– Today we’re with John Kelly. John Kelly is a personal
injury attorney. He’s out of Phoenix
Arizona and he’s agreed to answer some questions,
specifically a question that was asked online,
with a video response. So John, with that said,
let me go ahead and read you the question. This question was posted
specifically, well, let’s see. “If you were in a car accident, and you were to sue
the insurance company, is your insurance
rate from the company gonna go up because
of that lawsuit?” – Okay, so that’s an
interesting question. A lot of people wonder
about their insurance rates when they’re in an accident. You don’t actually sue
the insurance company, you sue the adverse driver so
I can assume that this person, if they’re suing is not at
fault for the accident because the real question is, “Are you
at fault for the accident?” If you are at fault, it’s
very likely that your rates are going to go up if there’s
any kind of a lawsuit, if there’s any contact with
your insurance company. Now, if you’re found to be not
at fault, 100% not at fault, they probably should not go up, but there are some
caveats to that. If you end up finding out
that the adverse driver, the person who injured you,
doesn’t have sufficient insurance to cover your
injuries, you may have to go back to your own
insurance company with an uninsured or underinsured
motorist claim. That may trigger your
insurance company to say, “Look, we paid out for your
accident therefore your rates are gonna go up.” Other issues that
can come up also are, these companies,
these big companies use a lot of computer generated algorithms to determine your
rates so the reality is, is that if you get in a certain
amount of accidents in a certain amount of time
and you fit some kind of demographic that
they’re looking at, they may bump your rates up. So there’s no hard
and fast rule to that. The best advice is to make
sure you find an insurance provider that you trust,
ask them the questions about whether your rates would
go up with an accident and just be an informed purchaser. – Okay. Well that
makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the answer and
if you’re watching this online and have any questions
you can actually post additional questions in
the comments below and John has agreed to
answer those online. Thanks, John. – Thank you, Ryan.