Category: Car Wrecks

Listed below are 10 things that as a personal injury lawyer, I think you should do when you are involved in a car wreck. Obviously, your health comes first and if you were injured in the car wreck, let the police handle these items instead.

• Call the police and let them create a report. That report creates a record of where the car wreck occurred, how the wreck happened and the names/addresses of the people involved in the wreck.
• Make sure the police officer obtains the name/address of anyone in your vehicle for their report. You don’t want to be fighting later on about who was or was not involved in the car wreck.
• Write down the name and contact information of any witness to the car wreck. Too often a witness is left off the police report and if fault for the car wreck is disputed by an insurance carrier,  a witness’ statement can make the difference on liability for the car wreck.
• Take pictures of the accident scene and the location of the vehicles. Again, should fault for the wreck be disputed, these photos can be indispensable.
• Take a picture of the other driver’s license plate. In Kentucky, through a vehicle’s license plate, we can contact the County Clerk and find out the last company to insure that vehicle.
• Take a picture of the other driver’s license and car insurance if they will let you. Instead of waiting for the police report, this information should allow you to report the car wreck to the at-fault driver’s insurance company on the day of the car wreck.
• Get checked out by your doctor or a hospital within the first four days following a car wreck. If you wait longer, it appears as if you were not hurt in the car wreck.
• Notify your insurance company and write down the claim number they give you. If you were hurt in the wreck and the wreck happened in Kentucky, we will need to use your car insurance, (i.e. the no-fault coverage) to get your medical bills paid.
• Obtain a police report number from the investigating police officer. Without it, it becomes difficult to track down the correct report. With it, we can use buycrash.com to obtain the police report via the internet and usually within a couple of days after the car wreck.
• If it was a significant impact, let EMS transport you to the Emergency Room. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

Below are some of the car accident, injury claims that I handled over the years.  Hopefully, each example demonstrates how the value of the personal injury claim can be severely affected by one or two facts AND contrary to the popular misconceptions, pursuing a personal injury claim is not something everyone has the knowledge to do.

• Advantage of UIM Coverage – Client returned to my office for a second car wreck. Because she followed my legal advice previously and purchased underinsured motorist coverage, we recovered an additional $40,000, over and above what the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier offered us.
• Motorcyclist was badly injured –The at-fault driver was only insured for $25,000. We had to search multiple motorcycle insurance policies as the family had several motorcycles insured with different companies. Ultimately, we found some underinsured motorist coverage that would apply.
• Motorcyclist had over $100,000 in medical expenses.  – We were able to use her health insurance to cover her medical bills and then, we paid the health insurance subrogation claim from the personal injury settlement. The advantage was that the health insurance carrier’s lien was only about 25% of the total medical expenses.  In other words, less money had to come out of my client’s personal injury settlement to satisfy her medical bills, related to her motorcycle accident.
• Hit by a Drunk Driver – Client was hit by a drunk driver, but she did not have her car properly insured at the time of the car wreck. Nevertheless, because the other driver was drunk, we were able to recover about four times what the case was actually worth.
• Client was told by big television advertising lawyer that she did not have a personal injury claim worth pursuing because she was uninsured. Wrong! We recovered $30,000 for that client. The lack of insurance, per Kentucky law, meant that she could not recover the first $10,000 of her medical bills and lost wages. However, her personal injury claim was worth a substantial amount anyway.  In other words, the big law firm gave her bad legal advice and walked away from a significant attorney’s fee because they did not look at all the angles for recovering on the personal injury claim
• Last Minute Lawsuit – Client came to me just shy of two years after the date of the car wreck. The Kentucky Statute of Limitations for a car accident is two years from the date of the car wreck.  This means the lawsuit must be filed with the proper Court or the claim is barred (as if it never existed). We were able to get a medical bill paid by my client’s car insurance, the no-fault carrier, and this payment, per the Kentucky statutes, extended the Statute of Limitations thereby giving us additional time to resolve her personal injury claim without litigation.

