A personal injury settlement demand package is what you send an insurance company to open settlement talks after treatment. It typically includes a demand letter explaining how the accident happened and why the other party is at fault, your medical records and bills, proof of lost income, photos and witness statements, and a specific dollar amount backed by that evidence.
Once you’ve finished your medical treatment, or your doctor tells you your recovery has plateaued as much as it’s going to, and pulled together the records to back up your claim, it’s time to put your demand package together and send it to the insurance company. Here’s what belongs in it, and what tends to happen once it lands on an adjuster’s desk.
The Core Elements of a Personal Injury Demand Package
A demand package is more than a single letter. Adjusters expect five things bundled together, and a package missing any one of them tends to draw a lower opening offer, or a request for more information before serious negotiation starts.
- A written demand letter covering how the accident happened and why the other party is at fault
- Medical records and itemized bills documenting your medical treatment
- Proof of lost wages and other lost income, such as pay stubs or a letter from your employer
- Photographs and witness statements supporting your version of events
- A specific dollar demand, with the compensation math behind it laid out
Writing the Demand Letter
The letter itself does the heavy lifting. Structure matters: a demand letter organized under clear section headings is easier for an adjuster to evaluate than several pages of running narrative, and an adjuster working through hundreds of open files is more likely to give a well-organized letter real attention.
Reference block: Near the top, before the greeting, include a short block of information: your name, the name of the insured (the other driver, business, or property owner), the policy and claim numbers if you have them, and the date of loss. This lets the adjuster route your letter to the right file immediately.
Opening paragraph and deadline: State plainly that this is a time-limited demand and give a response deadline. Thirty days is the standard window most Oklahoma practitioners use. A much shorter deadline (some letters try seven days) tends to read as an empty threat, since the file may not even reach the adjuster’s desk that fast.
The claimant: Introduce yourself next: your age, occupation, and health before the accident. If nothing was wrong with you health-wise before the wreck happened, say so directly. If something was, this is the place to put those health issues in context rather than let the adjuster raise them first without any framing. Married, have kids, coach a rec league team on weekends? That kind of detail is worth a sentence. It puts a person, not a claim number, on the other end of the letter.
The accident and liability: Describe the accident in plain, factual terms, who, what, when, and where, without editorializing about the other driver’s character. Save the argument for its own short section: a direct statement of why the other party is at fault. One or two sentences is usually enough. If liability is genuinely clear, over-arguing it can read like you’re compensating for a weak claim.
Documenting Economic Damages: Medical Bills and Lost Income
Economic damages are the dollars-and-cents category: medical costs and lost income, past and future. Use your medical bills and records, gathered before you start writing, to total your treatment costs, including prescriptions, and add any future care your doctor has recommended: more physical therapy, a planned procedure, or maintenance medication.
One Oklahoma-specific wrinkle worth knowing early: state law limits what medical expenses can be presented as evidence to the amount actually paid or owed, not the higher amount originally billed, under 12 O.S. § 3009.1. That’s a trial-evidence rule, not a demand-letter rule, but adjusters price claims with it in mind, so a demand built solely on inflated billed charges tends to get discounted before negotiation even starts.
For lost wages and other lost income, include any sick time or paid leave you used because of your injuries, plus the total wage difference if you had to move to a lower-paying or less physically demanding job. If you don’t have exact figures for future wage loss, estimate reasonably and say so. A defensible estimate holds up better in negotiation than a number invented to look precise.
Pain, Suffering, and Other Non-Economic Damages
Non-economic damages cover pain and suffering (physical) and emotional distress (mental). Describe your pain at its worst, how it has changed, and whether you expect to live with any of it long-term. If the injury puts you at risk for complications later, some joint injuries raise real questions about future arthritis, for instance, say so and note that your treating doctor supports it.
Oklahoma’s pattern jury instruction on personal injury damages, OUJI 4.1, doubles as a useful checklist even outside a courtroom: physical and mental pain and suffering, past and future; age; physical condition before and after the accident; the nature, extent, and permanency of the injury; physical impairment or disfigurement; lost earnings and impairment of earning capacity; and the reasonable cost of necessary medical care. Working down that list keeps you from underselling a category you’d otherwise forget to mention.
