Should We Lower BAC for Drunk Driving in Maryland?

May 14, 2013

Today, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said we should lower the blood-alcohol limit from .08, the current standard, to .05. The NTSB argues that the U.S. is too lenient when it comes to drunk driving and wants the U.S. to adopt the same standard as other countries, such as those in Europe.

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration tells us what we have known for a zillion years: alcohol plays a role in nearly one-third of traffic deaths in America.

But the NTSB tells us something incredibly new, providing data that the risk of a crash is reduced by half when the definition of “drunk driving” encompasses the .05 standard instead of the .08 standard. Depending on body size, the difference between .08 and .05 is one to two drinks over a three hour time span.

It is hard not to cut to the chase on this. There are 12,000 deaths, give or take, a year in this country from drunk driving. Now imagine in your mind 6,000 people in a room that could have been saved by everyone having just a few less drinks. Then imagine everyone who loved those 6,000 people in a room. I have to think the NTSB is on the right side of history on this.

(I just pulled a little trick there. The NTSB says "car crashes" and I turned that into "car crash fatalities." But if you reduce that 6,000 to 3,000, does it really detract from the point I'm making?)

We had been reducing drunk driving deaths for a while but we have hit a stopping point. We either need to increase penalties or reduce the BAC. Those, it seems to me, are the two weapons we have in our arsenal to get past the bottleneck.

Continue reading "Should We Lower BAC for Drunk Driving in Maryland?" »

Maryland Toughens Handheld Phone Ban

April 10, 2013

The Maryland General Assembly passed a bill this week which would make talking on a handheld cellphone while driving a vehicle a primary offense. If the bill is signed by Governor O'Malley, as expected, a police officer would be able to pull a driver over under this bill for talking on a handheld while their vehicle is in motion. The bill would allow you that quick phone call at a stop light and you can still use your GPS on your phone.

A first handheld offense would be punishable by a fine up to $75 fine. A second offense could be $125, and a third could be $175.

This is the progression of things. It is easier to pass the bill as a secondary offense and then bump it up in a few years. We are sheep and accept change a little better that way.

The problem is that there is data that suggests that it's not the holding of the phone, but the distraction in general that causes more accidents. It may be that it is not so much where your hands are when you are driving - not many of us are in a 10-2 position anyway - but where your mind is.

So should we eliminate talking on the phone while driving? Honestly, we probably should. I talk on the phone constantly when I'm driving but never with my kids in the car. But there is zero - absolutely zero - inertia to ban cell phone use while driving. Everyone turns a blind eye to these statistics because we believe what we want to believe and we don't want to give it up. Ironically, there is just one group that sees it my way: insurance companies.

Speed Cameras in Baltimore County Take a Hit

March 11, 2013

A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge ruled last week that that Baltimore County’s contract with its speed camera vendor is illegal, because it allows the contractor to get a cut of every ticket generated. Although Judge Susan M. Souder’s ruling dismissed only a single ticket, this decision is believed to be the first time a judge has ruled against the legality of this so-called “bounty system” practice.

In this case, Baltimore County’s contractor, ACS Xerox, received a whopping $19 from every $40 ticket. As you might imagine, the bounty system has raised many objections because it incentivizes contractors to maximize the number of tickets issued, which can lead to mistakenly generated tickets. In one instance, a motorist was cited for traveling 57 mph in a 25 mph zone despite the fact that the driver was actually sitting still.

Maryland law, however, specifically seeks to eliminate profit incentives by banning bounty systems. Transportation Article § 21-810(j)(2) of the Maryland Annotated Code states, “If a contractor operates a speed monitoring system on behalf of a local jurisdiction, the contractor’s fee may not be contingent on the number of citations issued or paid.” In practice, however, this restriction is effectively nullified as long as contracts avoid using the term “operate.” The Office of the Attorney General even provided an advisory letter in 2008 instructing Montgomery County to change the wording of its contract to specify that the county, rather than the contractor, operated the speed cameras, thus skirting the restriction.

