Week 15 The Art of Adjusting Why You Need an Expert - YouTube

i'm Chantal Roberts and i'm an expert witness for  claims handling standards practices and procedures  

i was an adjuster for 20 plus years the art of  adjusting is a vlog to help professionals and  

lay people alike understand a bit more about the  claims handling process today we'll be talking  

about why defense counsel and insurers will need  an expert witness for claims handling in today's  

day and age everyone really wants to save money  and that means pinching pennies so to keep costs  

down defense counsel and insurers want to save on  loss adjustment expenses (LAE) and they usually  

don't want to retain a claims handling expert on  a bad faith claim the thought is that a adjuster  

or the claims manager can serve as the good faith  claims handling witness and that's absolutely true  

but the issue is that sometimes they are  too close to to the problem to see what  

may come out and bite them you've probably  heard the phrase i didn't see the trees  

because of the forest and that's what could happen  here the adjuster and the manager may be too close  

to look at the file objectively and the defense  attorney while he's very skilled in insurance law  

may not catch a clue that the plaintiff's claim  attorney or the plaintiff's claim handler expert  

would catch for example i handled a case where the  claimant was an automobile case where the claimant  

was med-flighted to the hospital and the  doctors and staff worked on the claimant for  

quite a long time and there was one line one note  by the doctor about one or two o'clock the very  

next morning that said that he called the chaplain  for the claimant and this indicates to me that  

the claimant was very near death and that the  doctor did not believe that the claimant would  

be making it to the morning and and so i pointed  that out to defense counsel and said hey you know  

i know you don't think there was a lot of of pain  and suffering in this since the claim it came out  

okay and in the very end the claim it did survive  but when everything is said and done i mean  

there is some pain and suffering if the doctor  didn't even think the claimant was going to be  

making it and so the defense counsel was  able to go back to her client the insurer  

and say look guys we need to go ahead and  settle soon now and so i was able to actually  

help save the insurer more LAE rather than having  them take it to court and possibly receiving a  

plaintiff verdict and then an excess verdict on  top of that so this week we've discussed why you  

need an expert for claims handling procedures and  standards insurers want to save on lae but this  

might not necessarily be a good area to skimp  on of course every claim is different and every  

insurer has different protocols for handling  losses however this being in the litigated  

world that we're in see below for some legalese  very few claims go to jury trial and picking an  

expert who's been deposed the most or who has gone  to trial the most may not be the correct expert  

failing to have a second set of eyes on the claim  in order to save on expenses isn't always the best  

way to resolve a loss as an expert witness  and a former claims adjuster i'm sharing my  

experience on the art of adjusting thank  you for listening i appreciate your time