SKEPTICLE ABOUT MY LEGAL HELP

Your son was in an accident, and after doctors fees and lawyers fees are all paid you get $700 free money? And you bitch that it's not enough? Only an American would do that. Surely your son's health and life is worth more than all the money in the world?

Why should you get money for your son being in an accident?

By the way, it's "sceptical".

Elrob--

Welcome to A2K.

What state do you live in?

I'm not a lawyer, but I have some second and third hand experience of settlements in automobile accidents. Although three insurance companies were involved (yours, your cousin's and the at-fault driver's) only one is going to pay money. I'd guess by the laws and regulations of the state you live in, this is your insurance company.

I gather that your son was not seriously injured and that his injuries were not a serious inconvenience to him or to you.

Because the amounts of money are small (to large insurance companies) hiring a lawyer may not have been necessary. Still, you hired a lawyer and he wants to be paid.

We've all heard of large insurance settlements that change a family's standard of living in a large way. The flip side of the situation here is that these are cases in which the injury is severe and both the medical expenses and the awards for pain and suffering are high.

These large settlements get more public attention than small ones do. I think your lawyer is giving you good advice, but as I said earlier I'm not a lawyer. We have several lawyer members of A2K. Perhaps they will have more information for you.

I hope by the time spring arrives you and your son will have only memories of the accident and its aftermath.

It depends on a lot of things:

• How did the accident occur? Was your son hit in the rear, was it a head-on collision, did someone drift into his lane, was he hit when the other driver tried to make a left turn or something else? These questions all go to liability. If he's got a percentage of the liability, in most states it will affect the amount of the settlement.
  
• How serious were the injuries? A $2200 settlement sounds to me like something not too terribly serious. Were any bones broken? Was any work missed?
  
• What state did the accident occur in? Was it the state that you live in or the car is garaged in? In New York, it's a pure percentages state, so 1% liability means 1% off the settlement. In Massachusetts, it's a 51% state, so if the plaintiff is 51% liable, he or she gets nothing. Other states have differing laws.
  
• Didn't your health insurance pay for the medical treatment anyway? I am assuming that the doctors' fees you are talking about are for the doctor to examine and testify re your son's condition. These things do not come for free.

So, what's the rest of the story?

"Skeptical" is a totally acceptable spelling. In fact, in U.S. usage "sceptical" is listed as the variant.

Yes, but "skepticle" isn't.

Oops!! I guess I can spell; I just can"t read.

I just realized I wrote my last response under the impression your son was driving. Looking at the fact pattern again, I see he was a passenger. So, chances are almost certain that he has 0% liability.

Then the questions are about the severity of the injuries and the extent of the insurance, if any. In some states (Texas comes to mind immediately), auto insurance is not required. Hence you can find yourself with an injury and no way to get it paid on. In other states, such as New Jersey, an uninsured motorist's negligence is paid for (after you jump through any number of technical an bureaucratic hoops) by a government agency paid for by, you guessed it, the people with auto insurance who are residents of that state.

Hence without a lot in the financial pool to begin with, there isn't going to be a lot for a settlement.

The other half of the equation is the severity of the injury. When I was practicing law in NY in the late '80s, a $2200 settlement for 0% negligence would have meant you had what's called a threshold case. In NY and in many other states with mandatory no-fault auto insurance, there is a threshold of injury over which you must go in order to be paid any sort of settlement beyond regular old no-fault. I forget the exact terms of it and some of them may changed but the gist of it is the injury must hit a certain degree of severity, e. g. a broken bone, death, dismemberment, loss of fetus, permanent disability, etc. A certain number of days in a hospital also fit the bill, it was some percentage of the first 90 days after the accident but I strongly suspect that has changed so it would bear some research on the current law.

The idea behind it was to pay for soft tissue cases, e. g. whiplash, out of a no-fault fund and keep those cases out of the courts entirely. Sounds like your son may have sustained injuries that fit that kind of scenario. Did he?