Should I give a recorded statement to an insurance company before consulting with an attorney?
Answer: A recorded statement can make or break your case. So, even if you do not wish to retain an attorney, we highly recommend that you obtain a free, confidential consultation with the Haig Law Firm BEFORE you give a recorded statement. If you have any questions regarding your workers’ compensation claim, feel free to give us a call now at 540-777-1000.
Many injured workers are contacted within days or even hours of an on-the-job accident by insurance adjusters (sometime called “claim representatives”) who are often quite friendly. These insurance adjusters will typically request a recorded statement and explain that this is just part of the protocol they must follow. As a result, injured workers often provide recorded statements without much thought about critical issues and aspect of Virginia workers’ compensation law that could trigger the denials of their claims. In this respect, some injured workers incorrectly assume that all injuries that occur at work or while “on the clock” will be compensated. The harsh reality is that many kinds of work-related injuries are not compensable under the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Act. For this reason, recorded statements can be extremely important to an insurance company’s decision about whether to accept or deny a workers’ compensation claim. Insurance adjusters are trained to look for grounds upon which to deny workers’ compensation claims. Make no doubt about it, what an injured worker says during a recorded telephone interview can make the difference between a claim being accepted or denied.
Take, for example, a parcel delivery worker who has stated that a lower back injury occurred “while lifting boxes” but failed to mention that the lower back pain started when the worker was lifting one particular box weighing 50 pounds at one particular moment. That claim may be denied as a repetitive work injury even though, in fact, the injury was not caused by repetitive work activity or cumulative trauma. If one identifiable incident (lifting a 50-pound box at one particular time) caused the injury, then the claim would likely be compensable. However, if the injured worker does not know the law surrounding repetitive work injuries, he or she might not know to explain that the injury occurred while lifting a specific box at a specific time. The insurance adjuster taking the recorded statement in such a case might not feel any incentive to ask the injured worker, “Were you lifting a specific box at a specific time when you experienced the sudden onset of back pain or do you attribute your injury to lifting many boxes?” The adjuster might simply think to herself, “Lifting is a repetitive motion. Therefore, I can deny this claim.”
In fact, some adjusters might jump on a general statement that an accident occurred while “lifting boxes” and even try build a defense for a repetitive work injury denial with leading questions like the following. Take a quick look at the following dialogue:
Adjuster: “So you were working very hard lifting boxes?”
Injured Worker: “Yes”
Adjuster: “And you pretty much have to lift boxes and deliver boxes throughout the day, right?”
Injured Worker: “Yes.”
Adjuster: “ So that’s pretty much what happened on the day you were injured?”
Injured Worker: “Yes.”
Adjuster: “Do you have anything to add or would you like to change any of your answers to my questions?”
Injured Worker “No.”
Just like that, the adjuster has all she needs to deny this claim. She has even made it more difficult to rehabilitate the statement later with a focus on the lifting of the 50-pound box at a specific time that caused the injury.
In some cases, insurance carriers may deny claims because they arise from “unexplained accidents.” Often these denials are likewise based upon injured workers’ recorded statements. In reality, however, many of these accidents are not, in fact, unexplained. Take the example of an injured electrician who fell off a ladder, and during a recorded statement said something like, “I’m not really sure what happened. It all happened so fast.” The electrician’s claim very well might then be denied as having arisen from an unexplained accident. However, if that electrician could truthfully state that the accident occurred when he lost his balance while reaching overhead with one hand and simply could not maintain his footing on the ladder rung, then his claim might be accepted without any litigation. The electrician in the above example might really have only intended to say, “I have reached overhead while standing on a ladder a thousand times in the past without losing my balance. In the past reaching overhead has not caused me to lose my balance on a ladder, but this time it did and I fell, and it all happened very quickly.”
People are sometime embarrassed to discuss losing their sense of balance and falling or misjudging the edge of the roadway in a motor vehicle accident and make comments like, “I’m not sure.. it was just an accident.”
In both of the above examples, knowing the law can impact what facts need to be emphasized and what loose or inaccurate statements should be avoided (as they would create needless confusion). Giving a recorded statement to a friendly claims representative without first speaking with a lawyer might not seem like a big deal, but one small mis-statement during that recorded conversation could result in a denied claim. Therefore, even if you do not wish to retain an attorney, we strongly recommend that you obtain a free and confidential consultation with an experienced workers’ compensation attorney BEFORE you give a recorded statement.
