Panama City Florida Injury Lawyer Blog

The 2,400 page Affordable Care Act, now known as Obamacare, is difficult to decipher not just because of its length but also because of the legalese it contains. 2011 included an attempted House of Representatives repeal of the act and several court cases challenging its constitutionality. Those cases are in disarray with some courts ruling it constitutional while others disagree.

This law is one of the most far reaching and profound pieces of legislation passed and signed into law in decades. In 2012 Medicare health care providers will be able to start affordable care organizations to cut costs and improve quality of care. Other major provisions won't be effective until 2014, but big changes in health care insurance have already been implemented. For example, senior citizens started paying 50% less in prescription drug costs under the new law. That was due to drug company discounts worked out under the law. Seniors can also receive annual exams and some screenings without having a co-pay.

Insurance for those with pre-existing conditions, a huge health care insurance gap in previous years, became available. Those patients could join the government's Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan. Premiums dropped from an average of $390 a month to $234 a month. Older people weren't the only ones who were helped by the act. The law allows young adults between the ages of 19 and 25 to stay on their parents' health insurance policies. Proponents of the law say this has made it possible for young people to take jobs in fields they like rather than to take jobs mainly to get the benefits they want. Young people, too, are permitted by the law to maintain health insurance despite pre-existing conditions.

The Supreme Court is slated to consider the constitutionality of the law this year and has allotted an astounding 5 hours for oral argument.

Ten percent of us are hurt every year, usually due to someone else's carelessness. Last week, I talked about setting goals for successful completion of your legal case if you were in that group hurt last year. Today, I'll add to the list of things you can do to help your attorney and, therefore, yourself in a meaningful way.

1. Don't talk to anyone except your attorney and immediate, trusted family members about your case. That is especially true when the insurance adjuster for the at fault party calls you to get facts and take a recorded statement. You will be on thin ice if you talk to that person.


2. Keep and give to your attorney every item that comes into your possession that may be evidence in your case. That includes oral statements and written ones, like letters, made by the defendant at the scene or later. It also includes things like parts of equipment that failed and hurt you, shoes if you slipped and fell, and any foreign substance that you slipped on in a store.


3. If possible take photographs of the accident scene, damage to vehicles, wounds and surgical sites, and pieces of equipment or appliances that may have injured you. Give them to your attorney who may use them as evidence to support your case.


4. Since lost wages is an important part of any injury case, keep track of the time you have lost and the wages you were earning. If you were injured so badly that you cannot return to your old job, make a list of places where you seek new employment, the dates you apply, who interviews you, and the results you get. Jot down the reason you are given for not getting the job, such as, "We can't use someone who has a hurt back." That kind of statement is very important to prove the harmful effect of an injury on future employability.

It's time to set goals for 2012. If you are one of the roughly ten percent of the population injured last year and that injury was caused by someone else's carelessness, putting your legal case on track for successful completion should be a major goal. Here are some things you can do to achieve it.

1. Have patience. It takes time to get medical care to determine the extent of injuries, which are permanent, and how they will affect your future. It also takes time for your attorney to complete the investigation. That includes ordering all of your medical records and bills.


2. Tell your attorney about all injuries and medical problems both before and after the accident. Good cases can be destroyed if this information is concealed or forgotten. Insurance companies use an indexing system that will discover injuries and claims.


3. When you visit the doctor treating you for an injury, list all the problems you are having. If those complaints don't show up in the medical records, they don't and never will exist in the minds of insurance adjusters or jurors.


4. Notify your attorney if you change doctors, go to the emergency room because of pain, are admitted to a hospital, or are discharged from care. All these things will influence the course of a case and will determine when the law firm should order medical records and bills.


5. Keep a diary of your experiences following the accident or injury. Record important matters like pain levels, activities that you can't do or do only with pain because you have no other choice. Maybe you don't have help, so you have to work despite the pain. Describe it in your notes. Pain isn't always physical, so describe any emotional pain such as your feelings about not being able to lift your child.


6. Finally, keep a list of out-of-pocket expenses.

Doing these things will put you well on the way to successfully resolving your injury case. I'll add to this list next week.

