Minor car accident - now with ambulance chasing law firm

Wakandans sicken the jews on you

This reminds me saw a fender bender today at a intersection that is absolutely horrible for accidents. In fact dude just got killed in an accident on Friday just a quarter mile from it.

Same thing happened to my wife. She rear ended someone at best 5-7mph. It caused $300 of damage to our car (a toyota corolla), and $400 to their SUV (Nissan Pathfinder). No police, no injuries. My wife was even pregnant at the time. She's being sued as a result, and the ambulance chaser attorney even got the wrong address of us (He picked someone else with my wifes same first/last name). He clearly has no idea what hes doing, and trying to get $500,000. It's hilarious, not to mention the ambulance chaser doesn't even have a JD, just some BA of law from a small university.

My insurance company is like yeah, np, and hired the big dong atty lawfirm and is like "You don't have shit to worry about."

Case is still open though, so can't really get into any other details than that -- but it is a big headache and stressful for sure. Some people are idiots and I would love to counter sue after this is over so so bad, but its never worth it really because it's impossible to prove that shes doing this maliciously, even though there is a 100% chance she is.

Jovec_sl said:

Appreciate the responses.

I imagine it is standard practice, but his lawyers did ask for my policy limits, to which we refused.

I know the law exists in bizzaro world, but it would seem to me that two statements made in a letter from his lawyer to my insurance show their motives. The first is a demand for a settlement offer for the maximum amount under my policy as opposed to a settlement offer for X car repair + Y medical + Z legal (even if that total is outrageous). The second seems like a veiled threat about my insurance potentially failing to protect me "...from the burdens of an excess judgement." Not a fair judgement or reasonable judgement, but excess. To me and to most I would think that indicates a money grab.

Obviously the rear-end nature of the accident makes me legally responsible the vast majority of the time (and likely the reason why the lawyer took the case). I also understand that real injury can present itself at a later time, but in the current world we live in it is just too hard to take anyone's word for it anymore for a minor incident. If they want to claim serious injury, I'd want to be assured that they didn't have a pre-existing injury, weren't involved in another accident, didn't fall off a ladder hanging Christmas lights, or otherwise aren't faking it, etc.

As everyone seems to be saying, this will probably end up being settled out of court. Part of me is regretting that I lowered my coverage due a recent move (my insurance wanted almost twice as much for the same coverage in my new zip code) and that that decision doesn't come back to haunt me.

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Do not, under any circumstances, tell the opposing lawyer anything. Tell them to contact your insurance. Aside from them trying to get extra info out of you, that is what your insurance is now being forced to do as well. Your insurance cannot talk to the other party without first going through their attorney the moment they are notified that they have one, so don't give them anything in return.

They are trying to find out what your limits are so that they know what to ask for. If your limit is $50k, they are going to ask for a little over that and negotiate down to it. If your limit is $15k, same thing. They want to know what number to start at because they are essentially making shit up, and they want to avoid doing even the tiniest amount of work to try to figure out what amount might fly. They are clearly not actually calculating amounts based on any facts, they just want to know what they can safely ask for, period.

It will also pretty much never go to court. The attorney will lose more in their own time than they are likely to make, and your insurance won't want to waste their money either unless they are being asked for an exorbitant amount. The threats of "excess judgment" are exactly what I was talking about earlier with "exposing the policy." Your insurance company will almost never let that happen, because THEY will be on the hook for far more themselves. The lawyer is simply trying to scare you, nothing more. 99% of bodily injury claims never see a courtroom, because that's what insurance is for in the first place. And your insurance, if you have a decent adjustor, will run database searches (I want to say it is called ISO or ICO or something like that) to ensure they weren't in a previous accident, have pre-existing injuries, etc. Don't worry, most of the time they don't want to pay any more than they have to either. Unless you have shitty insurance and they just have to clear claims as quickly as possible, but even then it isn't your money.

Again, let your insurance handle everything. Only answer questions that your insurance agent asks you, or clears you to answer. Do not have any contact with the other party or their lawyers outside of that. It will only help them if you do so.