Personal Injury Loans and Pandemic Time
The cost and effects of the pandemic are both varied and wide-ranging. In the field of law, however, one of the most well-known impacts of the pandemic is the backing up of courtrooms. The initial lockdowns and quarantines meant that trials and hearings were backed up, and as new cases arose – in order to protect their companies’ assets – insurance adjusters dragged out cases and made nearly bare-minimum settlement offers to drag out their cases even further which created even more delays in the legal system.
Those bare-minimum settlements came from a simple idea: With millions of Americans financially impacted by the pandemic, and with some of those Americans seeking financial relief in the form of their legal case’s settlements, a plaintiff’s desperation would make them much more likely to accept a settlement amount that was actually much less that what their case was actually worth.
With the keys to a settlement in the insurance adjuster’s hands, the plaintiff would be left to choose between getting a paltry settlement (that was nowhere near the worth of their case) or waiting several months or years in a needlessly dragged out case, just to get the compensation they deserve. Given that people’s bills and finances can’t wait several months or years, most plaintiffs end up taking the former option.
In these scenarios, people are now turning to a different option that has been around since before the pandemic: Personal injury loans. Personal injury loans give people the opportunity to get loans in or near the amount that their attorney thinks their case is worth before their case is actually concluded. And usually, if for some reason the plaintiff ends up losing their case after they’ve received the loan, they won’t owe the amount they were initially paid. Personal injury loans are less of a loan, and more of a cash advance.
These increasingly popular personal injury loans are starting to flip the script on the adjusters. With the plaintiff’s immediate financial needs satisfied, they are suddenly free to wait as long as required to get a proper settlement that is relative to the true value of their case. However, as a personal injury lawyer from a law office like Injury Lawyer Miami can explain, the unfortunate side effect of the new prevalence of personal injury loans is that with cases now willingly being dragged out further (this time in concert with the plaintiff), the adverse effect on case schedules is now doubled.
However, as the saying goes, “The night is darkest just before the dawn.” Once it becomes apparent to insurance adjusters that they can no longer manipulate desperation, perhaps they’ll stop dragging out cases and we can finally get case speeds back to normal.