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.
So…how do we know he was drunk? 
I’ve been an adjuster since Christ was a kid. Also spent a few years working in a large plaintiff firm (that happens to advertise on billboards). One thing that always amuses me is how plaintiff attorneys are just certain the insurance people get bonuses for making low settlements (this is nonsense in the property/casualty world of car accidents–I’ll let health and disability people defend themselves), and insurance people are equally certain the attorneys are all misrepresenting the claim in order to boost the value (this is also, generally, nonsense). In cases where there is fiery disagreement about the value of a claim, the issue is usually just ineffective communication. It doesn’t help that both negotiators are primed to suspect each other of cheating and lying.
As for the OP: Largely answered. The numbers posted in the client endorsements usually represent coverage limits. $100,000 is not all that hard to get to, even in a moderate collision. A fairly typical treatment pattern:
Moderate rear-end collision,
then, ER/UC/PCP with complaints of neck & shoulder pain ($2,500 - $10,000)
then, 3-6 months of chiropractic care ($200 /visit x 3 visits/week x 12-24 months = $10-$15,000)
then, visit to orthopedist to see why the chiro didn’t help. $2,500 MRI + $500 visit, Rx is 3 months of PT
then, 3 months of PT for another $15,000
The PT usually results in symptom resolution and a demand for policy limit. But, if there is a lot of coverage, treatment may advance to pain management where some oftentimes ludicrously expensive spinal injections & procedures (Epidural steroid injections, nerve root ablations). Then if THAT doesn’t work we start looking at surgical options to correct blown disks. $100k-$500k settlements are pretty easy to reach this way. In addition to the bills, the claimant is entitled to pain & suffering money to account for the time spent in pain while all the treatments didn’t work.
Different states consider different things. In Colorado, you get credit for your medical bills at 100% irrespective of whether your health insurance may have paid them at 10%; in California you get credit for what the providers accepted (what insurance paid).
Most claims don’t incur those kinds of expenses, usually they stop after the ER, 3 months of Chiro, and a MRI–slam dunk limits case for a $25,000 policy, which is most of 'em.
It wasn’t in question. She and witnesses saw how erratically he was driving and the way he staggered off. He and pals were swerving across the road to pull into a strip club. If he wasn’t drunk, he was wasted on something else. No lack of witnesses, but no one could positively ID who was driving.
I agree, but how does find a good lawyer; AIUI, the bar association will also recommend those who paid their fee & are minimally qualified?
I work with insurance claims handlers - a common complaint is that underwriters who bring in $500k (or whatever) of new business get bonuses, but claims handlers who fight a claim payout down $500k get nothing. Yet the $500k saved on paying claims goes straight to the bottom line, while $500k of new business does not.
Of course the counter argument is that there is no telling whether the $500k claim payout was saved due to the claims handler’s effort or whether it was never going to be paid.
Well it may well be that it is the claimants rather than the attorneys misrepresenting, but where I’m from laughably exaggerated claims that no honest attorney could ever believe to be valid are - as an opening gambit - the norm. As is amply demonstrated by the fact that claimants reduce their claim by a massive amount in the first few minutes of negotiations.
Hey, what am I? Chopped liver?
[this is a joke - I’m not in your jurisdiction and you don’t want someone in my speciality]
It’s very simple. First you find a good lawyer. Then you ask them to recommend another one!
I say only half in jest…
One way you might accomplish this is by contacting the local bar association or better yet the local chapter of a particular area of practice.
How is that different that googling "(specialty) lawyer near me? "
Local bar associations do not have mandatory membership. Likewise, memberships to organizations for particular practice areas are not mandatory.
So for one thing, if someone is a member of, say, the Dallas Bar Association, the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association (TCDLA), or the American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), they are not only paying extra money, above and beyond what they need to be licensed to practice law.
For another, just being part of an organization related to a particular practice area indicates that the attorney likely prioritizes that practice area. Sure, you could say that they might be spending on AILA membership or TCDLA membership as just a niche form of advertising on its own (so now they can say for a member). But for my part, while I have seen attorneys advertise that they will practice every kind of law under the sun, I haven’t seen them advertise memberships (which combined would come out to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of dollars a year) in every speciality organization under the sun. And that kind of makes sense, too: as advertising goes, paying money to be a member of a particular organization might fool the potential clients who are doing some research beyond just goggling… but then those people are already going to be harder to scam. By way of analogy, there’s a reason Nigerian scam emails have so many errors and unusual turns of phrase: it’s specifically to filter out people with some minimal level of incredulity, so that they can be more confident people who respond really are gullible enough to be worth the investment in time and energy to scam.
In the practice of law, the real bad actors seem happy to, for example, advertise their services for criminal defense, immigration removal defense, asylum, personal injury, wills/probate, and family law but don’t seem to be a member of any of those organizations. Basically, they are advertising that they are happy to take people’s money for anything, but are competent in nothing. A jack of all trades and a master of none. That should be a huge red flag.
What asking the local bar association or the local chapter of something like AILA can get you is someone who knows someone (and by extension someone who knows whether a particular lawyer tends to practice in a particular subset of cases). Competent lawyers don’t generally tell other competent lawyers “I’ll take anything and everything,” even within a particular practice area like immigration law. Some immigration attorneys might specialize in removal defense and defensive asylum claim. Others might specialize in obtaining particular types of visas, and I personally mostly deal in naturalization (and within that I actually specialize in a particular population of immigrants) and almost never deal in detained cases. So bare minimum, you can be confident that no one in the local AILA chapter would ever recommend me to help get your dear friend who was detained by ICE yesterday release from ICE detention. This despite the fact that I am actually an immigration attorney and that is half my practice.
By contrast, if you just google “immigration attorney” or “immigration attorney” for your particular area, you might come up with all manner of websites and ads for people who aren’t real immigration attorneys and just want your money. You literally could not pay me (even if I were in private practice) to represent your dear friend in removal proceedings because it’s just not something I have competency to handle on short notice. By contrast, Lionel Hutz will be happy to represent you or your friend in any matter under the sun. And then probably won’t do a very good job of it. What Lionel Hutz and I have in common, though, is neither of us will be recommended to you by the local AILA chapter to get your friend out of ICE detention: me because they know I don’t take that kind of case, Hutz because they’ve never heard of him.
I can maybe see not charging the driver criminally because of the higher standard of proof, but also think the police could have done some more investigation. Like interviewing witnesses or looking to see if there is any video evidence of the guy driving.
But to also close the door to civil litigation as well? That seems like a failure of the system to me, and which can encourage some people to take the law into their own hands (i.e. vigilante justice).
And the ultimate result is that the drunk driver got away with it. Maybe next time he’ll succeed in killing someone. 