Your Liberty Mutual Injury Lawsuit Questions Answered
If you were in an accident caused by a driver with Liberty Mutual Insurance, it can be a little overwhelming to figure out whether you can get compensation for your injuries, who to sue, and how to negotiate with Liberty Mutual.
There’s a lot to think about when considering a personal injury lawsuit. With most of these choices, having an attorney can make the process much easier and give you a higher chance of reaching an agreeable settlement.
Here are answers to some of the frequent questions we see about Liberty Mutual Insurance:
As of January 2023, the CEO of Liberty Mutual is Timothy M. Sweeney, who took over at the start of 2023 for the retiring David H. Long.
The headquarters for Liberty Mutual Insurance is located in Boston, Massachusetts.
According to a JD Power survey, Liberty Mutual has earned a score of 818 out of 1000, with the average being 880. They are ranked below average for overall customer satisfaction. This is largely due to poor customer service experiences and a very slow claims process.
If you’re a driver insured by Liberty Mutual, the company says they make it easy to file insurance claims through your online account. However, if you are trying to file a claim because another party has Liberty Mutual, you can submit your claim:
You can create an online account and track the status of a claim even if you are submitting as a third party, meaning you don’t have Liberty Mutual as your insurance provider. However, while they have information on conducting investigations, they don’t have information on escalating a claim.
Usually, as a third party who’s been injured by a Liberty Mutual driver, you go through your own insurance provider, who then reaches out to Liberty Mutual on your behalf.
However, it can be difficult to escalate claims, and if you feel that Liberty Mutual is stonewalling you or your insurance agent isn’t standing up for you, you might have other legal options.
Liberty Mutual gives many options for getting an insurance claim, but they don’t have any information on challenging an insurance payout. At best, you can try to escalate your claim with a Liberty Mutual representative or consider alternative legal action, like a personal injury lawsuit.
Yes, there are different circumstances where you can sue Liberty Mutual if you are injured. In some cases, you might have Liberty Mutual as your insurance provider and have extended coverage through your policy that applies to any injuries you suffer in an accident. In most cases, however, you would sue Liberty Mutual if you were involved in an accident and the other party responsible for the accident had Liberty Mutual.
If you suffer a personal injury, you can sue the person responsible for compensation. However, people have insurance for this reason, in which case you might end up suing Liberty Mutual.
Sometimes responsible parties overlap. You could, for example, be involved in a car accident with another driver, but that driver could be using a company car on company business. In this case, you wouldn’t sue the driver directly or their personal insurance provider, you would sue the company and the company insurance provider.
If you don’t like how Liberty Mutual has responded to a claim, you have a few other options.
There may be class action lawsuits against Liberty Mutual.
A lawsuit against Liberty Mutual for having adjusted actual cash values on totaled cars for less than they were worth was denied class-action certification in 2022, although an individual case was allowed to proceed.
If you are eligible for a class action lawsuit, the court will typically attempt to notify you through the mail with instructions on how to determine if you are eligible.
To pursue a personal injury lawsuit against Liberty Mutual:
This depends entirely on your situation. In a Liberty Mutual lawsuit, you can claim damages for things like:
What you can ask for is based entirely on your experience. For example, if you were involved in a car accident and the responsible driver has Liberty Mutual as their insurance provider, you can submit a claim asking for compensation for medical expenses and lost income because of a broken foot. If in that same accident, you also suffered severe lacerations that disfigured your face and a spinal injury, you could add long-term care, emotional distress, and things like mental suffering.
An attorney can help you determine how much you may be able to seek in damages based on your situation.
In any personal injury claim, you can request two types of compensation:
Compensatory damages are supposed to cover the direct costs of the injuries. A judge wants to put you in the same financial position you were in before the accident so you can ask for compensation for medical bills, lost income, and repair costs.
Under certain circumstances, you might be able to request, or a judge might award punitive damages to punish the other party for their negligence.
There are limits to both, though. According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, the average winnings for tort cases—which include personal injury claims—in 2005 was limited to $31,000, but for car accidents was $16,000.
Insurance companies like Liberty Mutual typically calculate a settlement offer the settlement based on a variety of factors like bills and injuries.
Bills represent proven costs, the things that you can show a receipt or invoice for. This includes medical bills, lost wages based on previous pay stubs, repairs for your car or other personal property, and even the value of a totaled vehicle.
Injuries are usually compensated at a rate between one and five times the total cost of your medical bills. But you have to be able to prove that your injuries were a direct result of the accident, the accident was a direct result of negligence, and that Liberty Mutual is responsible for the negligent party. All of this is much easier to prove if you get a medical examination as soon as you are injured.
If you fail to get a medical examination, Liberty Mutual could claim that you let your injuries get worse by not getting an examination and not getting proper treatment right away, and therefore, they aren’t responsible for the full cost of your recovery.
If you think Liberty Mutual is offering an unfair settlement for your injuries, it may be time to pull in an attorney.
Insurance companies like Liberty Mutual typically determine pain and suffering based on factors, including the injuries you sustained. Liberty Mutual will look at the evidence you have, including invoices, bills, receipts, and the extent of your injuries, to figure out how those injuries have disrupted daily life and caused pain and suffering.
