November 06, 2025
Why Accident Claims Take Longer Than You Think
You expected your accident claim to be resolved in a few weeks. Several months have passed, and you’re still waiting for settlement. The delay frustrates you, especially when bills keep arriving and you need the money now. Understanding why injury claims take so long helps set realistic expectations and reduces the anxiety that comes with waiting for resolution.
Our friends at Bennerotte & Associates, P.A. discuss how unrealistic timeline expectations create unnecessary stress for accident victims navigating the claims process. A car accident lawyer can provide honest assessments of how long your specific case will take based on injury severity, liability issues, and other factors that affect resolution speed.
You Can’t Settle Until Treatment Is Complete
The single biggest factor extending claim timelines is waiting for medical treatment to conclude. You can’t accurately value your claim until you’ve reached maximum medical improvement or your doctors can reliably predict future medical needs.
Settling before treatment ends risks accepting compensation that doesn’t cover all your medical expenses. What seems like adequate money when you’re three months into recovery might prove insufficient when you discover you need surgery or ongoing therapy.
Minor soft tissue injuries might heal in weeks or months. Serious injuries requiring surgery and extensive rehabilitation can take a year or more before doctors can say you’ve recovered as much as you’re going to.
Medical Records Take Time To Obtain
Healthcare providers are notoriously slow about releasing medical records. Your attorney needs complete documentation of all accident-related treatment, and gathering these records from multiple providers can take months.
Hospitals, doctors’ offices, physical therapy clinics, and imaging centers all have different processes for responding to records requests. Some provide records within days, while others take six to eight weeks or longer.
Incomplete medical records prevent accurate claim valuation and give insurance companies excuses to delay settlement negotiations. Your attorney won’t present your claim to insurers until the medical documentation tells the complete story.
Investigation And Evidence Gathering
Building a strong claim requires thorough investigation. Your attorney needs to obtain the police report, interview witnesses, review medical records, calculate economic damages, and sometimes retain professionals to reconstruct accidents or provide medical opinions.
Witness memories fade quickly, making early interviews important. But coordinating schedules with busy people who aren’t parties to your case and have no obligation to help takes time.
Obtaining accident scene photographs, traffic camera footage, or business security videos requires identifying what evidence exists and formally requesting it before it’s deleted or lost. This process can’t be rushed without risking missed evidence.
Insurance Company Delay Tactics
Insurance companies have no incentive to settle claims quickly. They know accident victims face financial pressure and hope delays will force acceptance of lower settlement offers.
Adjusters routinely take 30 to 45 days to respond to demand letters, then make lowball offers that restart negotiations. Each round of offer and counteroffer adds weeks to the process.
Some insurers require multiple levels of approval for settlement authority. Your claim might sit on someone’s desk for weeks waiting for a supervisor’s review before negotiations can continue.
Liability Disputes Extend Timelines
When fault is clear and undisputed, claims move faster. When liability is contested, resolution takes much longer as both sides investigate, gather evidence, and potentially retain professionals to support their positions.
Disputed fault cases often require formal litigation to resolve. Filing a lawsuit, conducting discovery, taking depositions, and preparing for trial adds months or years to claim timelines.
The Discovery Process In Litigation
If settlement negotiations fail and your attorney files a lawsuit, the discovery phase begins. This formal evidence exchange process takes six months to a year in most cases and sometimes longer for complex claims.
Discovery typically includes:
- Written interrogatories requiring detailed answers
- Document production requests
- Depositions of parties and witnesses
- Independent medical examinations
- Professional witness disclosures and reports
Court rules impose deadlines for each discovery phase, and judges rarely accelerate these timelines. The process unfolds on the court’s schedule, not yours.
Court Scheduling Delays
Trial dates get set months or sometimes years after filing suit depending on how busy your local court system is. Some jurisdictions have severe backlogs creating year-long waits for trial dates.
Even after getting a trial date, continuances often push trials back further. Scheduling conflicts, attorney availability, judge availability, and court calendar congestion all contribute to repeated delays.
Cases rarely go to trial on the first scheduled date. Multiple continuances are common, with some cases getting five or six different trial dates before actually going to trial.
Professional Witness Availability
Cases involving serious injuries often require professional medical witnesses to explain your condition, prognosis, and future medical needs. These busy professionals have limited availability and might not be able to review your case or testify for months.
Accident reconstruction professionals, vocational rehabilitation professionals, and economic damage calculators all have full schedules. Coordinating their availability with court dates and deposition schedules creates additional delays.
Multiple Defendants Slow Everything Down
When accidents involve multiple at-fault parties, coordinating among several defendants and their insurance companies multiplies delay opportunities. Each defendant has their own attorney, and getting all parties aligned for settlement negotiations or litigation milestones takes extra time.
Defendants often point fingers at each other, each trying to shift liability to the others. These internal disputes between defendants don’t help you but significantly extend resolution timelines.
Lien Resolution Takes Time
Before distributing settlement funds, your attorney must resolve all liens and subrogation claims. Health insurance companies, Medicare, Medicaid, and medical providers with liens all need to be notified and given opportunity to assert their reimbursement rights.
Negotiating lien reductions requires back-and-forth discussions with lien holders who have no urgency to resolve quickly. Some lien holders take weeks just to respond to initial inquiries about their claim amounts.
Medicare particularly creates delays because federal regulations require specific procedures and timelines for resolving Medicare liens. These administrative requirements can’t be accelerated.
Minor Plaintiff Claims Have Special Requirements
When accident victims are minors, courts must approve settlements to protect the child’s interests. This approval process requires filing petitions, scheduling hearings, and waiting for judges to review and approve settlement terms.
Court approval of minor settlements typically adds two to four months to the timeline. Some jurisdictions require multiple hearings or have specific procedures that extend the process further.
Seasonal And Holiday Delays
Courts close for holidays, and attorneys, adjusters, and witnesses take vacations. Summer and December typically see slower progress as key people are unavailable.
These seasonal slowdowns are frustrating but unavoidable. Your case might stall for weeks during summer vacation season or the December holidays when people are out of office.
The Settlement Approval Process
Even after reaching settlement agreement, finalizing paperwork and receiving payment takes time. Settlement agreements must be drafted, reviewed, signed by all parties, and submitted to insurance companies for payment processing.
Insurance companies typically take 30 days or more to issue settlement checks after receiving signed releases. This final waiting period feels interminable when you’re so close to resolution.
Communication Gaps Create Perceived Delays
Sometimes claims are progressing normally, but clients don’t realize it because they haven’t heard from their attorney in weeks. Regular communication helps, but attorneys juggling dozens of cases sometimes fail to provide frequent enough updates.
Ask your attorney about expected timelines for your specific case and how often you’ll receive status updates. Understanding the process helps you distinguish between normal progression and actual problems causing delays.
Why Rushing Usually Backfires
Pressure to settle quickly almost always benefits insurance companies more than injury victims. They know you need money and use that desperation to push inadequate settlement offers.
Taking the time your case needs to develop properly usually results in significantly higher compensation than accepting early lowball offers would have provided.
Patience Generally Pays
Most cases that initially seem like they’re taking too long are actually progressing normally through each required phase. Understanding the process helps you see that what feels like delay is often just the reality of how injury claims work.
If you’re concerned about how long your accident claim is taking or want to understand the specific factors affecting your case timeline, reach out to discuss where your case stands in the process and what milestones remain before resolution. Knowing what to expect reduces anxiety and helps you plan for the wait ahead.
