In a recent interview a lawyer working for a team of Hartford, CT personal injury lawyers spoke about the shocking number of people who fail to claim compensation after an accident that wasn’t their fault.
There are a number of reasons why this could be the case, some believe that they are not entitled to a payout, others think that compensation isn’t right and many more simply don’t consider it.
The reality however is that compensation claims form a very important part of the legal process, and here is why you should claim if you are injured because of an accident that wasn’t your fault.
Covering The Costs Of An Injury
Getting injured is going to cost you money, and the severity of the injury will dictate just how much. In many cases, you are going to have soaring medical bills which your health insurance provider may not cover, insurance premiums to pay if your car was involved, as well as a potential loss of earnings if you’re unable to work.
Even if you have sick pay from your job, you are going to be unable to work overtime for example, which can limit your ability to earn. This is the main reason why compensation exists, in order to pay for the costs of the injury.
Preventing Issues From Reoccurring
Bringing these kinds of cases forward is not just about the money, it is also about making a company or an organization aware of their negligence so that they will take steps that will greatly minimize the chances of such an accident happening again.
Now, this is not going to help you and your injury right now, but there is a certain sense of civic duty that we all have, and bringing forth a claim like this will hopefully mean that nobody else suffers a similar fate in the future.
Purpose of Insurance Companies
Another important consideration to make here is that insurance companies are designed to cover this kind of incident. This is exactly why building and business owners take out insurance so that it can cover the potential risks of an accident taking place.
If you fail to claim compensation when you are involved in an accident then the insurance companies will keep this money, which of course is not right.
Punishment
In most cases of negligence, there is no criminal activity by the responsible party, and therefore the only way to really give out any kind of punishment is to hit them in the pocket.
As we have mentioned, these companies will have insurance companies that will take on these cases, but when the insurance company has to pay out, they will in turn increase the cost of future premiums for their clients. And so in claiming the compensation you can still punish the guilty party, by way of increasing their costs.
This is not the perfect way to deal with this situation of course, but given that the clock cannot be turned back, it is the best option which we currently have following this kind of accident.
