You may have learned that a polite person will agree to a reasonable request. That is true, but how can you tell when a request seems reasonable? If the request comes from an insurance company other than your own, you have good reason to doubt the existence of a legitimate reason for the insurer’s eagerness to be requesting a favor from you.
Insurers do not ask for a statement unless they are talking to a person that got injured in a car accident. Typically, the driver of the other automobile, the one that hit the victim’s car has purchased a policy from the company that seeks a statement. So, if you have been in a car accident and the insurer for the other driver would like you to make a statement, do not do it. Normally, such a statement gets heard by an adjuster.
Remember these basic facts about adjusters
Each of them is an employee of some insurance company. Each of them wants to please that same business. Like all employees, adjusters can please their boss by doing what that same person has asked them to do.
Adjusters get paid to minimize the amount of damage that has resulted from any designated accident. If the adjuster were to get a statement from you, after you had been in a collision, then the adjuster’s job would entail seeking to minimize the monetary value of the damages that you had suffered. Adjusters ask lots of questions. At times a few of those questions can push an accident victim to give a misleading answer.
The nature of the adjuster’s questions underscores the reason that you should not be providing your insurer with a statement
The adjuster’s questions may confuse you, because the insurer would like to see you made a bit confused. By placing you in that state of confusion, the questioner should find it easy to trick you into thinking that you were at least partially responsible for the things that caused the accident.
While trying to trick you, the adjuster’s comments and questions never offer a hint, regarding details about the other driver. Still you will be asked to provide lots of details, regarding your own actions at the time of the collision.
The defendant’s insurance company would like to acquire some bit of knowledge that could be used to suggest that you were partially at fault for the collision. Yet that same lawyer does not want to provide any evidence that would show that the lawyer’s client should be charged as the at-fault driver.
How you can be polite in the face of such a probing request
Politely say that you refuse to provide the defendant’s insurance company with a statement until you have spoken with your injury lawyer in St. Albert. Realize, though, that your lawyer will want you to give a statement to a representative of the company from which you have purchased your own car insurance.