Car Accident Legal Question

Factual Questions
1

A few years ago (like two years ago actually) I was driving on a rural country road (two lane, no line separating them) and as I went round a corner an SUV collided into me head on at about 40 mph (I was also going about 40 mph.) It totalled both vehicles and amazingly I was not hurt in the least. After the impact I climbed out the car window (door was jammed shut) and have a brief and slightly terse conversation with the driver of the vehicle. None of them were seriously injured though they all go to the hospital to get checked out. I choose not to.

Anyways shortly after the wreck by chance an off duty volunteer fire department person is the first to appear. I’m guessing he is the one who called in all the authorities. In a matter of hours or so two sheriff’s deputies, a fire truck, and ambulance arrive. After a brief conversation the ambulance takes the other car’s passengers away.

The fire fighter’s don’t really do anything, they were the first to arrive and did a cursory medical check on all persons involved.

The sheriff’s deputies file a report and ask questions, take insurance and registration et cetera. At the scene the deputies say their report will say the driver of the other vehicle was at fault (which goes against a popular urban legend I believed until then, that on a road with no painted dividing line there can’t be a driver at fault.)

As it is the SUV’s insurance has no problem with it and accepts fault and they pay me personal damages and pay me for the value of my wrecked car. It was actually all quite painless and I was driving the exact same type of car (though slightly newer) within 4 days of the accident.

Here’s where the strange legal matter comes in. About 6-7 months after the accident I’m informed that I owe the local volunteer fire department something like $250 for emergency response and towing fees. Well, I call my insurance company and they say to contact Nationwide (the insurance company who provided insurance on the SUV.) The guy from Nationwide ultimately responds with a letter and a phone explanation that say that there is no legal statute, state or municipal, which supports the right of the volunteer fire department to assess these fees. Nationwide further says that they will deal with any further problems arising from this issue.

Well about 6 months later I get another letter. I call Nationwide, they say they’ll deal with it. I get another letter like 6 months later, I throw it away and call Nationwide. They say they’ll deal with it.

My question is, WTF is going on? Does the volunteer fire department actually have any right to assess that fee? If they do, does the fee fall on me or does it fall on Nationwide Insurance?

It’s not a huge sum to me but I’m not just going to pay it because it seems a bit “off” to me that I should have to do so, I thought I paid taxes for a reason.

2

You realize there’s no way to answer your question without knowing your location, right? Laws vary by jurisdiction and without a jurisdiction there’s no way to begin researching what if any statutes apply to your volunteer fire department.

That being said, when I worked for health insurance companies doing business mostly in Wisconsin, we routinely paid ambulance claims submitted by fire departments and I never saw one denied on the grounds that volunteer fire departments are legally barred from charging for transport.

3

If they keep hassling you ask them to make sure that they’re not double-billing you. The local EMT-Fire guys have an unfortunate habit of doing that around here. I got a bill for over $700 after an acident I had a long time ago. It had actually been paid, but for whatever reason they kept billing me. I told them to check and it went away after that.

4

Wat Airman said. Check with Nationwide and see if they’ve already paid it. If they have, they can send you a copy of the draft they sent to the fire bugs. That’ll shut 'em up. If they haven’t paid them, ask how come, and would they please do so?

Fire departments get their dough from LOCAL taxes assessed to residents of the city and/or county. When “foreigners” get themselves into a situation which requires their services, they respond at the expense of the locals. This can be a disproportionate burden on the locals in rural areas, and to smooth things over they will sometimes ask you to pony up NOW since you didn’t contribute earlier as a part of the tax base. Think of it kind of like eating out of someone else’s refrigerator. It’s my understanding that (Colorado) this is not a collectable debt, meaning they don’t garnish or go running to the credit bureaus or put a lien against you, but they can be persistent. What are you gonna do, hire a lawyer & take legal action against a municipality for who knows what kind of expense to make them back off of their $300 service bill?

As a courtesey, and because fire departments aren’t normally viewed as racketeering organizations out for fat profits, insurance companies usually just roll their eyes and pay these kinds of bills. After all, keeping these folks afloat could conceivably save a life later on because they didn’t have to sell an ambulance to pay the bills.

5

Conversely, you could tell the volunteer fire dept. to deal directly with Nationwide and the other driver as the accident was not your fault. My non-expert understanding is that you do not have to pay any emergency fees (including ambulance, ER, towing off the road to a safe place, etc.) no matter what the circumstances. Also, my non-expert understanding is that if you tell them to stop billing you , they have to since they are acting as a collection agency and nobody is allowed to harass you into paying a bill if you ask them to stop.

6

xbuckeye opines:

BZZZT! Wrong answer. Ambulance companies come in 2 basic flavors - public and private. Private ambulance companies routinely bill the patient (or the patient’s insurance company) for their services, and they ain’t cheap. Public (city, county or state) ambulance services are at least partially funded by tax dollars and usually don’t bill directly for their services - but there is no reason they could not do so. Towing is almost always done by a private contractor and is always billed out, most often to the “towee”. Emergency room services are always billed to the patient.

And again:

BZZZT! Wrong again! There is a huge difference between allowable collection efforts of a “owner” of the debt and those allowed a third party collection agency. The debt owner is given far more latitude in collecting the debt than is an agency. For instance, say you owe Joe Blow a sum of money. He is pretty much allowed to harrass you as much as he wishes in order to collect the debt. If Joe contracts with an agency to collect the debt, that agency is held to a much stricter standard. Google “fair debt collection” for details on the distinction between “debt owner” and “collection agency”.

