster has in their heart. Hey, times are tough. Car accident insurance adjusters have to eat, pay the mortgage and pay for higher gas prices as well. They’re just doing their job. But you don’t have to play into the hands of their managers. With a personal injury attorney, the auto accident insurance adjuster will still be employed. The only difference is, the car insurance company which made billions last year will simply have to pay you more money and give their CEO a little less than the multi-million dollar bonus they received last year. Actually, in all likelihood, the CEO will actually still get the same multi-million dollar bonus they received last year or more.
It is believed that more than 70% of the claims adjusters and more than 300 insurance companies are now using Colossus. Those that don’t use it, undoubtedly use similar systems or guidelines.
It has been reported, and we can certainly verify this from our experience, that auto, motorcycle and truck accident insurance companies in general and those using Colossus in particular consider as important whether a car, motorcycle, truck, bicycle or pedestrian accident victim in San Diego was taken from the scene of the accident to the hospital and whether the personal injury victim was kept in the hospital overnight or longer. If neither is the case, the personal injury claim of that San Diego victim is valued at a lesser amount.
The length of treatment of a personal injury accident victim in San Diego (too short or too long) is also considered by systems such as Colossus, with treatment beyond a certain time frame being ignored. Treatment by specialists is given a higher value than treatment by GP’s or chiropractors. Delays and gaps in the treatment of a car, motorcycle or truck accident victim in San Diego, however, can be devastating to a claim punched into the Colossus system without an explanation by the doctor for the wait in the personal injury victim’s medical records.
Also important are the pedestrian, bicycle and auto accident victim’s medications they have been given, the level of impairment, the San Diego car accident victim’s prognosis and of course, the type of injuries suffered by a pedestrian, auto or motorcycle accident victim in San Diego, with higher values being given to fractures and herniated discs compared to soft tissue injuries. A car accident insurance adjuster will thus seek by any means possible to verify whether a fracture occurred, or not, as this puts the personal injury claim into a different category. The more damage there is to the vehicle in which the personal injury victim was in, the greater the value as well. Conversely, a vehicle with a small amount of damage will produce a lesser settlement offer by the car accident insurance adjuster or even be viewed as a possible fraudulent claim.
It is believed that these software programs value auto, truck and motorcycle accident claims as well as bicycle, pedestrian and wrongful death claims differently from one region to another. As an experienced personal injury lawyer for decades, we’ve even seen the offers from auto, truck and motorcycle accident insurance companies vary, not only by what company we are dealing with, but also by the different adjusters the car insurance companies use and now by the city in which the claimant lives as well. If we can generalize at all about the different regions, it appears that auto accident insurance adjusters using software systems like Colossus offer less in larger cities than smaller cities.
Knowing how car insurance companies work who use Colossus and other similar software programs, in our negotiations we bring to light factors that make our auto, motorcycle and truck accident client’s case stand out from the typical car accident claim that will be undervalued by these computer systems. An unrepresented personal injury claimant or even a bicycle or pedestrian accident victim in San Diego represented by a personal injury attorney who hasn’t had decades of experience in negotiating claims with these auto accident insurance companies will simply be trampled and chewed up by adjusters much more experienced in these matters.
We seek to provide a personal injury claims adjuster with information that will increase the amount their software program like Colossus recommends be paid to a car, motorcycle or truck accident victim in San Diego. Keep in mind that the amount a car, truck or motorcycle accident insurance company will offer to a personal injury attorney is significantly more than what is offered to an unrepresented accident victim. But on top of that, we provide the auto accident insurance adjuster with information that will cause any program to reevaluate the amount a car accident adjuster should offer to a pedestrian and bicycle accident victim as well as to an auto, motorcycle or truck accident client in San Diego. We commonly demand that the adjuster obtain additional authority to settle a personal injury claim, something most unrepresented claimants fail to understand is possible when they’ve been told they are being given a personal injury claims adjuster’s "best offer."
Without a personal injury or auto accident attorney guiding an accident victim in their medical treatment, an unrepresented truck, car or pedestrian accident victim will also end up with medical records that fail in many respects to document the claimant’s injuries and their pain and suffering, all of which will produce a much reduced settlement offer in their personal injury claim. Unless a personal injury victim in San Diego knows certain things to remind a doctor to do, they will often wind up with sketchy or unreadable medical records which do a claimant little good in their settlement negotiations. If you have cryptic or otherwise useless medical records documenting your injuries, a narrative report by your treating physician is essential.