A month ago, the Florida legislature initiated a debate that may herald massive changes to Florida's auto insurance requirements during the 2012 legislative session. If those changes occur, they are likely to change your insurance requirements effective next July 1.

The issues involve the current PIP auto insurance, which I will explain in a moment, and whether Florida should adopt a mandatory bodily injury liability insurance model. PIP is an acronym for personal injury protection. It is commonly referred to in this state as no-fault insurance. It works like this. If you are in an auto accident, regardless of whom is at fault, your insurance will pay the first ten thousand dollars of your medical bills and your lost wages. If a death occurs, an allowance is also made for funeral expenses.

Consumer groups say that the insurance industry and their advocates in the legislature are trying to use potential changes in the PIP laws to limit the rights of injured motorists and to increase their profits. The Florida Justice Association and allied consumer groups are pushing back against that effort by arguing that the legislature adopt a mandatory bodily injury liability insurance system currently used in forty-eight states. At the moment, Florida does not require a vehicle owner to have bodily injury liability insurance in effect to pay for injuries the driver causes to others. It requires only PIP and property damage coverage. Arguably, the Florida legislature has been more concerned about damage to cars than injuries and death.

If the mandatory bodily injury liability model is adopted in exchange for reducing or eliminating the PIP coverage, the new law will stem the tide of increasing numbers of motorists who are going bare of coverage that is designed to compensate people they injure. The legislature will go into session on January 10.

Credit damage from various forms of injury or litigation can result in costs to consumers in the thousands of dollars. Credit damage can occur in many situations such as serious personal injury causing default on payments, because the person can't work. It can also occur during real estate litigation, from identity theft, breach of contract, contested divorce, partnership disputes, and health insurance rescission.

Each of us has a credit reputation. When credit reputation is damaged, one can expect the loss of ability to get credit for new purchases or higher interest rates for the credit that can be gotten. In divorce cases, abuse of joint credit cards often occurs. The lower earning or unemployed spouse typically suffers, because his or her credit score can drop dramatically.

If you are in that situation, call this type of loss to the attention of your attorney or paralegal before a divorce settlement is prepared. Whether in a divorce or a personal injury case, loss of credit reputation due to a third party's conduct is a form of legal damage that may have significant value. These damages can be quantified, but too often this kind of damage is overlooked by attorneys. Why? The answer is pretty simple. Traditionally, this type of economic damage resulting from an injury was not taught in law schools. Today, these damages are considered as valid as loss of earnings, medical expenses, and pain and suffering, so be sure your attorney knows about this kind of claim and has considered it in your case. The red flags that can tip you off that you are experiencing damage to your credit reputation are the cancellation of your credit cards, foreclosure, repossession of a vehicle, and increases in credit card fees. As your legal team prepares this aspect of your case, they will ask for personal and sensitive financial information that is essential for case preparation. Don't worry. Everything you tell a legal team is held in confidence.

Although we try to avoid them, car and truck accidents do happen. We wish they wouldn't, but when they happen, it is important for you to know what to do then and in the next few days.

Of course, responsible drivers will stop and identify themselves. And police and medical services will be called. If you are not disabled by injuries at the scene, get witness names and phone numbers, because those people go on their way after a few minutes. Most witnesses leave before the police arrive and have a chance to identify them for accident reports. Make no statements at the scene that can be construed to admit your fault. Save those discussions for your insurance company, not the other driver's, or for your attorney.

At your first opportunity, notify your insurance company even if the claim appears to be small. Settling a claim by yourself is dangerous. Recognize now that if you are in a wreck and are hurt, settling with a powerful insurance company in a scenario orchestrated by an adjuster, who is trained to lead you down a dangerous and unhealthy path, is going to be disastrous for you unless you get legal advice. Right after the wreck, you are likely to get a call from the other driver's insurance company. You aren't obligated to talk to that adjuster, so refuse. Giving a recorded statement to that adjuster often leads to disaster.