How you frame liability affects this section too. Oklahoma follows a comparative negligence rule, under 23 O.S. § 13: you can recover as long as your own fault does not exceed 50%, though your award is reduced by whatever share of fault is assigned to you. A demand letter that anticipates the other side’s best fault argument, and answers it briefly, tends to hold up better than one that ignores the issue entirely.
Photos, Witness Statements, and Other Supporting Evidence
Photos of the scene, vehicle damage, visible injuries, and your recovery over time all belong in the package, attached or referenced, not just described in prose. If anyone saw the accident happen, a short written statement, even two or three sentences, carries more weight than a secondhand summary of what they told you. Include contact information for witnesses only with their permission.
Setting Your Demand Amount (and a Property Damage Note)
Total your economic and non-economic damages, then state that combined compensation figure as your demand. Start higher than the number you would actually accept. Adjusters expect an opening demand to have room built into it and will negotiate down from there; open at your real bottom line and you have nowhere left to go.
Negotiators on both sides often drift toward a rough midpoint between the two most recent offers. If your demand is $50,000 and the adjuster counters at $10,000, the midpoint is $30,000, though this shortcut is unreliable until a few rounds of offers have actually happened. At a formal, mediator-run settlement conference, insurers frequently open at ten percent or less of what they eventually pay, so an early lowball counter is not a signal to panic or abandon your number. (Mediate.com has a general, neutral overview of how the mediation process itself works.)
If you were in a vehicle, your property damage claim (repair cost or total-loss value) is usually handled by a separate adjuster from the one handling your injury claim, and you can resolve it right away without waiting on your injury claim to mature. One caution either way: think carefully before you agree to let an adjuster record your account of the crash, and make sure any property damage release you sign does not also release your injury claim.
What Happens After the Settlement Demand Goes Out?
Sending your demand package doesn’t pause Oklahoma’s two-year legal deadline to sue over a personal injury, under 12 O.S. § 95, so build in enough time for negotiation, and for filing suit if it comes to that, before you send it. Our full breakdown of Oklahoma’s statute of limitations covers the handful of exceptions that can extend or shorten that window.
Mark the response deadline on your own calendar too. Before it arrives, you’ll typically hear from the insurer by mail or phone: a counteroffer, by far the more common outcome, or, rarely, acceptance of your number outright. Oklahoma insurers are required to act on a claim once they have it, including furnishing proof-of-loss forms and eventually delivering a written offer or rejection, under 36 O.S. § 3629, so silence past your deadline is a reason to follow up, not a dead end. The Oklahoma Insurance Department is the state agency that oversees how insurers are supposed to handle claims generally.
From here, the process becomes a negotiation: rounds of offers and counteroffers, sometimes a request for more documentation, occasionally a denial you’ll need to push back on. We cover that stage, and a realistic timeline for it, in our guide to what happens once an insurance company has your demand letter in hand.
Do You Need an Attorney to Send a Settlement Demand?
No, nothing requires it. But insurers routinely value an unrepresented demand lower than the same claim with counsel attached, and the places a demand package usually goes wrong (an incomplete medical bill total, an outstanding lien nobody accounted for, a fault admission buried inside the accident narrative) tend to surface during negotiation, after the letter is already out the door. Clayton Hasbrook is an Oklahoma injury attorney who has been building these packages for clients since 2008, and reviews the numbers before any letter goes out under his name. For the section-by-section anatomy attorneys use when drafting one, including confidentiality clauses and policy-limits strategy, see how we break down a demand letter piece by piece.
Quick Answers
How long should a personal injury demand letter be?
Long enough to cover the facts, short enough that an adjuster with a stack of files actually reads it closely. Five pages that hit every element (accident summary, liability, injuries and treatment, economic and non-economic damages, the demand itself) usually beats twenty pages that bury the same information in extra narrative.
Should my opening demand be the amount I actually want to receive?
No. Treat your opening number as a ceiling with room to negotiate down, not your bottom line. Open at the number you’d actually accept and there’s nowhere left to move once the adjuster counters, and a counter is close to guaranteed.
Putting together a complete demand package, the records, the bills, the letter itself, takes real time, and small mistakes in it tend to show up as a lower number rather than a rejected letter. Hasbrook & Hasbrook is an Oklahoma law firm that handles personal injury and car accident claims on a contingency fee basis. Call (405) 605-2426 for a free review of your claim before you send anything to the insurance company.
