The Age-Old Question:
What should happen when one person is hurt by another?
The Answer:
The common law in the United States has evolved as an answer to that question over the last few hundred years. We certainly don’t want to criminally punish people for making a mistake, but we also know it’s not fair to let victim’s suffer more than they should. Those who cause harm should bear the cost of repairing that harm. The goal of a personal injury attorney is to put the victim back in the place that they were in prior to the accident. We only get one body, so there is no way to fully repair someone after suffering a catastrophic injury. Instead, the law offers money as the best available substitute it can come up with in an effort to make the injured party as close to whole as it can. That still leaves us with a problem; physical and emotional injuries can be extremely expensive, the at-fault party likely cannot afford to pay for your injuries. We don’t want your life to be ruined by your injury, but we also don’t want another person’s financial state to be devastated after making one mistake. That is where insurance comes in. We pay for insurance coverage so that we can afford to right the wrongs that we cause. Insurance is a system where we all pay in a little, so that the money is there when one of us needs that system to pay out a lot.
Our legal system enables us to enforce personal accountability by shifting the cost of an accident to the person who caused it. Then, our insurance system enables us to pay to heal the injured party without ruining the life of the person at fault. It’s a true win-win.
But are we Taking Advantage of Insurance Companies when we file claims?
Many people ask this question. The question I have is: do you feel that you are taking advantage of your television provider when you decide to turn on your TV? We pay insurance premiums monthly so that we will be protected from a catastrophic loss. We pay for TV monthly so that we can watch a television program should we choose to. We pay both of these bills whether we ever use it or not. Sometimes, we decide that we would like to watch a show. We pick up the remote without remorse because we have been paying for that exact service. Why would we then feel remorse when we are forced to call to make an insurance claim? Would it be better if we all just paid a company monthly for our entire lives for no reason whatsoever? The insurance industry is the only service industry that we pay and yet we hope that they do nothing for us. Sounds like a pretty profitable business to get into.
Insurance companies know that they will occasionally have to pay out. They plan on that. That is why they charge the prices that they do. They want to accept this obligation. They are extremely aggressive in their advertising because they are not afraid of having to protect new people. They know that even after all of their claims, they are operating at an enormous profit. After all, by the time an insurance company is forced to pay for your injuries, odds are that both you, and the person who injured you, have been paying insurance premiums for many years. What’s more, insurance companies know that some people are told that it’s a bad thing to get an attorney involved. They love it when unrepresented parties attempt to negotiate a fair settlement with them. They use their entire team of attorneys to keep your recovery at the low end of what they think is fair. At the end of the day, they are a business, and a very profitable one. You should not hesitate to seek the help of an experienced personal injury attorney in St. George, Utah when you have been injured in an accident.