For your car, get even minor damage repaired. If you don't, the depreciation in value will cost you a lot more in the long run. When you get it repaired, don't accept just any old parts the insurance company wants to throw your way. Get OEM, original equipment manufactured, parts that come from the car company itself. They are the best quality and will provide better structural integrity for your safety in most cases. Finally, for today, exercise your right to decide which shop will repair your car. Don't allow an insurance company to dictate that choice to you.

Continue reading "Important Things To Do and Not Do After an Accident" »

Holes in insurance laws and coverage sometimes leave us high and dry in times of need. Last week, I discussed some of those gaps that can ruin our day. As the famous late radio broadcaster, Paul Harvey, would have said, "Now, the rest of the story."

Ways exist to eliminate those insurance holes. For instance, motorcycle riders usually don't get personal injury protection or medical payments coverage on their policies. But sometimes they do, so shopping for the right policy can be incredibly important for these riders' financial health. If you are a biker and can't find a company that will sell these coverages, call me, and I'll tell you which to contact. This is especially important now since so many vehicles are on the road in the summer.

Another hole in coverage exists too often. Many drivers don't bother to buy bodily injury liability insurance coverage to take care of your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering if they negligently hurt you on the road. One night in an emergency room can cost over ten thousand dollars, so take advantage of the cure for this kind of gap in coverage.

Make a note of two letters. They are UM. Look at the declarations page of your own auto insurance policy to see if you have that kind of coverage, or call your agent to ask. UM stands for uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. If you don't have it, get it now. It will step in and pay for those things I just mentioned if the other guy didn't care enough to buy coverage to compensate you or if he didn't buy enough coverage for that.

I didn't talk last week about a specific coverage called gap coverage, so here is today's bonus. When you finance a car or truck and drive away, you risk its being totally destroyed 2 blocks from the car lot. If so, you'll be upside down with the finance company, because the auto insurance is going to pay you for only its fair market value, that is, street value, not for the financed amount. You can cure that problem by adding gap coverage to your policy. Safe travels.

We take for granted that insurance will take care of us if we're hurt. Since more than half of us will be injured in our lifetimes, that's an important assumption, especially because it's wrong so often. Thinking that an insurance company will step in and be fair is a fallacy. It's in business to make money for its investors, not to pay money to you. Here are some interesting, and maybe startling, facts about holes in insurance laws in Florida.

Motorcycle riders beware. Rarely do your policies cover you for medical expenses and lost wages like auto policies do. Automobile policies have PIP and medical payments coverage provisions that typically pay $15,000 or more of those losses.

In the workplace, an injured employee is ordinarily completely covered by workers' compensation insurance. But the worker can be completely without that protection if the employer wasn't required to buy it. An employer who has less than 3 employees doesn't have to buy workers' compensation insurance. I see cases all the time of roofers or other construction people who thought they would be covered for injuries but weren't.

Florida, unlike many states, doesn't require car owners to buy bodily injury liability insurance to take care of people they hurt on the highways. On the other hand, it does require the purchase of property damage liability coverage. Apparently, the Florida legislature thought that damage to cars is more important than damage to people.

If you're riding in a common carrier, let's call it mass transportation, like a shuttle bus or the local trolley that has more than six seats, you're not protected by PIP coverage that pays for 80% of medical bills and 60% of lost wages. Even if you have that coverage on your car, you can't use it if you're in one of those contraptions. You could if you were riding in someone else's car and got injured.

These gaps in insurance laws can hurt you further. If you know the law, you can protect yourself by buying insurance products to eliminate the gaps.

Continue reading "Gaps in Florida Insurance Laws Can Hurt You" »

Whiplash injuries are the most common injuries in automobile accidents. This kind of injury to the neck occurs most often when a vehicle is hit from the rear. The passenger's head whips back and forth, giving the injury sustained in this type of wreck its name.

To a doctor treating the injury and to the injured patient, "whiplash" means cervical strain, i.e., the stretching and tearing of delicate tissues in the neck such as muscles, nerve fibers and ligaments. The effect is pain, which is sometimes permanent, and sometimes headaches, dizziness, and ringing in the ears.

