Have you ever wondered why people pay money to attorneys after a car crash in Michigan? After all, the state has no-fault insurance laws, so you are covered if you have a car accident. Insurance companies are the reason people hire an attorney.
Think about the name; they are an insurance “company,” not an insurance charity. They exist to make money for their shareholders. They are not some little mom and pop shop either. They are big corporations worth a lot of money.
Ten companies control 72% of the car insurance market. The top of the tree is State Farm, which receives $42 billion of customer payments each year and owns 17% of the auto insurance market. They employ 70,000 people and are worth over $116 billion. Nothing personal about that.
No insurance company gets to be that big by giving money away. Insurance companies make money by promising a lot and delivering as little as possible. They sell you the dream of not having to worry about anything if you have a car crash. Sadly it is not true. Or, to be more accurate, it will not be true unless you make it be so.
One of the favorite tricks of any insurance company is to settle early, to tempt you with a seemingly large lump sum payment. Only later do you realize it falls far short of covering everything. Another is to come up with excuses: Yes, you would be covered but for that little detail in the small print. Yet another tactic used by insurance companies is to bore you into giving up. If they make things as hard as possible, they hope you will go away without receiving what you are really due.
If you want to take on the insurance corporations on your own, you will likely fail and leave with far less than you deserve. That is why people hire an attorney if they have a car accident in Michigan: to help them do battle with the insurance company and get due compensation.
