General Blog Archives

Indiana Car Wreck and No Insurance on your Vehicle

Posted below is answer I put on Avvo.com for an Indiana Car Wreck wherein the injured party did not have car insurance:
On the issue of no insurance that’s a criminal charge and I don’t handle those kind of cases. You need to contact a criminal defense attorney.
On the civil case, you have a personal injury claim against the other person. Indiana does not penalize you for not having car insurance when it comes to your personal injury claim. (For example, in Kentucky, you can’t recover the first $10,000 of your medical expenses from the at-fautl driver if you don’t have car insurance.)
So you can ultimately recover your medical expenses, related to the wreck, from the other driver’s insurance. My suggestion to you is to go ahead and see a doctor or hospital and use your health insurance to pay for that treatment. Your claim relies heavily on your medical records and if you don’t have formal treatment, it looks like you were not hurting during that time period.
If you decide to make a personal injury claim against the other driver, your health insurance will have a lien against the case and the right to recover what they pay in medical bills from your settlement. However, your health insurance gets you the treatment you need right now and it will reduce the medical expenses,( i.e. the amount that would come out of your settlement for your treatment).
If you don’t have health insurance, you can go to a medical provider and see if they take a lien against the case for you to get the treatment you need. But, be aware that you are incurring medical expenses that way and you will owe those charges one way or another.

What to do when the Insurance Company won’t approve a rental car?

I just posted this answer on Avvo. In short, the question is what do you do about a rental car when the insurance company for the at-fault driver is claiming they can’t get hold of their driver.

On the police report, go to buy crash.com and see if you can print one up. If you can, fax it to the insurance company. You want to take away every excuse they throw at you. They do have a reasonable amount of time to investigate the claim. If this guy proves to be uninsured, remember that you can make an uninsured motorist claim against your own policy. Moreover, I understand that uninsured motorist coverage can cover your property damage, depending upon how the policy is written, in Indiana.

If you pay for your own rental, keep your receipt and try to keep the cost low. There is no guarantee that they will reimburse you in full. FYI, usually a liability carrier will only cover a rental car for 10 to 14 days so you want to start looking for a new car. Also, they owe you fair market value for the vehicle, not the payoff. So get together your receipts and your title as you want to show it is worth as much as possible.

Lastly, if you have any pain at all, get to the doctor. You want to get to the doctor. Injury cases live and die on the contents of the medical records. As a result, if you don’t have treatment for a time period, it looks like you were not hurting.

Easycarwreck.com

WWW.EASYCARWRECK.COM

I created a new website, EasyCarWreck.Com to make it easier for car accident victims to get immediate legal advice. On EasyCarWreck.com, a person only has to complete five questions to get a free, legal analysis within 24 hours. No commitment or fees. I will provide you with my legal analysis of your car wreck and how I can help you! You will have my contact information and from there forward, it is completely up to you whether you set up a free consultation. It’s all about making car wrecks easy for you!

The idea is simple. All you have to do is answer five questions about the car accident and I will provide you with a free, legal analysis about the car wreck and your personal injury claim. After that, you can decide to set up a free consultation so we can have a more in-depth conversation about your legal rights. However, I won’t harass you or constantly contact you. It is all the legal advice you need without all the hassle of dealing with paralegals, call screener or case managers. Rather, it is direct legal advice from an experienced personal injury lawyer.

Criminal law versus Civil Law In regard to Car Accidents

Remember that there is criminal law and civil law. Criminal law means the State can assert fines against you and possible make you serve jail time. Civil law means that you, the injured victim, have the right to recover money damages from the party that was negligent if their negligence injured you. Yes, that is an oversimplification but accurate for now.

Civil law controls the facts of the car wreck and the claim for pain and suffering. The fact that your driver’s license may have been revoked or suspended at the time of the car wreck does not make automatically at fault for causing the car wreck. The real questions for a car wreck in Kentucky are: 1) who was at fault for the car wreck; 2) who was injured in the car accident and; 3) what insurance policies can we recover from. A criminal citation, such as for having a suspended license, does not automatically change these questions or whose negligence caused the car accident. While it may play a role in the amounts recovered, it does not automatically prevent a claim for pain and suffering. Below is part of an answer I posted on Avvo.com wherein this issue was raised:

For the moment, ignore your license or lack of license issue. For a civil case, you have to show negligence on the other driver. The lack of the license does not affect the pain and suffering claim for the motor vehicle wreck. Your first step, if the Officer gave you a report number, start trying to get the accident report through buycrash.com. If you were injured, go ahead and see a doctor or hospital. The no-fault part of the State refers to the fact that your insurance company will be responsible for the first $10,000 of your medical bills even though they can, at a later date, recover them back from the other driver. If the Officer issued a citation for the lack for driver’s license, that falls under criminal law and will not affect your pain and suffering, or property damage claim, from the wreck.

What Does it Mean to Stack Insurance Coverage

What does it mean to stack insurance coverage in a Louisville area injury accident under Kentucky or Indiana Law? Kentucky law allows stacking of uninsured and underinsured motorist benefits depending upon how the insurance policy is written. Indiana does not allow insurance policies to be stacked.

Simply put, stacking refers to recovering insurance polices from more than one applicable policy. In other words, you have $25,000 of uninsured motorist coverage on your Volvo, Chevrolet and your motorcycle. Stacking would say that you have $75,000 of coverage because you have 3 policies of insurance with $25,000 on each policy.

By stacking coverage from more than one car or motorcycle insurance policy the injured party can increase the total amount of his recovery, assuming the value of his claim is worth more than the just the initial insurance policy.

For example, if you own three vehicles: a Buick, a Toyota and a Ford Truck. On all three of these vehicles, you made sure you put $100,000 of underinsured motorist coverage on each automobile policy. Well stacking means that since you effectively bought three $100,000 policies of underinsured motorist coverage, you have $300,000 of underinsured motorist benefits available to you; even though you were only in one of your vehicles at the time of the accident.

Insurance companies are not fond of stacking because it ultimately means that they may have to pay out more money to settle your personal injury claim. As a result, they have now written most insurance policies so that stacking does not occur. They do this by making it so that you have one policy of insurance that covers you no matter which vehicle you are riding in at the time of the wreck.

Now, let me explain to you how this concept can work when dealing with a car wreck. I had a gentlemen approach me about a case wherein his first medical bill was $22,000 and the at-fault driver was only insured for $25,000. I looked at the automobile policy and there was no underinsured motorist coverage on his Toyota. Nevertheless, we were able to get my client’s underinsured motorist coverage from his other automobile insurance that covered his Cadillac.

Very simply, to avoid stacking, his insurance company wrote the underinsured coverage so that it would apply regardless of the vehicle he was operating. In this case, it meant we had an additional $25,000 in insurance coverage we could go after.

Is it possible to stack insurance coverage in your situation, and how would that affect the amount of money you receive? I would need to see your whole policy and see how your benefits are defined therein. As a result, I suggest you contact me at (502) 609-7657 and we discuss this matter further.

Category: General Blog