On the other hand, insurance adjusters react to the loose diagnostic word "whiplash" in a different way. They are trained by their companies to minimize these injuries. Typically, they say, "Oh, you have only a whiplash injury, nothing serious," or to redefine the injury as a "Minimal Impact Soft Tissue" or "MIST" injury. The thought they and their insurance defense lawyers try to portray, especially to jurors, is that a minimal impact injury can't be permanent or serious, because if the damage to the car wasn't bad, how could injury to the person inside it be bad? And they use the acronym "MIST" to imply that the injury is like a cool morning's mist that will evaporate in the sun.

This is a terribly simplistic and incorrect, even fraudulent, approach to the dynamics involved in a collision. It fails to take into account the different stiffness built into each vehicle's platform or chassis. The platforms designed by some manufacturers are relatively soft, allowing more crushing of the vehicle to occur in order to dissipate the crash forces before that force is transmitted to occupants. Occupants of these cars and trucks usually have fewer whiplash injuries than those in vehicles that are stiffer. In stiffer vehicles, more force from the impact is sent through the body of the occupant since it wasn't dissipated during the crushing of as much metal.

If you're looking for a car to buy, you want one that has plenty of metal around you and that is soft enough to absorb the energy of a wreck by crushing appropriately to save you, not the vehicle itself. Whiplash is bad, so you definitely want to avoid it.

The 2011 National Hurricane Preparedness Week is May 22 through May 29th. According to the Tropical Meteorology Project based in Colorado State University, we are likely to see an above average hurricane season in 2011. Their forecast for this season, which begins on June 1st and runs through November 30th, is expected to see 17 named storms in the Atlantic basin, 9 of which will develop into hurricanes.

With previous storms such as Katrina (2005), Wilma (2005) and Ike (2008), it's proven that being prepared can not only save lives but can help to avoid putting your family through unecessary hardship. The most basic needs such as clean water and food can be available to you and your family by simply following the Hurricane Preparedness Guide published by the National Hurricane Center.

If you have any elderly friends or neighbors, be sure to add them to your list to ensure they will be safe throughout an approaching storm. And lets not forget our four-legged friends. Pets are often forgotten and are left out in the deterioriating weather.

If you ever get hurt and have to make a claim against another person's insurance company, you have to know how to avoid playing into their hands. Insurance companies are powerful corporations that never have your interests at heart despite their promises in commercials. You have heard me say before that you definitely must avoid talking to the other party's insurance adjuster. When that adjuster calls after an accident, you will be far better off if you have already talked to a lawyer who should have advised you to say, I'm represented by an attorney. At that point, the adjuster has a legal obligation to discontinue the conversation. But there are other things that you can do to avoid being taken advantage of by an insurance company after you've been hurt.

The practical suggestions I'm going to give you center around some of their common defenses. First, they will have a powerful defense against a personal injury case if you didn't get medical treatment shortly after the accident. Your delay in getting treatment gives the insurer the opportunity to argue that if you had been hurt much, you surely would have gotten treatment. Delay in treatment also gives the insurance company a chance to argue that between the accident and your first medical treatment you must have been injured by something other than the accident that its driver caused.

Second, it will try to defend by showing that you have had lengthy breaks in treatment for your injuries. Because their lawyers can argue to the jury that if you weren't getting treatment, you weren't hurting. It's a logical and compelling argument. It's not true in many cases, because some people just don't have insurance to cover treatment they need. Nevertheless, you can avoid this common and misleading defense by going to your doctors as often as you need to and not letting the insurance companies use gaps in treatment against you. Even if there's no insurance to cover the treatment, a good personal injury attorney can arrange for your treatment until your case is settled and you have the money to pick up the cost of treatment yourself.

Would you know what to do if you were driving and another vehicle hit you? It's equally important to know what NOT to do in those circumstances. I'll share a couple things I've learned from handling thousands of accident cases successfully over the years. A lot of people who are hurt in accidents become victims for a second time by making the wrong decisions. First, they are the victims of a bad driver. By making bad decisions after the wreck, they become victims again, typically of the insurance companies.

