Can You Still Sue After Having Accepted A Settlement?
You are involved in a bad car accident and have incurred tens of thousands in property damages and bodily injuries. Since you are naive, you accept a settlement out of court. Then about a year after the accident, you are suffering from a bad back and can only work part-time for 6 months. You are also facing paying several thousand in physical therapy bills and missing tens of thousands of dollars in lost income. What do you do? Well, you can hire a Personal Injury Attorneys in Martinez to get the best legal advice.
Don’t have the option to sue
Your personal injury lawyer will inform you that you generally don’t have the option to sue after having accepted a settlement from the defendant and his or her insurance company. However, some exceptions exist.
Complex settlement agreement
The law stipulates that settlement agreements be written in language that is easy for anyone to understand, however, sometimes this is not the case. It is in these instances that you can negate part or all of the agreement (depending on which sections were badly written) in court. This is because the lawyers who drafted the settlement have breached the law by making the wording and terms of the settlement opaque. Legally, they are at fault and not you.Always seek out counsel from another personal injury lawyer if you feel as though your present one gave you bad legal advice. This is especially true if that legal advice leads you to prematurely be lowballed into accepting a lower settlement from the defendant’s insurance company out of court.
Settlement was done in bad faith
If you feel that the other party had malicious intentions for you when drafting the settlement agreement, you can indeed bring a personal injury lawsuit against the defendant in court and win. Examples of a settlement that was drafted in bad faith include:
● Part or all of the settlement being fraudulent
● The insurance company of the defendant knowingly coercing you to accept the terms of the settlement agreement
● You being under extreme duress when accepting the agreement
● You were threatened to accept the agreement from the other insurance company
Note that you will need a personal injury lawyer when trying to prove that this occurred since these instances are complex, subtle, and are therefore hard to prove by yourself.If more than one person hits you, then you can sue the other party if you have not already accepted a settlement from him or her.
Understanding your rights after a settlement is difficult if you don’t get legal guidance. It can be hard to understand your rights after a settlement, but you can still sue with your personal injury lawyer provided you are aware of the information discussed above.