The present case is not the only lawsuit that has been introduced. The bounty system previously ignited a legal clash in 2008 when ticket recipients filed suit against Montgomery County and several municipalities in the county. The Maryland Court of Appeals, however, ruled that the plaintiffs did not have the power to sue under the law, but did not decide whether governments can pay contractors a contingency fee based on the number of tickets generated by the speed cameras.

Continue reading "Speed Cameras in Baltimore County Take a Hit" »

Maryland Average Car Accident Verdicts Updated

March 7, 2013

Five years ago, I wrote a post on the average jury verdicts in Maryland car accident cases. I have since updated that page with more thoughts on verdict and settlement value of these cases.

State Farm Settlements and Verdicts in Car and Truck Accident Cases

March 7, 2013

We compiled on our website a sampling of State Farm verdicts and settlements in Maryland and around the country. This is hardly a scientific sampling - we drove past more than a few soft tissue injury verdicts, for example - but I think it is extremely interesting for both personal injury car accident plaintiffs and lawyers.

Trying to Get Defendant's Bad Behavior Into Evidence

March 6, 2013

Last week, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals upheld a small verdict in a truck accident case. The issue was the exclusion evidence of the defendant's fleeing the scene after a car accident, even though plaintiffs put on a pretty good case that the act of fleeing itself caused plaintiff's injury. I understand the logic of the holding and understand how the court found as it did. But I disagree with the ruling.

Here are the facts is Alban v. Fiels. The plaintiffs, a married couple in the 70s, were injured when their truck collided with another truck in Baltimore County. After the accident, defendant briefly returned to the scene and then fled. Witnesses said that the defendant laughed as he drove off. That sounds so crazy, I know. But that is what the opinion said. I'm picturing Jack Nicholson in his Joker prime.

The insurance defense lawyers wisely did not dispute liability. The case went to trial for compensatory damages. The trial court granted the female plaintiff $5,000 in non-economic damages and $5,000 to the couple for their joint claim of loss of consortium. The entire award was $10,000 plus costs. I don't know what the underlying medical and injuries were, but if you are getting a $10,000 verdict in a jury trial, thing didn't go well.

Plaintiffs' appeal was based on the inability to get in the "fleeing the scene" evidence. Their attorney argued that it was an error to exclude the testimony of accident witnesses and plaintiff’s psychologist because emotional damages were part of the original complaint. Plaintiff said that her PTSD stemmed from the moments after the accident when defendant returned to the scene. She testified that she feared they would be killed while they were trapped in the vehicle. Plaintiff said that she has had ongoing anxiety problems and has suffered from prolonged bouts of crying and sleeplessness since the accident. Plaintiff’s physician testified that she was permanently disabled with post-traumatic anxiety.

This is a good test case for the idea of admitting this evidence. Often, let's face it, plaintiffs' accident lawyers just want to get this kind of evidence in to inflame the jury to hate - appropriately - the defendant. Here, the plaintiffs at least arguably were really hurt by the way defendant fled the scene and it really - at least allegedly, is hard to read these things and know - harm. We have plaintiffs in their seventies... it is not a stretch by any stretch. The trial court stuck to the usual playbook and excluded evidence of the defendant’s post-accident conduct because of its prejudicial nature.

Continue reading "Trying to Get Defendant's Bad Behavior Into Evidence" »

New Bad Faith Opinion from Louisiana

December 17, 2012

Louisiana’s Court of Appeals last month issued an unpublished opinion in Rando v. Furr, a case that dealt with the ins-and-outs of uninsured motorist coverage and bad faith claims. Here’s what happened:

A man was driving his motorcycle and was involved in an awful collision with a pickup truck driven by the defendant. He briefly survived, before tragically succumbing to his injuries. The man and his motorcycle were insured through his wife’s insurance—when she originally got the insurance through Progressive about seven years earlier, she waived uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage. Progressive paid Louisiana’s equivalent of PIP to the tune of $2,500, then said that they had no more exposure.