Here's a scenario that's become an epidemic. The wreck happens and the hurt person goes to the emergency room. The doctor decides to either treat and release or admit for a hospital stay. Within hours at either place, a telephone call comes. It's from an insurance adjuster for the guy who hit you. He talks nice and friendly and says how sorry he is that you were hurt and that he's there to help. To become a victim twice from the wreck, go ahead and talk to him. Let him take the recorded statement he'll ask for, as he'll say, "just so I can document my file." You'll be his at that point. Then, it's easy to be led down the path by the adjuster intent upon manipulating you into giving up your case for pennies on the dollar, because by then he will have gained your confidence through the sales techniques adjusters are taught.

State insurance regulations require an adjuster to be fair, but what's written on paper and what actually happens are vastly different things. Why are adjusters suddenly beating a path to injured people's doors? Because we're in an economic downturn. Insurance companies are hurting, too. They know with certainty, like the gambling casinos know the odds are stacked in their favor, that if they can keep wreck victims from getting professional help, they will save a bundle of money, all at injured peoples' expense. The claims manual for one of America's biggest auto insurance companies tells its adjusters to get there fast, before the victim has a chance to call an attorney, and to get the confidence of that victim. The manual tells them why this is important for the insurance company: the company on average will pay only one-third of the value of the injuries if the adjuster can prevent the hurt person from hiring an experienced injury attorney.

Another mistake, this one occurring minutes after a wreck, leads again to legal troubles after the wreck. The careless driver or the police officer asks, "Are you hurt," and in the confusion of the moment, standing on the side of the highway, you say, "Oh, no, I'm fine." That seemingly innocent statement can immeasurably complicate a legal case when in a few hours or a few days pain begins and gets worse from injuries that were unknown at the scene. A true response to the question would have been, "I'm not sure."

The moral of the story is, (1) at the accident scene, don't assume that you haven't been injured, and (2) get professional help with the complexities of an accident case. Don't become a victim the second time.

Auto insurance is baffling to a lot of people. So many coverages exist that deciding which kinds to buy can be confusing. For your safety, I'd rather you make decisions about your coverage now. When you have a wreck, it's already too late to buy it. I represent injured people against careless drivers who hurt them and destroy their vehicles. It's what I do all day, everyday. So in the years that I've represented thousands of car and truck wreck victims, I've learned about the best types of coverage for protection.

In these hard financial times, two kinds of auto insurance are in the must-have category. Going without them can be more costly in the long run than buying them now. The two essential coverages are UM and GAP. The letters stand for uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage and guaranteed auto protection. Why is it so important to have them now? Because more and more car owners are driving without any auto insurance or with inadequate insurance. They can't afford to buy it. So when they hit you, unless they're financially well off, you're not likely to get enough money for your injuries or for car replacement. It's not a nice situation to be hurt, not be able to work due to the injuries, and watch the bills piling up on your table. And the loan company to which you owe more than the car was worth is yelling for its money.

Your next question is likely to be: How could these coverages help me? When you buy bodily injury or BI coverage, you do it to protect your assets in case you hurt someone else. In Florida, if you don't sign a written rejection of UM coverage, you automatically have it in the same amount as your BI coverage. So if the other driver didn't buy bodily injury coverage and hurts you, your own uninsured motorist coverage (remember the other driver is uninsured) steps in, takes the place of the insurance the at-fault driver should have bought, and pays you. It pays for your medical bills, lost wages, and pain and suffering. It works similarly if the other driver didn't buy enough BI coverage to pay the full value of your injuries. Never reject UM coverage when you're buying car insurance.

Now, let's switch to GAP insurance. If your new car, which is financed, is destroyed, say 10 minutes after your drive off the dealer's lot, you've just lost a lot of money. As you drove away, it depreciated by 20-30 percent, because it became a used car. You now owe more to the finance company than it's worth. GAP coverage will pay the difference in the used value of the car, which your insurance would pay to you, and the amount financed. Don't leave home without GAP coverage on new or nearly new vehicles. Get and keep these two important coverages, uninsured motorist and GAP, especially now that the number of uninsured and underinsured drivers has increased.