[CTA]

• Importance of Seeking Medical Care – A couple was injured in a car wreck. We recovered a much higher amount on the wife’s claim than the husband’s claim. The difference being that the wife went to the Emergency Room by E.M.S. from the accident scene.  The husband, unfortunately, decided not to go to the hospital for his injuries.
• Maximizing the Available Coverages – Client’s medical bills far exceeded the applicable insurance coverage on the at-fault driver. We were able to reserve the no-fault coverage and allow the client’s health insurance to pay her medical bills.  We then addressed the health insurance’s lien.  The health insurance reduced these charges, per the contract they have with the medical providers, to an amount that was less than the $10,000 in no-fault coverage.  We were able to get the health insurance lien paid under my client’s no-fault benefits rather than having the amount of that lien deducted from my client’s personal injury settlement. This maximization is often extremely important in car accident cases.
• Totaling a Car – I was fired from a case because the insurance company wanted to total out the client’s car and the client wanted me to force them to repair the vehicle instead. Per Kentucky statutes, the insurance company must total out a vehicle if the repair costs are 75% or more of the fair market value of the car.
• Motorcycle PIP Coverage – For a motorcycle wreck, the client has significant scarring. We hired a plastic surgeon to give us his analysis as to the future surgeries, and medical costs, to correct this scarring. Since, Kentucky statutes prevent a motorcycle rider from recovering the first $10,000 in medical bills unless they purchased optional no-fault coverage, the future medical bills, listed by the plastic surgeon, will help us minimize that $10,000 penalty specific to motorcycle riders under the Kentucky Motor Vehicle Reparations Act.
• Uber Collision – We had one of our first cases involving Uber and a Kentucky car wreck. Uber provided no-fault benefits to my client, who was a passenger in their car, and after the medical bills were paid, we proceeded to make a pain and suffering claim against the at-fault driver.
• Fighting Denied Coverage – Because of some new case law, we were able to recover money, including past due interest, for medical bills that were previously denied on a closed case.  Even though the case was a closed case, we were able to forward the client some additional money from this recovery and get the remaining medical bills paid in full.
• Out of State Wreck – There seems to be an influx of cases wherein my clients reside in Kentucky but they were injured in car wrecks in another state.  In most of these car accident cases, I hired co-counsel to assist with the litigation in the state where the car wreck happened, while I was able to concentrate on obtaining my clients’ no-fault benefits, collecting their medical records and getting them the treatment they need from Kentucky doctors and hospitals.
• Loss of use claim – Client went to another attorney first and then I took on the case. The at-fault insurance carrier did not accept liability for the car wreck until 120 days after the wreck. They argued that they only owed 30 days for loss of use of my client’s vehicle. I pointed out to them that the loss of use statute allows for recovery for a “reasonable” loss of use.  You can’t argue that the 120 days to decide liability was reasonable under the Unfair Claims Settlement Practices Act and then try to argue it was not reasonable under the Kentucky loss of use statute.  We recovered three months on the loss of use claim and my Firm did not charge an attorney’s fee off of that recovery.

The benefit of my legal experience is that I’ve worked with hundreds of clients involved in car accidents.  I have worked directly with them. They have not worked with case managers or paralegals.  I use my experience, limited to injury claims stemming from motorcycle and car accidents, to look for additional ways to benefit each client.  Knowledge is power.  The best way to get knowledge is to gain experience handling a wide variety of automobile accidents.  When you handle the case personally, you learn much more that if a case manager or paralegal were to handle it for you.  There’s an old saying that’s very relevant to my career as a Louisville personal injury attorney, “I learn something new every day.”

While everyone thinks it will never happen to them, we all know car accidents happen no matter how carefully you might drive.  Nevertheless, you don’t ever want to be the one at fault for a car wreck.  Not only can you not recover your damages (i.e. the damage to your car, rental car expense, pain and suffering, etc.), if you were at fault for the car wreck.  Also, the other driver has a claim against you and your insurance company for all these items if your negligence caused the car accident.  Of course, such a claim will most likely raise your insurance premiums, as well.  However, you already know the solution: let every turn you take behind the wheel of the car be dictated by who has the right of way.  This is an important step in helping you to avoid being the at fault driver.