The deceased man's wife (and later child) filed a wrongful death claim against the negligent driver and his insurance company (our friend State Farm), as well as Progressive. For whatever reason, Progressive quickly decided that there was UM/UIM coverage in the amount of $50,000/$100,000. They tendered an offer of the full $50,000.00, plus reasonable interest. The plaintiffs demanded the full $100,000, but Progressive (correctly) noted that only $50,000 was applicable, because the wife and child’s claims were derivative of the decedent's claim.

The plaintiffs included a bad faith claim against Progressive, alleging that it refused to make a timely and unconditional tender of the UM limits, and that claim went to trial after all of the claims against the negligent driver and State Farm had resolved. Trial was apparently a short affair, and there was not much evidence presented. The judge dismissed the bad faith claim, holding that the plaintiffs failed to testify about the cause of the accident, the amount of the State Farm policy, and the amount of damages.

The case is mostly consistent with how Maryland courts would view things. To make an uninsured or underinsured claim, it is important to show that some other person or company was responsible for the accident, and that they have either no insurance, or insufficient insurance coverage. The whole point of uninsured/underinsured coverage is that a driver’s insurance will pay them if they can’t recover from another source. The plaintiffs in this case failed to prove any such thing to the judge. In fact, they probably did receive some money from State Farm—that case was settled on the courthouse steps.

Continue reading "New Bad Faith Opinion from Louisiana" »

New Rules for Medicaid Liens in Maryland

November 26, 2012

Medicaid is tough to deal with when they have a subrogation lien against your case. With some wonderful exceptions, they are often inflexible about reducing your clients' lien which is to say that they simply won't unless the lien is greater than 50% of the net recovery to the client after attorney's fees. But since you don't know who is going to be handling your request, you really have no idea how it will play out.

New and easier rules might be on tap for reducing Medicaid liens in Maryland. The Maryland Register has posted new regulations that would allow for the following:

  • Let the jury make the call on how much of the overall award is attributable for medical expenses. This is a big deal because Medicaid should not be getting a piece of the overall recovery but only the medical cost that were attributable to the accident.
  • Requires Medicaid timing requirements to be consistent with Health-General Article, §15-120,
    Annotated Code of Maryland which provides for, among other things, hardship waivers on liens in all cases, including wrongful death claims. (Not for nothing, this law also holds the plaintiff's attorney personally liable for the subrogation claim if the attorney ignores written notice of the lien.)
  • Allows for proportional reduction of Medicaid's lien if the award is greater than available liability coverage so Medicaid cannot claim a lien that exceeds the recovery. In other words, if the jury awards a $500,000 verdict but the plaintiff can only collect $100,000, the amount allotted for medical bills must be reduced by at least 20%.
  • Limits Medicaid's recovery to only the portion of the allocation related to past medical expenses. Shuts down the issue of potential set asides for future medical bills expected to be incurred.
  • Reduces the lien by one-third of the amount of the recipient‘s attorney‘s fees in the event that the Department, after notice, fails to intervene in the recipient‘s case. And they are never going to intervene. This is really huge.
  • Gives attorneys the ability to put disputed funds in trust so there can be a fair adjudication of what is owed and allows the plaintiff the opportunity to challenge the subrogation claim.

Continue reading "New Rules for Medicaid Liens in Maryland" »

Progressive Wrongful Death Disaster

November 2, 2012

Have you ever Googled yourself? No? Okay. You are a big liar.

I found myself quoted in the Washington Times today while Googling myself. The topic? The whole Progressive wrongful death case debacle.

Dollar for Dollar Comp Setoff in Uninsured Motorist Cases

October 9, 2012

We often handle car and truck accident cases for victims who were working at the time of the crash. (I guess a motorcycle accident claim could also be while the employee is on the job - but I have never had or seen that case.)