When you pay for a life insurance policy, you expect it to take care of your family after death. Last week, I told you about post claims underwriting which is a legal way for an insurance company to avoid paying a policy if death occurs within two years of the policy's effective date. When an insured person dies within two years, the insurance company gets all the old medical records and examines them closely to see if the insured person ever had a condition that, if disclosed to the insurance company in the application, would have enabled it to ask for more premium. If so, our law permits it to deny making payment to the deceased person's family. The condition doesn't even have to be life threatening.

Many people aren't sophisticated enough in medical matters to realize if they've had some conditions asked about, and the life insurance agents, who read the application's questions to a customer and fill in the blanks, often don't want to explore the past medical history in depth. Finding out about past medical problems is against their financial interest. They want to sell the policy and move to the next customer's house to sell another.

Here are some ways to guard against this problem and to better ensure that your life insurance policy will insure you if you die within those critical first two years of the policy.
As a beginning, don't trust the life insurance companies and their agents. Insist on reading the application, and fill it out yourself. An agent hurrying to make a sale isn't as interested in accuracy as you are. I won't let one of them fill out my insurance application. Second, some companies offer online insurance products. Buying online is okay, but read the application slowly and carefully before clicking the mouse. Consumers click a mouse to answer several questions containing multiple health issues, sometimes not reading carefully. So if multiple ailments are included in a single question, and one is overlooked, it's easy to buy a policy that upon death isn't going to pay. Third, consider keeping your own medical history by jotting down in a notebook or on a computer list every visit you make to a doctor or hospital, when you went, and what the visit was for. Give a copy of it to the insurance agent, and insist it be attached to the application and made a part of it. When your policy is issued, if the history was included, you'll see it attached to your application which is a part of the policy that you'll receive. If it's not there, the agent didn't do his or her job. Call the agent immediately, and by using firm language, get the problem fixed.

If you'll do these things, you will have gone a long way toward protecting your family from the insurance company that cares only about making a profit.

Continue reading "Ensuring That Your Life Insurance Policy Insures You" »

Just the thought of buying life insurance makes people shudder. But far worse is the thought of the insurer refusing to pay the policy when death does occur. It happens every day. Families get letters from insurance companies saying the money they expected to survive on isn't coming after all.

Most states, including Florida, specify that for two years after life insurance is bought, the company can contest its validity by claiming that a material misrepresentation was made in the application for insurance. Although the two-year period is a narrow window, it catches too many families and destroys their finances at a very bad time, often following the death of the family's main bread winner.

The process I'm describing is called postclaims underwriting. When an insured person dies within this two-year period, the insurers get every scrap of past medical records and use a microscope to examine them to see if there had been any undisclosed medical condition. Under most laws, it doesn't have to be a condition that would have led to death, only a condition for which a little additional premium would have been charged. Incredibly, under our law, that's enough for an insurer to deny the death claim and refuse to pay the policy.

In my experience, most misrepresentations aren't intentional but result from the consumer's lack of sophistication in medical knowledge when filling out the application. They also result from the insurer's slipshod practices in not adequately investigating potential customers' health before rushing out to collect the policy premiums. Only if the laws are changed will the purchase of life insurance guarantee the safety of our families once we depart this life. Until then, only the profits of insurance companies are guaranteed. As a California court has said, "If the insured is not an acceptable risk, the application should be denied up front, not after a policy is issued." In that state, postclaims underwriting is permitted only when the insured intentionally misrepresents his or her health. Why don't insurance companies investigate the facts stated in an application before issuing the policy? Easy. Without doing that, they can immediately start to collect premiums. Present law permits exactly that.

So what do you do to protect your family besides wish for backbone from our legislators to pass better laws? As a start, you don't trust life insurance companies and their insurance agents. The agents usually earn commission based salaries and get promotions for increasing business. They don't want to find out about customers medical impairments. They don't make money by finding out your problems and accurately writing them down on the applications. There are good ways to protect your families. Next week, I'll tell you about them.