Yes, we all learned that concept when first obtained a driver’s license but we forget how important it is for daily driving. When a police officer comes to an accident scene the first factor he is considering, when determining who was at fault for a car wreck, is who had the right of way.  The same is true when your insurance agent is hearing your description of the wreck for the first time.

When I get a call from someone injured in a car wreck, I immediately ask them to describe the facts of the car accident for this very same reason.  I need to be able to determine who was at fault for the car wreck to see if I can help that person.  Most of the time, whoever has the right of way will determine who is considered responsible for the car accident.  Why is this so?

Negligence is a legal term that applies to all car wrecks and means there was a legal duty, that legal duty was breached and but for the breach of that legal duty, you would not have suffered your damages.  Whether it is an insurance company, a personal injury attorney or an investigating police officer, the first question we all have is who had the legal duty to avoid the wreck, which typically determines “who had the right of way”.

Let’s look at the instances in which the vast majority of the time, you will be most likely be considered at fault for a car wreck: 1) if you rear-end the other vehicle and; 2) you are turning left in front of the other vehicle or are crossing traffic.

The first one, hitting someone in the rear end, is common-sense.  When you allow your vehicle to collide with the rear-end of another vehicle, the argument is you, not the vehicle you were following, had a legal duty to follow at a safe distance.  You obviously breached that duty as you hit the other vehicle in the back end.  It really does not matter why the other driver may slammed on his brakes, the vast majority of the time you will be considered at fault for the car wreck.  To take matters to the extreme, what about if other driver claims he was trying to avoid a squirrel but you think he really slammed on his brakes intentionally because of road rage?  Recall that the law is not about what we think happened but rather, what we can prove happened.

How you prove an intentional act on the part of the other driver?  I can tell you from experience, it is very difficult to do so.  Essentially, you would be trying to buck a strong presumption that your negligence caused the wreck while trying to prove a fact that is almost impossible to prove i.e.,  that the other driver acted intentionally.  The key is to take preventative steps to avoid being the at fault driver.

For the second instance, turning left in front of another vehicle or crossing oncoming traffic, you have to understand that you ALWAYS have the duty to yield the right of way to the other vehicle.  It’s one of the most important concepts to consider to avoid being the at fault driver.

When a person calls my law firm and tells me they were turning left, my first reaction is to cringe.  Why? Because that other vehicle had the right of way and you didn’t!  I will hear stories of how the other guy was speeding or came out of nowhere and the caller believes that this will change who was at fault for the car wreck.  Usually, these are little factors that are difficult to prove because I can tell you right now, the other driver will say, “no, I was not speeding.”  More importantly, these factors don’t change the big picture, i.e. the legal presumption in which is who ever had the right of way was not at fault for the car wreck.

[CTA]

Yes, there are exceptions to this rule. A lady called the other day and she indicated she was turning left when the car wreck occurred, but she had a green arrow. Obviously, she legally had the right of way because of the green arrow and there was a witness listed on the police report that informed the investigating police officer of that fact.  However from experience handing a lot of car wrecks, I can tell you that this would most likely have been a swearing contest between the two drivers as to who had the green light and the presumption of fault would have been against the lady, as her vehicle was turning left.

For the typical driver, a car accident is a pain in the neck that you wish never occurred.  As a result, since you know you can’t completely wipe out the odds of being involved in a car accident, the next best thing is to take steps to avoid being the at fault driver by driving with the law on your side.  How do you do that? Every action you take as a driver should recognize who, from a legal point of view, has the right of way.  You understand that if you don’t have the right of way you have to be all the more cautious in regard to the driving of your vehicle. By doing so, you substantially decrease your likelihood of being involved in a car wreck and substantially reduce the chance that an insurance company or another driver is going to try to claim your negligence caused the car wreck.