In these types of cases, workers comp claims a lien on its payout and you have to work with them to get them to reduce their lien. A hassle, but usually not a much larger challenge then working with the health insurer to reduce its lien.

But this Field of Lien Reduction Dreams falls apart when you have an uninsured motorist claim and a workers' compensation case. In Maryland (Insurance Article, § 19-513e) and many other states, when an insured files a lawsuit against the uninsured or underinsured motorist carrier, the insurance company can file a counter claim against the victim to reduce the amount of the claim by the amount of money that the insurance company claims that the insured owes to it. Practically, this means a dollar for dollar set-off of the amount paid by worker's compensation. The theory behind this is that setoffs lead to double recovery by the victims.

This is dumb and I'm not the first person to notice it. Maryland Court of Special Appeals Judge, Judge Timothy E. Meredith argues - in a dissent, of course - that it is an unreasonable windfall for the car insurance company to get the benefit of the workers’ compensation lien and, really, calling it a double recovery misses the whole point of modern UM coverage in the first place - to place the victim in the spot she would have been in if the at-fault driver had the same coverage she did. A minority of states agree with Judge Meredith and do not allow for these dollar-for-dollar reductions.

Continue reading "Dollar for Dollar Comp Setoff in Uninsured Motorist Cases" »

New Maryland Ethics Opinion Ends Annoying Defense Tactic

October 1, 2012

Defense lawyers and insurance companies have this irrational fear of an unpaid lien holder coming back and claiming the insurance company is obligated to reimburse for the unpaid debt. Sure, some adjusters and lawyers push this issue because they are pathologically difficult. But I also think that they have an earnest belief that this could happen and, more importantly, that they will get blamed for it.

This problem has grown especially acute since Medicare came out with new reporting rules in personal injury claims that many insurance companies believe means that the plaintiff is obligated to prove the negative that they don't have Medicare. "You are 32 years old making $75,000 a year? So? Prove to me you are not on Medicare."

You would think this increasing fear would be tempered by the fact that this doomsday scenario has not come to pass even a handful of times in human history. (Source: I've never heard of it happening other than one Medicare case, a thousand years ago, where the plaintiffs' lawyers really were up to no good.)

So the adjuster-defense lawyer wonder twins concocted a plan to decrease the likelihood of a lien ever coming back on them: having both the plaintiff and the plaintiff's attorney indemnify them for any lien.

Maryland Ethics Commission: Docket No. 2012-03

So here's what happened that led to a Maryland State Bar Association ethics opinion. After agreeing to the amount of a car accident settlement, the insurance company demands that the plaintiff's lawyer and the plaintiff indemnify both the insurance carrier and the defendant from any claim for any of plaintiff’s medical bills, medical liens, or workers compensation liens related to the car crash. The question posed to the ethics commission is whether this demand violates the Maryland Rules of Professional Conduct.

Continue reading "New Maryland Ethics Opinion Ends Annoying Defense Tactic" »

How Much is a Car Accident Claim Worth?

September 13, 2012

How much is a car accident claim worth? It really depends on how you adjust your lens.

According to Jury Verdict Research, the median jury award for plaintiffs' verdicts in 2010 for vehicular accidents was only $19,806. That's not much. Yet the average award in a vehicle crash case is $181,197. ISO, an insurance risk information service, reports that about 5% percent of bodily injury claims - including cases that were settled out-of-court - in 2010 were for more than $100,000, while about 2% reached $300,000.

What does this tell us? Certainly, for those of you who went to some fancy liberal arts college - communist! - that did not require statistics, it underscores the wild difference than can exist between the average and the median. It also shows how insurance companies can distort data. Trust me, when their lobbyists storm Annapolis, they are throwing out average verdicts, not median verdicts, and ignoring many of those high end average verdicts.

We have put on our website a lot of data that provides average and median verdict and settlement data for specific types of personal injury cases and specific types of injuries. You need to take this data with more than a pinch of salt. The truth is - trite as it may be - that there are so many intangible variables at play in determining the true worth of a particular person's injury case. So, average settlement and verdict statistics are of limited use in determining the value of your case.

