hi this is brian wiklendt with garfinkel schwartz. i’m here in maitland florida today in ouroffice here. we also have an office in cocoa beach florida which is on the space coast. but our practice especially including thedefense base act takes me all across the country and pretty much all around the world. what i’d like to do is talk to you verypractically about insurance companies under the defense base act. there are only a few of them that kind ofmonopolize the market. i don’t like insurance companies becausei used to be in-house counsel for an insurance
company for a period of time. for a long periodof time i was outside counsel for insurance companies so i know exactly how they workespecially how they work under this law which is really, really bad. i’ve had clients say that they didn’tget an attorney until they called me because the nurse case manager said that she was goingto take care of everything. or the adjuster said, “hey, once you get back home you’llbe treated like a king…blah blah blah.†the thing you should be aware of just practicallyspeaking is that every time an insurance company does something, they’re doing somethingto try to minimize your claim. what i mean by that is if they ask for a recordedstatement, why would they need a recorded
statement from you? they already know whathappened. they know that you were injured at work. they want to try to find something that theycan use against you in the future. it’s the only reason that they would wanta recorded statement from you. they have witnesses they have the companyknows what happened to you, what the injury was. they don’t, they don’t need that. number two is why would they send you to anindependent medical exam at a doctor of their choosing? wouldn’t that mean that they’retrying to figure a way not to rely on your treating physician who’s telling you thatyou need these things?
that’s probably the only that’s the onlypurpose for sending you to an independent medical examination. is to try to get awaywith not having to pay for your medical care. third thing, they do a vocational assessment.what is a vocational assessment? well someone interviews you about all of yourqualifications all the things that you could possibly do physically even though you couldbe partially or pretty much permanently disabled. they’ll be doing this vocational assessmentto try to find jobs for you to help you get back on your feet? no! they’re trying to find jobs they think theycan qualify you to do to send those jobs and the qualifications and the physical requirementsto send to their independent medical examiner
or peer review person to sign off and sayyeah we can probably prove to a judge that he or she can do these jobs. well that obviouslywill reduce the benefits that they pay and that’s the only reason they do it. they don’t do it for your benefit. afterthe vocational assessment there’s what’s done a labor market survey is done on you.and that that they try to search for and find jobs that pay enough money that it will affectyour bottom line as to what your compensation rate should be in the future. another two things the insurance companiesdo to try to minimize your claim or get away with not paying you are:
number one they want you to go to a functionalcapacity evaluation. they’re looking for exaggeration, they’re looking for any typeof thing that they can think of to say that you’re not trying your best, doing exercisesand doing these different bending and lifting things that you may or may not be able todo. and they only simply do the functional capacityevaluation to try to get you back into the work force under their terms and not underyour or your doctor’s terms. so be aware of the functional capacity evaluation as well. finally a lot of times if the case is reallyand it looks like long-term care is going to be needed, including possible surgery,it’s not unlike, it’s not, it’s not
uncommon for the insurance company to do surveillanceon you. and that’s just another one of the tools that they have in their arsenal to tryto get you trapped up and explaining during maybe in an initial written statement or oralstatement they ask you for maybe in a deposition if you’re not represented. they’re goingto try to twist your words and say “you acted like you couldn’t do anything, andwe saw you in your yard cutting your grass, picking up your kids…blah blah blah andthen they’ll try to say that you’re untrustworthy to the judge. so those are all the things that the insurancecompanies do to people regardless of you individually because you’re just simply a number to themand they want to try to minimize the number
that they’re going to have to pay you. so that’s all i do for a living i fightfor the true value of the claims for people that i represent but it’s one definitelyworth pursuing. like i said sometimes they act like they’retrying to help you out and doing all these things. there’s absolutely no reason whythey would do any of these things other than to try to minimize what they have to pay you. and so anytime you start to feel a littleuncomfortable about these things that they’re trying to do that’s the time you’ve gotto call an attorney. if you don’t call me, please call somebodyelse that specializes in the defense base
act because it’s complicated, and they havegiant resources and an entire industry on their side playing these games to try andreduce or completely cut off your benefits. so again i’m brian wiklendt with garfinkelschwartz. i’ll come to you call me anytime 24 hours a day. check out my website, ourwebsite is www.defensebaseactlaw.com brian wiklendt again signing out thanks forlistening in maitland florida.