All of the above is applicable in the United States, thought here is room for loal variation. Since neither the OP nor xbuckeye gives an indication of their respective location, these answers may not apply. I have no knowlege, for instance, how these laws might apply in Israel, Luxombourg, Lithuania, Ghana, or Vatican City.

7

I don’t know whether you actually owe the fire department the money they’re demanding. But if you do, the other driver’s insurer ought to pay it, given that they’ve accepted liability. If you owe money to the fire department for their emergency response, that debt is part of the damages that you have suffered as a result of the other driver’s negligence.

Of course, with insurance companies, there’s not a strong correlation between should pay and will pay. Good luck.

8

Okay to clarify some more; I was visiting relatives in Southern Virginia. I was in Franklin County, Virginia, on a rural road between the towns of Union Hall and Glade Hill.

No, I’m not going to take this volunteer fire department to court. If it comes down to me being legally responsible for paying this $300 then I’ll do it, I have no problem with that. But Nationwide in their written letter said that the volunteer fire department has no legal right to charge this fee. So it isn’t a matter of Nationwide paying it or not paying it. Nationwide has informed me they aren’t paying it and no one has to pay it. I’m guessing/hoping they had some sort of legal counsel’s help in coming to this conclusion.

Ultimately I do think the $300 would be something Nationwide has to take care of if it is something that has to be paid. Now, the towing service that came and towed my car away was a private enterprise and I spoke with the tow truck driver when he took it away (to find out where he was taking it to, in case I needed to come by later to get anything out of the vehicle.) So that’s why I’m unsure as to why the Fire Dept. should be paid for that, I’d think there’d be a bill payable to the towing company.

9

What you fail to discuss, and perhaps even notice, is that the OP never even asked for emergency response. He was billed for a bunch of volunteer guys to come out and look at the scene. This would be comparable to me coming over and mowing your lawn without previous knowledge and then demanding to be paid for it.

I agree…ambulances routinely bill for their services. But 1) the OP did not use their services and 2) I can send you a bill for mowing your lawn…that doesn’t make you legally obligated to pay it.

I also agree that the private towing company has every right to try to collect…but since the car is totalled and that is the only leverage they have on you, in this situation it is also perfectly legal, and common, to not pay and not retreive the vehicle. You cede ownership, but you don’t want the car anyway. Also, the OP implied that the VFD did the towing, which the OP then clarified after my post.

I likewise agree that ER’s routinely bill patients. However, you are legally protected from having to pay for it, since you have no choice when you need emergency care. You can walk away from an ER bill with no harm to your credit and no future implications other than if you go back to the same hospital, they may provide only acute care and make you go elsewhere for non-acute treatment. However, the hospital is not going to tell you that, because they want you to pay for treatment.

this from googling ‘fair debt collection debt owner’

maybe you should get that buzzer checked.

10

Yes, to support Doc’s post I did not call 911 or anything like that. A volunteer fire department guy who was off duty happened to be driving home on the road in question. Since I guess he has his volunteer fire department radio on him at all times I believe he used that to call the fire department in when he saw the accident.

The volunteer fire dept. truck was the first emergency vehicle to arrive on the scene. They communicated with me twice:

  1. When they first got there they they asked me if I needed medical attention, I said no, they asked me, “are you sure?” I said, “I feel like I’ve been hit in the face due to the airbag, but I feel perfectly fine and don’t think I need to go to the emergency room.” Now, most of my friends have told me in retrospect I should have gone to the ER “to be safe” but I honestly felt fine and I didn’t want to spend 3/4ths of the day dealing with ER unless I had to. As it is I did go in and get checked up by a doctor a few days later and he informed me I was just fine.

  2. When the tow truck arrived they came over and asked me (I was talking with the sheriff’s deputies at this point) if I wanted to get anything out of the car as the tow truck guy was getting ready to take it away. I said, “let me get a few things” and that was it.

To me, it seems inherently wrong that I should be responsible for something that involved what appeared to be 2-3 sentences of communication and the calling of a private towing company. I guess the towing company may have billed the fire dept., so that may be why they are trying to bill me.

11

If I may ask, do you have a citation for “You can walk away from an ER bill with no harm to your credit”
I tried googling the phrase you mentioned later in your post and failed to turn up anything definitive on that.

12

Medical bills can be sent to a collection agency. The agency, at least, notifies the credit demons that you’ve a debt in collection.

OP, another way to look at this is the other guy’s liability coverage in his auomobile insurance policy will have language to the effect: [Insurance Company] will pay all expenses legally owed by you in the event you cause an accident." In other words, if the other dude was found 100% at fault, he is liable for all expenses arising out of this accident, and that would include your medical & related bills, market value of your car, loss of use (rental expenses), lost wages, etc. Basically, if the EMTs can demonstrate that they are legally entitled to the dough, they should be presenting the bill to the other driver who caused the accident or to his insurance company.

If Nationwide continues not to address this situation with them, you can:

  1. get a copy of the police report stating the other guy was at fault and present it to the EMTs along with a letter suggesting they pursue the debt through him or his insurance
  2. continue to ignore the notices
  3. Hi Opal!
  4. Check with your own insurer to see if Personal Injury Protection/Medical Payments Coverage exists on your policy, and if it does can that coverage take care of this bill?

I’d say there’s a 98% chance that option 4 will not affect your insurance rates.