Are We the Worst Drivers in America? Yes and No.

August 29, 2012

So, Allstate has published their eighth annual report of cities with the worst drivers. Given the publisher of the study, I immediately began searching for some hidden bias.

Apparently, we are in the eye of the storm. Washington D.C. is ranked first - which means worst - with Baltimore City right behind in second.

Allstate studied the auto insurance claims frequency of America’s 200 largest cities and found that residents of our nation’s capitol were found to get into collisions on average once every 4.7 years. The typical driver in the U.S. is involved in an automobile accident once every ten years. If you aced math class, you might realize that this means D.C. drivers are 112.1% more likely to be a party to an accident than the typical driver in the U.S. For Baltimore drivers, they are 89.7% more likely than the average driver. Rounding out the top five, Providence Rhode Island ranks third, Hialeah, Florida fourth, and Glendale, California comes in at fifth.

Where might you want to live? Sioux Falls, South Dakota. For the fifth time out of the report’s eight year history, Sioux Falls, South Dakota ranks as the safest place to drive, with drivers being 27.6% less likely to be involved in an accident than the typical driver.

Okay, so what does this study mean? You want to avoid Washington, D.C. and Baltimore streets at all costs? Ironically, I think Washington, D.C. and Baltimore might be among the safest streets to drive on in America. Why? Because car accidents are one thing and car accidents that cause serious injury and death are another. In Maryland, Baltimore County has almost twice as many fatal accidents as Baltimore City.

Continue reading "Are We the Worst Drivers in America? Yes and No." »

Can the Defense Expert Say the Plaintiff Is Lying? No, But Maybe You Should Let Him Anyway

August 27, 2012

Defense lawyers are reluctant to say that the plaintiff is lying. They will insinuate, suggest, intimate, and any other verb you can think of to try to lead that horse to water, but they will rarely come out and say it. It is largely a trial tactics decision but it is also because defense lawyers are human. (No, really! It's true!) It is uncomfortable to call someone a liar or a bad person, so most defense lawyers avoid it. The strategy for many, then, is to turn it over to their medical expert, hoping that packaging it in a white coat makes it more credible.

Medical experts really should not be testifying as to the plaintiff's credibility. Under both Maryland and federal law, the credibility of a witness and the weight to be accorded the witness' testimony are for the jury and, accordingly, it is "error for the court to permit to go to the jury a statement, belief, or opinion of another person to the effect that a witness is telling the truth or lying." Stated clearly by the Maryland Court of Appeals: "It is the settled law of this State that a witness, expert or otherwise, may not give an opinion on whether he believes a witness is telling the truth. Testimony from a witness relating to the credibility of another witness is to be rejected as a matter of law."

Continue reading "Can the Defense Expert Say the Plaintiff Is Lying? No, But Maybe You Should Let Him Anyway" »

Is Your Client's Motorcycle Accident Covered by Her Uninsured Motorist Policy?

July 30, 2012

The purpose of uninsured motorist coverage - which most of us blindly have because our state requires it - is for protection in the event that we get hit by a driver with no insurance or not enough insurance to provide compensation for our injuries. Most uninsured motorist policies compensate the victim for any amount, within the policy limits, that would have been recoverable from the at fault driver as money damages resulting from a car collision.

What happens when your client is on a motorcycle that is not listed on your insurance policy? Does your uninsured motorist coverage kick in? This issue is usually framed by breaking down the language of the uninsured motorist agreement that considers a motorcycle to be an excluded vehicle. But the analysis does not end there. Some states - Maryland is a prime example that I will get to in a second - are willing to rewrite the terms of an insurance policy to meet public policy objectives. This is done either by judicial fiat or by the state's uninsured motorist statutory scheme.

