How Long Does a Car Accident Settlement Take in Indiana and Kentucky?

Why Is My Car Accident Settlement Taking So Long? Common Factors That Lengthen Timelines

While we can’t tell you exactly how long your car accident claim will take to settle, we can highlight some of the most common factors that tend to drag out car accident settlement negotiations. Here are a few of the major ones:

The Value of Your Car Accident Claim

The insurance company, first and foremost, is trying to save money. They want to close out personal injury claims as cheaply as they can. That’s why calculating your damages accurately is so important.

Depending on your case, you might be eligible for a variety of types of compensation:

• Economic damages: reimbursement of financial losses due to the crash, like medical bills, lost wages, and household services
• Non-economic damages: compensation for your pain, suffering, emotional distress, and other harder-to-calculate losses
• Punitive damages: awarded by juries in the most dramatic cases, where the wrongdoer acted intentionally or was grossly negligent

In a no-fault state like Kentucky, your own car insurance will pay economic damages up to the policy limit, and any excess would be paid by the at-fault party. In a fault-based state like Indiana, you will demand compensation primarily from the negligent parties.

If your claim is a small one, with maybe only a few thousand dollars in claimed damages, the adjuster might approve it more quickly. Or, if it’s immediately clear that their driver is at fault and the damages you’ve suffered greatly exceed the maximum amount of coverage the policy offers, they may determine that quickly offering a policy limits settlement is going to be better than trying to fight.

But in general, if you have suffered serious injuries and are making a large financial claim, you can expect more pushback from the insurance company.

Calculating damages in large, complex car accident claims is a difficult process. It often relies on extensive medical records and expert testimony (to accurately estimate future costs), as well as subjective evaluations of pain, suffering, emotional trauma, and other non-economic damages that don’t come with a simple price tag.

In short, not only does the insurance company have a lot more to lose with big cases, but there’s also more wiggle room for them to try to minimize your pain and negotiate a smaller settlement.

Whether Fault Is Clear

Almost all car accident lawsuits are centered on the concept of negligence, even in a “no fault” state like Kentucky. People have a duty of care to one another while they’re on the road. If they do not exercise reasonable care, and someone is harmed as a result, they are responsible to pay for the injured party’s damages.

Unfortunately, in many cases fault isn’t completely clear. If there were no reliable eyewitnesses, and the other driver isn’t owning up to their misconduct, fault must be determined based on an analysis of whatever physical evidence is available: road debris, vehicle damage, skid marks, GPS data, and even surveillance footage.

Furthermore, there may be additional parties at fault. For example, this is often true in truck accident cases, when you may have a negligence claim against the driver, the trucking company, and others.

The murkier the evidence is, the more room the insurance company has to argue that their driver wasn’t responsible—or that you were also at least partly responsible. Countering these arguments often requires an extensive investigation, which may include speaking with experts in multiple fields, performing an accident reconstruction, obtaining any dash cam or security footage that may have been taken, and more.

And because of Kentucky’s pure comparative negligence law, if the insurance company can show that you’re even partially at fault, they can reduce the amount they have to pay you by the same percentage.

RELATED POST: How Do I Dispute Fault After a Car Accident?

How Long It Takes for You to Reach Maximum Medical Improvement

You can, of course, file a car accident claim any time you wish, up to the statute of limitations. But there are risks to negotiating a settlement before your condition has stabilized and you’ve reached maximum medical improvement—or in other words, your doctor believes that no further progress in your recovery is realistically possible.

Every injury recovery process is different. Sometimes a doctor expects symptoms to go away within 2-3 months, but then they don’t. Other times, injuries linked to the car crash may not be obvious in the first few days after a car accident, but gradually reveal themselves over time.

Settle too early, before you can confidently say what your future medical care needs will be, or how long you’ll be out of work, and the consequences may be tragic. Be wary of pushy insurance adjusters who try to get you to sign on the dotted line while you’re still recovering from your injuries. This is one area where you should definitely wait.

Insurance Company Stalling Tactics

Naturally, you want to settle your car accident claim quickly. You’ve got bills coming in, income drying up, and no clear idea when your settlement check is going to arrive—or if it will even arrive at all.

Unfortunately, an insurance adjuster might harness that desperation as a negotiating tactic. They’re hoping you get so fed up with waiting, so sick of the drama, and so ready to finally start fresh that you’ll take whatever the next car accident settlement check they throw at you is—even if it’s far less than what you deserve.