The third primary way in which auto, truck and motorcycle insurance liability companies seek to reduce the amount they pay to a claimant, especially to one that doesn’t have a personal injury attorney, is to deny liability in whole or in part for your San Diego accident. While one would think this is nothing new, there is a new twist that is now being given to this old approach by today’s car accident insurance companies and their auto accident insurance adjusters.
While previously, auto, truck and motorcycle insurance companies would accept the conclusions of a traffic accident police report in San Diego, knowing quite well that a police or highway patrol officer will testify in trial just as he or she has concluded in their San Diego accident report, in recent months car accident insurance companies have begun to tell unrepresented auto, motorcycle and truck accident victims and even attorneys that they don’t simply accept police report conclusions anymore.
One trucking insurance company adjuster, who was first denying a truck personal injury claim altogether and who we have now convinced that he was completely wrong, admitted to me that he never accepts full liability in any accident case, police report or not. An unrepresented car, motorcycle or truck accident claimant who is being told he or she has been evaluated by the insurance company to be 20 or 30 or even 50% at fault, in most cases simply has no idea how to combat this approach by an adjuster and can and often does accept a settlement amount that is only a small percentage of an already reduced amount for their San Diego car, motorcycle or truck accident by virtue of their not having an experienced personal injury accident lawyer. Bicycle and pedestrian accident victims in San Diego who have similarly done nothing wrong are completely baffled when told they are 25 to 50% comparatively negligent for not getting out of the way of the driver of a vehicle that failed to see them.
San Diego Personal Injury Attorney, Sebastian Gibson
If you’ve been injured in an auto, motorcycle, truck, pedestrian, car or bicycle accident in San Diego or any of the surrounding cities or if you’ve lost a loved one in a wrongful death accident or had a child suffer serious injuries in any kind of accident in San Diego, call us. Don’t try to go it alone against a car, motorcycle or truck accident insurance company holding all the cards and using computer systems and other unfair methods to reduce the value of your personal injury claim such that virtually nothing is left over for you after the medical bills have been paid. And if an auto accident insurance company promises to set aside a certain amount for reasonable future medical treatment, keep in mind who will be in charge of determining what is reasonable or unreasonable (they will) and what good that will do if you later find you are much more seriously injured than you think (virtually nothing at all).
Keep in mind also, once you’ve started negotiating with an auto, motorcycle or truck accident insurance company for a settlement for a car, truck, motorcycle, auto, bicycle or pedestrian accident in San Diego, there’s almost nothing we can do for you. With most car accident insurance companies, it is virtually impossible for a personal injury attorney to get an insurance company to reclassify your case, except in wrongful death cases, as suddenly being valued significantly higher simply by virtue of your hiring a personal injury lawyer. Once you’ve been branded as being self-represented by a car, truck or motorcycle accident or even a bicycle or pedestrian accident, most auto accident insurance companies will continue to evaluate your San Diego personal injury accident claim as if you were still self-represented despite now having a personal injury to represent you for your injuries.
Having been sought out to write legal articles for California’s two largest and most prestigious legal newspapers, today San Diego auto, motorcycle, pedestrian, bicycle, car and truck accident Attorney Sebastian Gibson’s articles have been published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal and the San Francisco Daily Journal and he has recently completed a book for publication this year. Today thousands also follow his incisive blogs and tweets on Twitter.
One of the best attorneys to follow for his humor and wit, one of the funniest San Diego Personal Injury Lawyers and one of the top humorous San Diego Accident Attorneys people follow on Twitter, San Diego auto, truck and motorcycle accident attorney and bicycle, pedestrian and car accident lawyer Sebastian Gibson has been called "brilliant," "hilariously funny" and a "legend."
It matters more than you think who you call for your personal injury auto accident or other type of crash or injury. When it matters most, call San Diego personal injury lawyer Sebastian Gibson. When it’s time to hire a San Diego personal injury attorney for your case, hire a legend.
