Okay, let's pretend that you are in the middle of a law suit.
Your case has been filed in the Circuit Court and you are the Plaintiff.
At some point in time, your attorney may suggest sending an Offer of Settlement.
And you'll say, what is that?
and why would we want to send the defendants an Offer of Settlement?
This video will explain what an Offer of Settlement is and how they work.
I will explore some strategies that may help reduce your risk and increase your recovery
by using an Offer of Settlement.
But before I dive in, let me say that the Offer of Settlement laws and procedures
are very complex and have undergone numerous changes since they were first created.
This video is a simple overview of the Offer of Settlement procedure.
But every case is unique and there are lots of variables that affect each Offer.
But this video should help give you a basic foundation of how you can use them
in a personal injury case.
Most people have heard that in England,
the loser of a law suit has to pay the winners attorney fees.
Well in Florida,
we have a similar law that says if any party offers to settle the case with the other side,
and the other side rejects the offer,
and you go to trial and win by more than 25% of your offer,
then as a penalty to the side who made you go all the way to trial,
they may have to pay your attorney fees on top of your award.
This sounds simple enough, but let me tell you it is very complicated.
There is a lot of strategy that goes into deciding how much to make an offer for,
when to make it, and for how much.
But first, I am going to talk briefly about the mechanics of Offers of Settlements.
The rules say that the plaintiff can't make an offer immediately.
And you have to wait at least 90 days in order to give the Defendant time to evaluate your case.
But the defendant can send you an offer of settlement as quickly as 45 days after the suit is filed.
Also, just so you know,
you can't make an offer of settlement within 45 days before a trial starts.
All offers of settlement are good for 30 days.
So when we send one to a defendant, they have 30 days to decide if they want to accept it.
And if one is sent to you, you have 30 days to decide if you want to accept it as well.
Also,
if you send an offer of settlement, you can withdraw it before the defense accepts it,
or before the 30 days expires.
But if you withdraw the offer, then it has no effect and you can't recover attorney fees.
Now, let me give you two different examples of Offers of Settlements.
The first example is when You make an offer to the defense to settle your case,
and the second example is when the Defense makes an offer to You.
So with the first example,
let's say that you offer to settle with a defendant for Seventy Five Thousand Dollars,
the offer expires and you go to trial and win.
The jury awards you One Hundred Thousand Dollars.
So in this case, you are entitled to additional fees and costs from the day you made the offer.
This is because you offered to settle for much less, by twenty five percent,
then you ultimately were awarded a nice verdict.
So therefore, the court will penalize the Defendants for not settling your case
when they should have.
The penalty will be the value of your attorney fees from the date you made the offer to them.
The theory is that since you made what turned out to be a very reasonable offer to settle the case,
and since the judgment is 25% higher than your offer,
the defendant should be punished for making you go through all of the effort
and expense of trying the case when they should have paid you when you made the Offer.
Now here is the second example:
Instead of you offering to settle the case,
the Defendant offers to settle the case with you.
They offer you One Hundred Thousand Dollars as their Offer of Settlement.
However, you turn down their One Hundred Thousand Dollar offer and go to trial.
At trial, the jury awards in favor of you, but the verdict is only Fifty Thousand Dollars.
Since you recovered less than their offer to you by 25%,
then You will be penalized for not accepting their One Hundred Thousand Dollar offer,
and now you will be required to pay their attorney fees and costs from the date of their offer to you.
Now, let's discuss strategy when there is more than one defendant.
For example, let's say you were in a car accident.
We file suit against the driver of the car and against the owner of the car.
Since we have two defendants,
let's look at what we need to consider when making an Offer of Settlement in your case.
Let's say our goal is to settle your case for One Hundred Thousand Dollars.
We could offer to settle against one of the defendants, let's say the driver of the car,
for One hundred Thousand Dollars, and state in our settlement offer,
that if they agree to settle for One Hundred Thousand Dollars,
we will drop the case against the other defendant, the owner of the car.
If the Defense accepts the offer, then the case is over.
If they don't accept this offer, then in order for us to trigger the attorney fees,
we will need to end up with a judgment against the driver
for One Hundred and Twenty Five Thousand Dollars or more.
Now let's look at a different strategy.
We want to settle the case for One hundred Thousand Dollars,
and we could offer to settle against each defendant for Fifty Thousand dollars.
This could have three different outcomes.
One, they agree and pay fifty thousand each;
two, they don't agree to settle any of the cases and we go to trial;
or three, they accept one offer and settle for one of the defendants for fifty thousand dollars
and we go to trial against the other defendant with fifty thousand in our pockets.
