Like a good neighbor? With good neighbors like State Farm and other insurance companies, who needs enemies?

Many of my clients can’t understand why insurance companies like State Farm consistently make low settlement offers. Why would they make an offer that doesn’t even cover the medical bills? Why would they make an offer that is less than they are going to pay their attorneys and expert witnesses to fight us in litigation?

The answer? State Farm and other companies like it don’t act like normal people. Their employees’ hands are tied. The insurance adjusters are trying their best. Their lawyers are usually just trying to make a living. But they are trapped inside the machine, burdened by algorithms, actuaries, and aggressive bureaucracies. Negotiating with State Farm is more like playing a video game than it is like negotiating with a real person on the other side of the table.

At first glance, this strategy from State Farm doesn’t make a lot of sense. At the end of the road, litigation attorneys like me almost always end up getting a fair settlement, arbitration award, or trial award. In my last trial against a person insured by State Farm, we won an award that was 10 times more than State Farm’s “top offer.” The attorney on the other side (a fantastic lawyer and great person) admitted that he really had no choice. “State Farm just wants to fight.”

Is there a reasonable explanation? Perhaps this strategy works against some attorneys who don’t want to take cases into ligation. Maybe some accident victims don’t hire attorneys, and settle for whatever they can get. Or is it possible that State Farm is trying to collect a massive amount of data through litigation to make it more difficult for injured people to get the treatment they need?

Even if my clients are in substantial collisions, with legitimate bills, and even when the treatment they receive helps them to get better, State Farm commonly refuses to reimburse my clients for all the bills and State Farm commonly makes extremely low offers for the pain and suffering my clients endure.

These companies are filled with great people and represented by great lawyers. But if they continue to push this policy of low-ball offers, litigators like me will continue to aggressively fight these cases in court, causing more and more people who are insured by State Farm to get sued and dragged into the legal process.

Hopefully these insurance companies will see the light and dedicate some of the time and money they spend on helping victims get a fair recovery.

(JB Legal is a personal injury law firm in Lehi, Utah)