So outside of Maryland, Plaintiffs' lawyer in these cases argue that the state uninsured motorist laws provides protection that extends not just to the vehicle but to the person. Accordingly, this argument goes, UM coverage is broadly construed to cover all motor vehicle accidents. The insurance companies, argue, on the other hand, that its insured should not be able to have their cake and eat it too by doing someone inherently unsafe while not paying for the coverage. There is merit to both arguments.

Continue reading "Is Your Client's Motorcycle Accident Covered by Her Uninsured Motorist Policy?" »

Accident Claims with Chubb Insurance

July 18, 2012

We give our thoughts on dealing with Chubb Insurance in Maryland accident claims here. If you have any thoughts based on your experience in Maryland or elsewhere with Chubb, please share it in the comments below.

E-Mails from GEICO in Accident Claims

July 11, 2012

Today, I received this email from GEICO:

    Attached is correspondence regarding your claim: 0312851310101112.

    For your privacy and security please log into http://www.geico.com/claims/etrack/, select your claim, and 'Contact Us' if you would like to respond to this email. Please do not select the 'Reply' option on this email.

    If you are unable to open the attachment please go to this site and download the free Adobe Acrobat Reader, http://www.adobe.com.

    If you would like to provide feedback regarding our email process, please visit: http://webeffective.keynote.com/v.asp?inv=ClmsLtrEml

E-Mails from GEICO claims adjusters

I have some feedback. First, I'm glad you are using email. Let's take it to the next level and allow all of your adjusters to have at least some discussions about the case by email. It would save both of us a ton of time.

Second, is there any chance you could tell me what the case is when you send me one of these emails? Believe it or not, we don't use GEICO claims numbers to sort our cases because we have non-GEICO cases as well. (I know, crazy!) Also, who are you? These email are never signed by or come from a GEICO adjuster.

Finally, how did you get my email address? I never gave it to you. One day, about a year ago I guess, they just started coming. I'm not mad about it. But it is odd.

Continue reading "E-Mails from GEICO in Accident Claims" »

Novel Liability Theory in Car Accident Claim Rejected by Maryland Court of Appeals

June 27, 2012
Should employer who overworks their employees be responsible for fatigue caused car accidents?

The Maryland Court of Appeals delivered its opinion in Barclay vs. Briscoe v. Ports America, a car accident case where the plaintiff was seriously injured by a man who had just finished a twenty-two hour shift at a job at the Port of Baltimore.

Liability was not at issue. But the driver had a limited insurance policy that would not fairly compensate the victim for his injuries. So a creative plaintiffs' lawyer argued that it is a jury question as to whether the driver's employer is responsible, because the employer had basically set the table for the car accident by overworking the driver and letting him drive home.

This argument is a novel one. But it is held together by more than just duct tape and the magic of defense lawyers' laughter: it makes some sense that a reasonable jury could find that the employer knew that its extremely fatigued employees posed foreseeable harm to themselves and other motorists when they drove home from work.

When you are trying to make new law, you have to dig around to try to find something somewhere that seems to be on point. Plaintiff's lawyer did find a great case in Timbuktu Oregon that seemed on point. In Faverty v. McDonald's Restaurants of Oregon, Inc., 892 P.2d 703 (Or. App. 1995), a high school student who worked three shirts for a McDonald's restaurant in a 24 hour period. Driving his car home, the boy fell asleep and hit someone head on, killing the boy and seriously injuring another driver.

Pretty much sounds like the same set of facts, right? The Court of Appeals of Oregon found McDonald's had a duty to avoid conduct that unreasonably creates foreseeable risk of harm to others, and that a jury could reasonably find that the employer should have foreseen that the boy would become so exhausted or fatigued after working three shifts in one 24-hour period.

Continue reading "Novel Liability Theory in Car Accident Claim Rejected by Maryland Court of Appeals" »

State Farm's Issue Preclusion Argument Wins and Loses on Appeal

June 25, 2012

The perils of handling an accident claim that implicates law outside of the lawyer's home state was underscored once again in the Maryland Court of Special Appeals opinion this month, in Bryan v. State Farm.

