Personal Injury Demand Letters: How to Write a Strong Demand

Begin with the routing information the adjuster needs before reading a word of argument: your client, the insured, the date of loss, the claim and policy numbers and, in a limits case, the bodily-injury limit. Beneath it, a caption that names the letter’s legal function (a settlement demand, or a time-limited policy-limits demand) and a settlement-purposes legend.

Then make the ask in the first paragraph. Who you represent, what happened in one clause, the figure demanded, and the two or three reasons it is justified: liability is clear, the damages are documented, and the value of the claim supports the number. Adjusters read hundreds of demands; a demand that first appears on page nine is a demand that gets skimmed. Close the introduction with a one-paragraph reservation of privilege so the enclosed records cannot later be treated as a blanket authorization.

Describe what happened the way an investigator would: date, time, location, direction of travel, signal phase or hazard, point of impact, and what happened to the vehicles or the claimant afterward. Each fact should trace to something in the exhibits (the report, a photograph, a statement), so the narrative reads as a summary of the record rather than as advocacy.

Aggravating facts belong here too, stated once and with numbers: a measured alcohol concentration, a citation, an admission, a prior complaint about the same hazard. Stated plainly in the facts section, they support the liability and damages arguments later without being repeated. Put the vehicle or scene photographs in the body of the letter, not only in the exhibits; a photograph answers the low-impact argument before the adjuster makes it.

Keep the adjectives out. “Violent” is acceptable if the photographs show it; “horrific” is not evidence of anything. The persuasive version of a facts section is the one the defense cannot dispute.

Argue liability from the specific duty the defendant owed and breached: the transportation code section on signals or following distance, the premises owner’s duty to inspect and warn, the statute that imposes strict liability for a dog bite. Cite it, then apply it to the facts already established. A letter built on the statute signals that the petition is half drafted.

Causation is argued twice: general causation here (the breach caused the collision) and medical causation in the injuries section (the collision caused these diagnoses). Keep them separate so each is complete.

Then take the defense away. Every adjuster is required to consider comparative fault, and every file has a candidate: speed, distraction, a late entry, an open-and-obvious hazard, provocation. Name the anticipated defense and foreclose it with the evidence: the signal sequence, the witness, the point of impact, the absence of any citation to your client. A comparative-fault argument left unanswered becomes a percentage taken off the offer.

Start with the baseline: age, work, activity and the absence of active treatment before the incident, in two or three sentences. Everything that follows is measured against it, and it is what makes the loss legible to someone who has never met your client.

Then move through treatment in date order, provider by provider. Each entry should carry the subjective complaint (pain scores, functional limits), the objective finding (spasm, range-of-motion loss, imaging, positive tests, standardized instruments), the diagnosis, the provider’s causation or aggravation language where the record contains it, and the plan. Write from the records, not from memory of them; an adjuster who spot-checks three entries against the exhibits and finds them accurate will trust the rest.

Two things the chronology must not skip. Treatment gaps: state the reason (work, transportation, insurance, a referral delay) and the evidence that symptoms persisted through it. Degenerative or pre-existing findings on imaging: address them where they appear, in the treating providers’ own words, as conditions rendered symptomatic by trauma. A chronology that omits either leaves the adjuster to fill the silence.

End at discharge or maximum medical improvement, with the provider’s statement of remaining symptoms and recommended future care. That entry is what makes the future-care section credible.

Present medical expenses by provider, line by line: CPT code, description, date and amount, with a subtotal per provider and a total. Only charges the reviewer has tied to the incident belong in the table. A routine physical or an unrelated prescription that appears in the bills is left out of the letter and documented as excluded in the summary spreadsheet, so the total is defensible when the adjuster reconciles it against the bills.

Itemize future medical expense from the treatment plan in the records: the confirmatory injection, the ablation if it succeeds, the maintenance therapy, the follow-up evaluation, each with a cost. A percentage uplift or a round number invites the adjuster to price future care at zero; an itemized plan traced to a provider’s recommendation survives scrutiny.

Wage loss is arithmetic: rate, hours, weeks, the phases of missed and restricted work, one total, and the supporting exhibit named in the paragraph. Add property damage only if it has not been resolved separately, and lost earning capacity only with a vocational or medical opinion behind it. Where the facts support exemplary damages (impairment, gross negligence), plead them under the governing statute here, less as a number than as the insured’s uninsurable exposure.

General damages are where demands most often drift into adjectives, and where adjusters most readily discount. The answer is to argue them in categories, each anchored to facts already established in the chronology: the pain scores and invasive procedures for physical suffering; the standardized instrument scores, formal diagnosis and treatment course for psychological harm; the specific tasks the client can no longer do the way she did them for loss of function and daily life.

Give each category its own number and one or two sentences of justification. Separating them prevents a single pain-and-suffering figure from being discounted as a whole, and it makes the letter’s arithmetic transparent. Where carriers evaluate with software, coded diagnoses, objective findings, treatment duration and documented daily-life impact are the inputs that move the output; a multiplier applied to the specials is not.

Before the demand itself, a damages summary: economic subtotal, non-economic subtotal, total. Then the sentence the letter exists for, stating what the arithmetic means: that the value of the claim exceeds the available limit, or supports the figure demanded. After ten pages of evidence the conclusion should be one line.

The demand paragraph does four things. It states the number (or the policy limits) without hedging; conditional language gives the carrier room to argue it never received a real offer. It states what is offered in return, typically a release of the insured. It addresses liens, usually by agreeing to satisfy valid liens from the proceeds. And it sets a deadline: a date, a time and a time zone, with the consequence stated. Thirty days is the conventional response window for an ordinary demand; time-limited policy-limits demands use shorter windows, and several states now prescribe minimum periods and required contents by statute. Confirm the rule in your jurisdiction before choosing a window.

Close with the signature block and the enclosure list. Then stop. A demand that keeps arguing after the ask has been made reads as uncertain.

The exhibits are the package. Group them in the order the letter cites them (bills, records, the report and investigation materials, photographs, wage documentation), letter each group and number each provider within it, and cite the exhibit in the letter wherever a fact depends on it. In a well-assembled package each exhibit is a bookmarked section of one PDF, so the adjuster can go from a citation to its source in one click.

Two checks before it goes out. Every provider in the bills appears in the records and in the chronology, and vice versa; a bill without a record, or a record without a bill, is a question the adjuster will ask. And where collateral-source rules make them prejudicial, insurance references, paid or adjusted amounts and unrelated sensitive information are redacted from the exhibits before they are produced.

Finish with a summary of every charge and diagnosis, coded and categorized by relation to the incident. It is what lets the adjuster reconcile the letter against the bills in minutes instead of disputing the total.