Wow, where I am standard third party liability limit is $20M
Where I’m from the standard thing is that the accident has caused PTSD, inexplicable headaches and ongoing soft tissue pain (all unfalsifiable) that will prevent the claimant from working ever again. If the claimant is young, and they have a solid working history, their lifetime earnings will be seven figures.
Where is this? In the US somewhere or another country, if you don’t want to be too specific?
After many a bad experience with Billboard Car Injury Lawyers (I spent years in Sales, then Customer service, then claims) I basically assume all of them are crooks, though some DO manage to do some good despite being crooks.
What was a sadly common experience for me was to be working on a claim ( FTR I only did non-injury claims) in good faith, then I get a letter from a lawyer telling me they were representing the insured or injured party. Their FIRST question (and to be fair, it’s a legit one) was to demand to know the coverage on the policy.
And low and behold, in cases where the coverage was low about 80-90% suddenly stopped their representation on the clients behalf due to “issues” with the claim. On a few such occasions, I had the injured party in the claim contact me sheepishly later to go ahead with the repairs but who mentioned they’d been had by a lawyer who had promised them a big settlement but instead billed them a grand (in 2015 money) for their investigation into the case before dropping the representation.
IOW, no matter what those billboards say, the sleeze is always getting some money, even if they say you pay nothing unless you win. Even if all they did was meet with you and send a literal form letter to 1-2 carriers.
Australia
I’m sure that you read something like this, but it was most likely wrong in that insurance companies are generally not the entities sued. Let’s say for example, you and I are in a car accident and I’m at fault. If you don’t agree with my insurancce company’s proposed settlement , you have to sue me. The insurance company might have to pay for my lawyer and may have to pay any award - but they have an obligation to me, not to you. In fact, although it’s not uncommon for car insurance to settle claims without a lawsuit , I once had to sue someone in small claims court regarding damage to my car. Her insurance wouldn’t pay for my damages because 1) they had no obligation to me 2) she never reported the accident to the insurance company and 3) they had no obligation to her until she reported the accidents ( Of course, getting served prompted her to notify the insurance company , which then settled the claim. ) That’s why that aunt had to sue her nephew, rather than the insurance company over the hug. The insurance company had no obligation to pay for her medical expenses, they only had an obligation to pay if their clent was liable.
Also, when “joint and several liability” comes into play, there is sometimes (often?) a minimum level of fault required. For example, in my state in certain situations, only a party who is at least 50% at fault might be liable for the full award.
I’ve been in two (Canadian) provinces where the government took over the auto insurance industry. You pay your insurance same time as renewing license plates. One thing I recall from the news (never had to find out myself) was that they limited payouts, for example if there was no substantial damage to the car, no whiplash-type payouts, and payouts for things like physical therapy etc. were capped and subject to arbitration. Plus, they pay for insured car repairs (or determine if car is “written off”), so no arguments about fault and whose insurance pays. Uninsured driver coverage is built into the policies. Plus plus, government health insurance pays for necessary injuries, so no medical bills to sue about. Won’t someone think of the poor starving lawyers??
Apparently rideshare companies are a target now for these lawyers nowadays, I see one of the local Texas screaming lawyer’s commercials says to call him if you are in an accident involving a rideshare driver.
I think the idea is that they can sue the rideshare companies (Uber or Lyft) in addition to the drivers themselves.
Basically, any chance to sue someone other than a random individual driver with bare bones or no insurance coverage.
i don’t see a problem with suing Uber if one of their drivers was negligent (or worse)
I’ve done it myself.
I am not a fan of stupid lawyer ads, but I don’t know what we can do about that. Things like that used to be regulated by the bar associations, but the Supreme Court said “free speech.”
Back when people rented Zip Cars, a drunk who was driving one hit my daughter’s motorcycle. He got out of the car and fled. The police wouldn’t charge him because there was no way to prove that the person who rented the Zip Car was the same person who was driving it. And the lawyer she consulted wouldn’t take the case because the damages were under $2k. He also advised her that she’d likely lose in Small Claims court because of not being able to identify the actual driver.