A family - Mom, Dad, and two kids - were injured in a car accident with another vehicle in New York City. Plaintiffs, both the driver and passenger of that vehicle, brought a lawsuit against Dad. The trial was bifurcated and tried on liability only in New York. Plaintiffs won. The next day, the parties put the settlement on the record of $15,000 per plaintiff.

The family then brought a phantom vehicle uninsured motorist case in Montgomery County, Maryland. State Farm, the uninsured motorist insurer, sought and received summary judgment on the family's claim, arguing that collateral estoppel prevents the family from relitigating the issue of liability.

The first thing that strikes me here is that State Farm is relying on the defense of the plaintiffs in New York - or its failure to mount an effective defense - as the basis for its claim. State Farm had other options. Most obviously, it could have settled the case, thereby avoiding the collateral estoppel problem. State Farm also could have made an effort to stay the litigation pending the case in Baltimore (induce the underlying plaintiffs to dismiss their claim without prejudice). Something. Anything.

State Farm also could have played it really straight with their insured and not raised this defense in the first place, because they knew that the Maryland accident lawyer who brought the claim apparently failed to note that New York's comparative negligence law - presumably the controlling law in the case - would allow for some negligence on the part of the Dad.

Do I think State Farm threw the New York case or has some obligation to do the plaintiffs' lawyers job for them? Even the Oliver Stone in me doubts it. But if they wanted to do right by their insured, they would have allowed them to have their day in court. Remember, this was a first party case filed by their own insured. But State Farm's paradigm is clear: all out war on personal injury plaintiffs. (Half of the State Farm adjusters who read that last line think I am dead wrong; the other half are shaking their fist with pride.)

Continue reading "State Farm's Issue Preclusion Argument Wins and Loses on Appeal" »

Let Me Talk to the Adjuster's Supervisor

June 4, 2012

If you cannot make progress with an insurance adjuster, and the problem is something other than the valuation of the case, I'd ask to speak to the adjuster's supervisor. (If the problem is the valuation of the case, whining about the offer is useless. File suit.)

I settled a relatively minor car accident case with USAA yesterday. We thought it might be a larger case but the client, thankfully, had a great recovery. We sent USAA a demand package. After a great deal of nonsense, and a lot of phone calls to the adjuster that went unanswered, we got an offer four months later that did not include the client's lost wages.

The initial offer was awful but I'm not even mad about that. After squaring away the medical/health insurance liens and talking to the client, I made a counteroffer by voice mail. No response. I kept calling. Finally, I get this whining adjuster on the phone who blamed all of his problems on someone or something else and inexplicably began every sentence with, "Well [long pregnant pause], let's just say...." Finally, the adjuster tells me he is going to "drop everything" and get right on getting us a counteroffer on a case that he had ostensibly already evaluated. He also agrees the lost wages should be included.

He never calls back. I called him that night and left a message. A few days go by and I call and try to get his supervisor. Another USAA adjuster - a very nice woman - intercedes and makes me a counteroffer. I get a counter demand from my client and call back again. Same deal. No response.

I call the adjuster's supervisor and, after sitting on hold for 5 minutes (I have a timer on my phone), she picks up. Now, the supervisor knows if you are asking to speak to her, you are the typical jerk personal injury lawyer who is only complaining about the amount of the offer. This is not a rebuttable presumption type of assumption by the supervisor. It is set in granite. (This happened last time I tried to get USAA to admit that the collateral source rule has been in effect in Maryland for the last 113 years).

Ignoring this iceberg in my path, I turn the boat north and speed up, trying like crazy to lay the sweetness extra thick to refute the supervisor adjuster's assumption that I am John Edwards' even more evil twin. I brilliantly praise other USAA adjusters that she knows in an effort to establish my "I'm not crazy" bona fides.

Continue reading "Let Me Talk to the Adjuster's Supervisor" »