You should contact an attorney after you seek medical care. An attorney can help you substantiate a claim for pain and suffering and file a claim with Liberty Mutual.
Sometimes it can feel like Liberty Mutual is ignoring the legitimate harm you have suffered or the emotional impact your injuries have had. An attorney may be able to help you seek more than what Liberty Mutual has offered.
If you are seeking a settlement over an accident with a driver insured by Liberty Mutual it could take months, or longer, to reach a settlement, depending on your situation. A good lawyer who has settled cases against Liberty Mutual in the past may be able to give you a helpful estimate.
Liberty Mutual doesn’t give a specific timeline for settling personal injury cases. They only state that people who have Liberty Mutual can expect a response to a file claim within 1 to 2 business days, but that response could simply be acknowledging the claim, asking for more information, and so forth.
Based on the norms for the industry, settling can end up taking a few months, or even longer. A significant factor in determining how long it takes to settle is whether Liberty Mutual is willing to negotiate and offer a settlement up front or whether you have to go to court.
This looks a little different for everyone. When you are injured in any personal injury situation, you start negotiating with Liberty Mutual for compensation by sending a demand letter. An attorney can draft this on your behalf or help you make sure you have the right language. You want to be as thorough as possible with your demand letter. If you leave out any details or forget to include evidence, it can extend the time frame for settling your personal injury claim because you’ll have to go back and forth with Liberty Mutual.
This demand letter should explain what happened, how you were injured, how it was the other party’s fault, why Liberty Mutual is responsible for that other party, and how much you want in compensation.
After you submit it, you or your attorney will go back and forth with Liberty Mutual to negotiate. Liberty Mutual can respond in many ways, like offering a lower settlement than what you asked for, not settling at all, or asking for more information before they consider settling. If they won’t agree, your next step is to sue them in court with a personal injury lawsuit, which an attorney can also help you with.
The best way to maximize your insurance settlement with Liberty Mutual is to have sufficient evidence to back up your claim. You can’t submit a claim for compensation just because you were in a car accident or just because you were injured at a pool party hosted by a friend. You have to be able to prove that your injuries were because the other party was negligent and that Liberty Mutual is the insurance provider for that other party and, therefore, financially responsible.
Generally, having a lawyer will often result in a stronger and more successful case with maximized settlements.
How long a Liberty Mutual lawsuit lasts can depend on many factors:
According to a study by the National Center for State Courts, personal injury cases average 16 months. This figure decreases if you can reach a settlement early in the negotiations.
No, you don’t necessarily need a lawyer, but having a lawyer will often result in a stronger and more successful case.
If you are dissatisfied with the financial compensation offer you are receiving from Liberty Mutual after an accident, an attorney can help you maximize that compensation. If you live in an at-fault state, an attorney can help you collect evidence to prove that you were less at fault than the other party.
In a Liberty Mutual injury lawsuit, a lawyer does many things. Firstly, they investigate your claim to figure out if you have grounds for the personal injury lawsuit. Slipping and falling at a place of business or getting in a car accident is not necessarily grounds for a lawsuit. Slipping and falling or getting in a car accident because the other party was negligent, however, is grounds for a lawsuit.
If an attorney decides that you have a good case, they can help you gather evidence for your Liberty Mutual injury lawsuit. This might include getting incident reports from police, following up for witness statements, having a photographer photograph where the accident occurred, finding camera footage from where the accident occurred, and so forth.
Once they have enough evidence, an attorney can help you by Drafting and sending your demand letter to Liberty Mutual. That letter will state exactly what compensation you want and why. After that, your attorney will negotiate with Liberty Mutual on your behalf so that you aren’t feeling multiple phone calls every day. If Liberty Mutual comes back with a counteroffer, your attorney can offer advice as to whether that counteroffer is legitimate or whether he or she thinks you might be able to get more.
If an agreement can be reached, then your attorney can represent you in court when your case goes to trial.
Most personal injury attorneys work with a contingency agreement. This means they take between 33% and 40% on average of whatever settlement you get, but you don’t pay anything upfront. Some contingency agreements have smaller, hidden fees for things like administrative costs that you have to pay at the end of your case in addition to the percentage of your settlement.
So if a lawyer helps you get that much more—or achieve a settlement with Liberty Mutual when you wouldn’t have got one—then having one can be a good investment.
You can find a good lawyer for a Liberty Mutual injury lawsuit by doing your homework. Don’t be afraid to ask friends and family for recommendations. If you know someone who was involved in an accident, you can ask for the attorney they had and whether they were satisfied.
When you reach out to attorneys through free consultations, ask a lot of questions. Use that time wisely by asking whether they have experience handling personal injury claims like yours with insurance providers like Liberty Mutual. Just because an attorney is an expert in their field doesn’t mean they have experience with car accidents or slip and fall accidents and Liberty Mutual.
Good attorneys should happily provide peripherals so you can speak with other customers. While you are asking questions about how much they charge or whether they use a contingency agreement and their personal experience, pay attention to how you feel and what you think of the general office environment. The attorney you choose will be someone you work with for a long time, so it should be someone you are comfortable with.
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