Ali Awad:
How much should I ask for in a personal injury settlement? Well, if you hire Ali Awad, we're
going to ask for a lot of money, but that doesn't necessarily mean you're going to
get it. Every time. I have a case where we've been working on it for a little over two years now. The
client was involved and he was hit with a tractor trailer and there was $2 million in coverage on
that policy, but client's injuries weren't that serious. He went and saw the orthopedic doctor.
He didn't need any sort of surgeries, didn't have any traumatic brain injury, didn't have any
future recommended procedures.
For all intents and purposes, it was considered a minor impact.
Now, even though there were minor injuries, we still sent a demand to the insurance company
for the full $2 million. And when we relayed that to the client, he automatically assumed he
was going to make $2 million, and he already started spending the money. He legit went
and booked a vacation package with his wife, started going into debt, took out $40,000
in loans and started just really blowing the money that he hadn't even earned yet.
The problem was that the case was really only worth maybe in the low six-figure category.
Luckily, we were able to settle that case at mediation for $250,000. But why would we ask
for $2 million when we know the value of the case is significantly less? Well, this is a
basic negotiation tactic. In any negotiation, information is your friend. The more information
you have about the other party, how much money they have on the table, how much they're willing
to pay, how much your case is worth, all of this information is beneficial in a negotiation.
So if we don't know exactly how much the other party is willing to pay, you should start at
a very high number and you should expect that they're going to come back and give you a counter
offer.
We started at two million and their first offer was $20,000. So obviously there was a lot
of room to make up for that. So in most cases, we start at the policy limits, whatever the entire
insurance policy amount is and then we negotiate from there. A lot of times if you have a strong
enough case, you can settle for the entire policy limits, whether that's 25,000, 50,000, 100,000
or a million dollars, the insurance company will pay you if you've built up the case properly.
So as a general rule, you should always ask for the most amount of money possible in the event
that there's a piece of information you don't know and you might end up with a much higher settlement
and a lot of money. If you want to know how we maximize the value of our cases, take a look at
some of my videos about MRIs, punitive damages, and UM and resident/relative coverage. Those
videos go into more detail about how you can get more money on your case even when
you thought there was nothing left. I'm attorney Ali Awad, the CEO Lawyer.
I
hope this video has answered the question about how much you should ask for in a personal
injury settlement. It would mean the world to me if you subscribe to my channel and watch my videos
because I'm always looking to add value for you. I'm attorney Ali, the CEO Lawyer. Thank you
so much for watching my video.
Take care..
