Liberty Mutual Insurance Company is one of the largest automobile insurers in Illinois and the United States. The company is more than 100 years old and is valued at $100 billion. Liberty Mutual writes insurance policies for cars, mobile homes, homeowners, casualty insurance and fire insurance. At Kreisman Law Offices we have handled many claims for our clients, mostly for injuries suffered in an auto or truck accident where the party responsible is a Liberty Mutual insured.
In years past, Liberty Mutual’s insurance adjusters seemed to be fair and reasonable when evaluating claims that we have brought to their attention. But recently that behavior towards car accident cases seems to have been changed. Now Liberty Mutual like most of the other major insurance companies, makes settling pre-suit claims difficult if not impossible because of the somewhat unreasonable stance some of its adjusters take.
It is expected that all claims made by our office on behalf of an injured client will be scrutinized by the insurance company’s claim adjusting unit. That would mean that once our client has finished his or her medical treatment and we and the client are assured by the medical providers that a medical plateau has been reached, we will have collected all related medical reports and associated bills and forward those to the Liberty Mutual adjuster for review. After a short time, maybe two weeks at most, I will call the adjuster to discuss their evaluation and explore settlement. Sometimes and seemingly more often than usual, adjusters will say that they are missing certain records. This leads my office to resend the same records, bills, vehicle photographs and lost time from work verifications. Then I will make another call to the adjuster to discuss the claim. Liberty Mutual adjusters are generally experienced, polite and fair.
But in some instances, we have found that Liberty Mutual reacts to hospital, physician and physical therapy bills as though the client and the attorney at Kreisman Law Offices have conspired with the cooperation of doctors to inflate the bills and medical service. In one recent case that we are about to file in the Circuit Court of Cook County, the Liberty Mutual adjuster took issue with the $12,000 in combined hospital and physical therapy bills stating that the offer to settle this rear-end crash by a garbage truck was valued at $3,000. That was its offer to settle this claim with $12,000 in medical bills, which by the way were paid from the med pay portion of my client’s State Farm auto insurance policy. The adjuster actually said that the medical treatment and physical therapy could not be necessary and would not be fair and reasonable. I took exception to that statement. No insurance adjuster who is not licensed as a medical professional could possible opine on the reasonableness of the medical treatment prescribed by doctors treating the patient. In brief, this adjuster may not understand that at the jury trial the treating physician will give unrefuted testimony to a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the care and treatment that our client received as a direct result of the rear-end crash was necessary, fair and reasonable for the curing of his medical injuries. To offer $3,000 with medical bills that will be just a part of a jury’s verdict is absurd. Maybe this is not typical of all insurance adjusters but it has become more of the norm than the exception.
When at Kreisman Law Offices face insurance adjusters that have an unrealistic view of a case, it is very easy for us to simply file the lawsuit in the appropriate venue or jurisdiction. That is what we were hired to do—obtain fair and reasonable compensation for our injured clients. In this case mentioned above, the client was at a complete standstill at a stop sign when the garbage truck weighing several tons crashed into his car. We will see how wrong it was to dispute such an obvious claim of injury.
Kreisman Law Offices has been handling Liberty Mutual Insurance claims for most of the 40 years we have in experience. When Liberty Mutual adjusters choose not take responsibility for their insureds negligence and refuse to value the claim fairly, a lawsuit and jury verdict will cure that unfairness.
If you or someone you know or love has been injured in car accident or other accident with a Liberty Mutual insured, call us for a free and immediate consultation and evaluation of your case. We can be reached 24 hours a day, 7 days a week at 312.346.0045 or toll-free at 800.583.8002. We are here to help.