Joseph Matthews has been an attorney since 1971, and from 1975 to 1977 taught at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley. He has for many years been involved in matters relating to seniors, and is the author of Social Security, Medicare & Government Pensions and Long Term Care: How to Plan & Play for It, as well as How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim.
Matthews, an attorney and author, offers a guide to winning a personal injury claim for automobile, cycle, or pedestrian accidents; slip or trip and fall accidents; home accidents; and others. It covers handling a personal injury claim oneself and when to hire a lawyer, how legal responsibility is determined, initial steps in settling a claim, understanding insurance coverage, how insurance adjusters decide how much a claim for injuries is worth, processing the claim, property damage claims, negotiating a settlement, finalizing it, and working with a lawyer, arbitration, and taking a case to court. This edition has been updated to include recent state-by-state lawsuit filing deadlines and small claims court limits. Eithne O'Leyne Editor, ProtoView Reveals step-by-step how lawyers and insurance firms process personal injury claims, and the secret formulas used to pocket a hefty share of your settlement. San Francisco Examiner Finally a book that takes the mystery out of personal injury claims...consumers can confidently handle claims against insurance companies and save the cost of legal fees. Los Angeles Times This completely updated edition of How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim includes the latest state-by-state lawsuit filing deadlines and small claims court limits. Readers don't need any special training to handle most injury claims just patience, perseverance, and some basic information about how the insurance claims process works. According to Matthews, it usually doesn't matter whether they were partly at fault for an accident as long as the accident was not mostly their fault. They can use this book if they have been injured or their vehicle or other property has been damaged in any sort of accident that occurred when they weren't at work. Even if they were injured on the job, if someone other than their employer or a coworker might be partly to blame, they can use this book to seek compensation. The book explains what to do if the insurance company refuses to negotiate fairly. Readers learn to handle nearly any type of accident situation, and to navigate most of the tricky parts of the insurance claims process. The book walks them through all the different parts of the process, with samples and examples of everything they might need to do. If the claim is too complicated for them to handle, they learn that from How to Win Your Personal Injury Claim, too. And the book explains how to work with an attorney if it comes to that. SirReadaLot.org