I had a caller the other day who was upset because his Peoria workers’ compensation attorney couldn’t get him the big settlement he was looking for. I’m not a fan of every attorney down there, but this caller had a good one in his corner so I just explained what the lawyer was not.
The caller had a major injury and could not return to work at his old job. He found a new job within his restrictions that was paying him about $500 less per week. Under Illinois law he is entitled to a wage differential payment of about $17,000 per year. He has a life expectancy of around 40 years so in his mind he should be compensated for all of that at once. The present value of that would be around $200,000.
The insurance company has only offered $75,000 to settle the case and otherwise has said they will just make weekly payments of $333.33 which is what they are supposed to do. Nobody, not even the Arbitrator, can make them pay a lump sum settlement. They wouldn’t do it if they thought you were ill and might not survive (once you die the payments stop) or if they think you are desperate to settle for a low number.
In this case, the attorney rightfully told his client not to take the settlement. But just because you don’t get a lump sum today, doesn’t mean you can’t get one in a year or three or whenever. In all of their cases, insurance companies want to close the file if they can. At some point, this file will be audited by an insurance company pencil pusher who wants to know why they are still paying. If they pay a total of $50,000 for the next three years then all of the sudden they look foolish. So at that point they will likely seek to settle the case. And you know what? The full value of the case in 3-5 years will likely be just about the same as it is today.
In other words, if you know your case is worth $200,000 and the insurance company won’t offer that, if three years from now they want to settle, it’s not as if they get a credit for everything they’ve paid you in the last couple of years. There would be no logic to them saying “we’ll now pay $150,000 which is really like $200,000 given that we’ve paid you 50k the last few years.” That would be them rolling the dice and losing.
So the moral of the story is that sometimes you have to be patient. If you aren’t getting the big lump sum that you want right now, go to trial, get a weekly award and just sit tight. In most cases the lump sum will happen at some point. I assure you that getting 75k now is way worse than collecting 50k over the next three years and then getting a big settlement of around 200k. .
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