And here's another strategy to consider.
Let's say we are sure that we can't settle your case,
and we know that we will have to go all the way to trial.
Since we know your case won't settle, for whatever reason,
we may want to consider sending an offer to settle the case
against just one of the defendants for a LOW Amount, and let it expire.
The idea behind this strategy is that the insurance company
won't accept a low offer to one defendant and still have to litigate for the other defendant
since they represent two defendants and your offer is only to one of them.
For example, suppose you still want the One Hundred Thousand Dollars,
but you offer to settle with the defendant car owner for only twenty thousand.
If they accept it, then you go to trial only against the driver,
and you have twenty thousand in your pocket.
And if they don't accept it,
you only have to recover Twenty Five Thousand Dollars to trigger your attorney fees.
So in this example, if you made a low offer to one of the defendants,
and the final judgment was what you expected, One Hundred Thousand Dollars,
you would be entitled to recover the reasonable value of
your attorney fees and costs from the date the Offer of Settlement was made.
So these are just a few examples of some strategies for making an Offer of Settlement.
Now, let me share with you what ultimately happens at the end of a trial.
At the end of a trial, the jury fills out a Verdict form.
This is basically the paper that says who proved what in your trial.
In a car accident case,
a verdict will usually have the following questions for the jury to answer.
1. Was the defendant negligent?
Yes or No
2. Were you negligent?
Yes or No
3. What percent of negligence do they attribute to the defendant and to you?
4. What are your past medical bills, and past lost wages?
5. What are your future medical bills and future lost wages?
6. Did you suffer a Permanent Injury?
Yes or No
7. If you did suffer a Permanent Injury, what is your past and future pain and suffering?
These are the simplified questions on a verdict form.
If the trial goes great, then all of the answers will be favorable to you.
But in many cases, the jury may not find that you suffered a permanent injury,
and therefore , they will not award you any pain and suffering.
And in many cases when they don't find a permanent injury,
they also won't award any future lost wages or future medical bills.
When the numbers are added up, the jury verdict is given to the Judge,
who then enters a judgment.
Now what is important about your judgment is that,
it is the judgment that determines if you have triggered,
or won or lost, an offer of settlement.
And before a Judge signs a judgment,
he may have to add some things to the judgment,
such as court costs, and he may have to deduct such things from the judgment,
such as what was paid by your PIP carrier or write offs from your medical bills.
My point is this,
when it comes time to select a number that you want to offer in your offer of settlement,
you want it to be low enough that your judgment exceeds it by 25%,
and yet high enough, that if they accept it,
you are being compensated fairly for your injuries and damages.
99% of all personal injury cases settle.
Since the insurance companies have the money,
they can pick and choose which cases they want to try,
and which ones they want to settle.
So if your case is one they think they can win,
they probably won't offer much to settle your case.
So by making a low Offer of Settlement against them,
this increases your recovery when you do win.
Sometimes it is the only leverage we have on a tough case
when the insurance company forces us to go all the way through a trial.
Also, you can make more than one offer of settlement.
So if we go to mediation, and they won't offer fair money to settle your case,
and we believe they are locked into a low number,
then we can make an offer slightly above their highest number
and hope they don't accept it.
Or, if you think they are bluffing at mediation,
we can make an offer slightly higher than your last offer to settle the case,
and they may change their minds and accept your offer.
Let's suppose you are in a situation where the insurance company
won't make a reasonable offer to settle your case.
Maybe they just don't think a jury will award much money for you,
or they think that the jury won't find that you don't have a permanent injury.
For whatever reason, you can't get your case settled,
and now you know you are going to have to go to trial.
Here is a strategy that may improve your recovery,
and may give you a little extra protection at trial.
Calculate what your judgment would be if the jury
only gave you your past lost wages and past medical bills.
In some really tough cases, like when a jury does not like a case,
but they still like the injured victim,
they will often compromise the verdict
and give the plaintiff some of their damages but not all of them.
So it is common to see a verdict where they award past medical bills
and past lost wages, but they don't award anything else.
In this situation,
if you had sent an Offer of Settlement for seventy five percent of your past medical bills
and lost wages, then even in a tough trial,
you have a better chance of recovering some of your attorney fees.
I hope you have found this information helpful,
and I can tell you that even lawyers and judges find the Offer Of Settlement rule confusing.
Hopefully,
I have shed a little more light to help you make some good strategy decisions
if you need to consider making an Offer of Settlement in your case.
Thank you for watching this video.