I was in an auto accident the 25th of october, my neck and back was injured. A 17yr old kid decided to come flying out of a gas station acrross a double yellow line into my lane as I was going through an intersection, did not see him at all, I guess he figured he could make it. He admitted fault to the accident and there was witnesses. He totaled my 1997 cadillac, I took out a loan to get it and it was not paid off in full, and on top of all of it my husband has been laid off so I settled with the insurance company 2500.00 for pain and suffering and lost wages and medical until Jan 1 2009. I am starting to regret it. we needed the money, or all of our bills would have been shut off, phone electric, and not to mention our rent. I have had several people tell me that I should have gotten a lawyer and not settled, on top of all of it I did all of the work, not my insurance company and the kid that caused the accident was high risk insurance. Advice anyone.
Well the thing is that you shouldn’t have settled. You should have taken the kid to court and sued for damages. That was your right at the time. But now you can’t go back and fix what you didn’t do. You have to make a choice up front when you are in that kind of accident. To settle which is what you did, or to sue. In that case you choose to settle to get the money, but it backfired. If you had sued you would have received more money from the lawsuit because it sounds like he was at fault. The sad thing here is that you can’t go back and undo the damage or the fact that you settled. Its far too late to sue after the case has been settled. The only thing you can do is learn a lesson from this and that is whenever you are in this type of an accident, sue the other driver. But make sure you do it if you know they are at fault and have caused major damage. I’m sorry for your losses and I hope that things get better for you.