The recorded statement: what an adjuster is doing when they ask for one

Two different companies ask for a recorded statement and the request means two different things. One duty is written into the No-Fault Act. The other is not written anywhere.

Two companies will ask you for a recorded statement in the first weeks after a Minnesota crash, and the request means something structurally different depending on which one is asking. One of them is paying your medical bills under a contract you bought. The other is defending the person who hit you. Both calls sound the same, both adjusters are pleasant, and the statutes that govern them are not the same statutes.

Your own insurer: the duty that is actually written down

Minnesota’s No-Fault Act puts specific cooperation obligations on a person claiming benefits. They are in Minn. Stat. § 65B.56, subd. 1, and they are worth reading in the original because the gap between what the statute says and what people believe it says is the whole subject of this page.

Any person with respect to whose injury benefits are claimed under a plan of reparation security shall, upon request of the reparation obligor from whom recovery is sought, submit to a physical examination by a physician or physicians selected by the obligor as may reasonably be required.

… An injured person shall also do all things reasonably necessary to enable the obligor to obtain medical reports and other needed information to assist in determining the nature and extent of the injured person's injuries and loss, and the medical treatment received. If the claimant refuses to cooperate in responding to requests for examination and information as authorized by this section, evidence of such noncooperation shall be admissible in any suit or arbitration filed for damages for such personal injuries or for the benefits provided by sections 65B.41 to 65B.71.

Three things in that text do work. The examination is at the insurer’s expense and, under the same subdivision, must be conducted within the city, town, or statutory city where the injured person lives — or, if no qualified physician practices there, at the closest available place. If the person examined asks for it, the party that ordered the examination “shall deliver to the examinee a copy of every written report concerning the examination rendered by an examining physician to that person,” and at least one of those reports has to set out the findings and conclusions in detail. And the cooperation obligation is enforced by an evidentiary consequence: noncooperation becomes admissible.

What that subdivision does not contain is the word “statement.” It does not contain “recorded,” “interview,” or “deposition.” The obligation it describes is an obligation to be examined and to let the insurer get at the medical record.

The other side’s adjuster: a claimant, not an insured

You have no contract with the company insuring the driver who hit you. That does not put you outside Minnesota’s claims-handling statute, because § 72A.201, subd. 3(5) defines “claimant” broadly:

"Claimant" means any individual, corporation, association, partnership, or other legal entity asserting a claim against any individual, corporation, association, partnership, or other legal entity which is insured under an insurance policy or insurance contract of an insurer.

So the adjuster on the other end owes duties that run to you. Subdivision 4 makes it an unfair settlement practice to fail to acknowledge a notification of claim within ten business days; to fail to reply within ten business days to communications that reasonably indicate a response is needed; and, ordinarily, to fail to complete the investigation and inform the claimant of acceptance or denial of a claim within 30 business days of the notification of claim. Clause (9) of the same subdivision is short and pointed: it is an unfair settlement practice to demand “information which would not affect the settlement of the claim.”

Clause (7) is the one worth memorizing. It is an unfair settlement practice to advise a claimant not to obtain the services of an attorney or an adjuster, or to represent that payment will be delayed if one is retained.

What those standards are actually worth

Here is where the popular account of Minnesota insurance law comes apart. The list in § 72A.201 reads like a bill of rights. It is not one, and the statute says so in its own first subdivision.

The commissioner may, in accordance with sections 72A.22 to 72A.25, seek and impose appropriate administrative remedies, including fines, for (1) a violation of this section or the rules adopted pursuant to this section … The commissioner need not show a general business practice in taking an administrative action for these violations.

No individual violation constitutes an unfair, discriminatory, or unlawful practice in business, commerce, or trade for purposes of section 8.31.

Section 8.31 is Minnesota’s private-attorney-general statute. Closing that door is deliberate drafting. The standards give the Commissioner of Commerce a hammer; they do not hand an individual claimant a cause of action for a single violation.

Section 604.18 has a second limit that matters here. Its definition of “insured,” in subdivision 1(b), is a person or entity that qualifies as an insured under the policy on which coverage is claimed, and it states expressly that an insured “does not include any person or entity claiming a third-party beneficiary status under an insurance policy.” The bad-faith remedy runs against your own insurer. It does not run against the company insuring the driver who hit you.

Why the timing of the request is the request

A recorded statement is a party’s own statement, and Minn. Rule of Evidence 801(d)(2) removes it from the hearsay definition altogether when it is offered against the party who made it:

(2) Statement by party-opponent. The statement is offered against a party and is (A) the party's own statement, in either an individual or a representative capacity …

Compare that with how Minnesota treats the other side’s conduct. Under Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 2, a settlement with or payment to an injured person is not an admission of liability, and under subdivision 4, such a payment is generally inadmissible at trial. The asymmetry is not an accident of drafting. What the injured person says is evidence. What the insurer pays is not.

The second half of the timing problem is medical. Minnesota’s tort threshold at § 65B.51, subd. 3(b)(4) opens on “disability for 60 days or more,” and the same subdivision defines disability as “the inability to engage in substantially all of the injured person’s usual and customary daily activities.” That is a question about daily function over a two-month arc. A recorded interview conducted on day four asks a person to characterize their function before the arc exists.

The provisions that require the insurer to move

The No-Fault Act sets a clock on the insurer rather than on the claimant. Under § 65B.54, subd. 1, basic economic loss benefits “are payable monthly as loss accrues,” and benefits are overdue if not paid within 30 days after the reparation obligor receives reasonable proof of the fact and amount of loss — with a limited accumulation option of periods not exceeding 31 days paid within 15 days after the period closes. Subdivision 2 is one sentence: “Overdue payments shall bear simple interest at the rate of 15 percent per annum.” Subdivision 5 requires prompt written notice of a rejected claim “specifying the reason,” and requires the notice to point the claimant to the assigned claims bureau where the rejection rests on something other than ineligibility for the benefits claimed.

Two further provisions exist and are almost never used. Section 72A.201, subd. 6(13) entitles an insured who has submitted a claim for § 65B.44 benefits to a complete copy of the insurer’s claim file within ten business days of a written request, subject to named exclusions and a reasonable copying fee. Section 72A.201, subd. 11 requires an insurer to disclose the coverage and limits of a policy within 30 days after a claimant requests the information in writing.

What this page is not

It describes machinery. It does not apply that machinery to anyone’s accident, policy, or recorded interview, and it cannot: whether a particular cooperation clause reaches a particular request is a question about a document nobody has read here, on facts nobody here knows.