“I was injured at work. The insurance company is calling me and wants to take a statement about my accident. What should I do?”
“I was injured at work. The insurance company is calling me and wants to take a statement about my accident. What should I do?”
1.) First know this: You DO NOT have to give a RECORDED STATEMENT about your injury to the work comp insurance company, no matter what they say or try to claim about this. The most common lie the insurance company will tell you is that in order for them to “start your case” or “open a claim” for you, that you “must” give them a recorded statement about your injury. That is a flat-out lie. Repeat: You do NOT have to give a recorded statement to the insurance company, that is Illinois LAW, and anything else is a LIE.
2.) That being said: If you do not have an attorney, the insurance company can almost do anything it wants to do to you and your case, and make up the rules, because until you have an experienced work comp attorney on your side, they know that you cannot properly take them to court and straighten out anything they try to do wrong to you during your injury case. If they decide they cannot “start your case” without a recorded statement, then they can do just that if you do not have an attorney to take them to court.
3.) If you tell them you know you do not have to give a recorded statement, they MIGHT bend to your will, because they might sense you are smart, and so will want to try to keep you from getting an attorney. This is another trap that many intelligent injured workers fall into: “Things seem to be going smoothly, so I think I’ll wait to call a lawyer.” And so, they might not make you give a statement, but alarm bells should still be going off in your head, and I strongly advise you to contact an experienced work injury attorney for a free private talk. Work injury attorney Peter Corti is one option for you at (312)-782-8372, and I would be honored to answer whatever questions you may have about workers’ comp in Illinois.
