Insurance Companies

November 11, 2009

Negotiating a Settlement with Car Insurance Companies

Accident lawyers attempting to negotiate settlements with insurance companies view insurance companies as monolithic, i.e., “Insurance Company A is difficult’ or “Insurance Company B is easy to deal with on claims.”

Sure, it is an oversimplification. Claims practices by different insurance companies vary from state to state and even from insurance claims adjuster to insurance claims adjuster. But each insurance company has its own history, policies, and “world view” of handling auto accident claims. There are some insurance companies — Progressive and MAIF come to mind first — that you can safely bet you have no chance of getting anything resembling a fair offer.

It is also worth noting that the similarities of individual insurance companies vary inversely with the severity of the accident. This is because larger cases invariably require more discretion by the insurance adjuster, and serious injury cases are given to more experienced adjusters who are given more trust from the insurance company.

August 6, 2009

Ameriprise: Battling for “Most Difficult Car Insurance Defendant” Title

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Five years ago, I had never heard of Ameriprise Auto & Home Insurance. Now, I’m seeing more and more Ameriprise claims that involve an Ameriprise insured defendant. Ameriprise does not have a lot of market share in Maryland. But the Ameriprise website claims it is one of the fastest-growing insurance companies in the country. Based on the rise in Ameriprise claims in Maryland, I believe it.

Anyway, the point of this post: the settlement offers that have been coming in from Ameriprise have been worse than awful. Ameriprise has a hardball pre-suit business model. This may or may not work for them.

But the take-home message for Maryland accident lawyers is clear: you will need to sue and try some accident cases against this insurance company to get their attention.

May 12, 2009

Workmen’s Compensation Uninsured Motorist Setoff: New Opinion for the Maryland Court of Special Appeals

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals in a 2-1 decision today affirmed a Frederick County trial court’s grant of summary judgment to Erie Insurance in an underinsured motorist lawsuit.

The nutshell: State Farm paid its $100,000 liability policy in a serious injury car accident case. Plaintiff sought payment under his $250,000 uninsured/underinsured motorist policy with Erie Insurance. Erie claimed that it was entitled to a workers’ compensation setoff of $246,305.66, representing the workers’ compensation benefits the car accident victim received because he was working at the time of the accident. The Plaintiff claimed the setoff should be $27,396.28 because this was the amount of the workers’ compensation lien. Continue reading

April 1, 2009

IME Doctors Caught on Tape

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The New York Times has a good article today on Independent Medical Examination doctors, including a doctor referred to by New York injury lawyers as “Doctor Says-No.” We have several IME doctors in Maryland that must be related to him because they have the same last name.

The New York Times would not have written this story if it did not have examples of patients possessing the great weapon of the modern age: “I’ve got it on tape.” The article has examples of doctors who told the patient one thing in the evaluation – which the patient’s taped with their phones – and put the opposite conclusion in the report.

In Maryland, our lawyers are seeing a recent wave of IME doctors replacing the old guard of discredited doctors that juries stopped believing long ago. Below are a few tools to fight for your clients to get fair defense medical exams.

My colleague John Bratt is in the middle of a battle in a Montgomery County case where the expert is refusing to meet the same conditions imposed against this same expert by a judge in another case we had with him in Montgomery County. In another accident case, my colleague Rod Gaston has with the same doctor, they ordered the doctor to produce his financial records. Bizarrely, the insurance company withdrew the doctor, but he still filed an interlocutory appeal. I’m looking forward to finding out who has been paying his legal fees for all of this. My bet: the insurance company.

(Note: I have fixed the New York Times link, as requested. Thanks to all for bringing it to my attention.) Continue reading

March 24, 2009

Maryland Auto Accident Cases: A New “Amount in Controversy” Law Passes the Maryland Senate

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Maryland Senate Bill 468 passed today in the Maryland Senate. It increases – from $10,000 to $20,000 – the maximum amount in controversy in a civil action in which a party may not demand a jury trial. Defendants would only be able to “bump up” cases between $20,000 and $30,000 from District Court to Circuit Court.

Any case pled in District Court for more than $10,000 can be bumped up to a jury trial. This practice, which is mostly done by insurance companies in personal injury car accident cases, leads to massive numbers of car accident cases before Maryland juries in cases that should be streamlined into District Court trials.

In fact, auto insurance companies are the problem in getting this bill passed; small businesses, for example, did not oppose this bill. Why are auto insurance companies opposed to this bill? It saves them legal costs to be sure. Is it because insurance companies get better results in front of juries than judges? No. The motive is much more nefarious: they want personal injury lawyers to spend time and resources in accident cases if the lawyers and their clients refuse the insurance companies’ below market settlement offers in smaller cases.

February 11, 2009

Circuit Court Removal by Insurance Companies in Maryland Car Accident Cases

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

There is a battle now in the Maryland state legislature about whether Maryland should increase the minimum jurisdictional amount before a defendant can remove a case from District Court to Circuit Court. Defense lawyers for State Farm and Allstate, the two largest auto insurance providers in Maryland, routinely “bump up” District Court claims to Circuit Court if the amount in controversy is more than $10,000.

So what happens is we have an enormous volume of cases where insurance defense lawyers in Maryland are seeking jury trials in cases that do not belong in Circuit Court. Why? Do they think a jury will give them a more fair trial? Ironically, for the jury-hating insurance companies who continue to argue that juries are out of control, trust in juries is at least one reason insurance companies seek jury trials in Maryland auto accident cases (at least in some Maryland counties where juries are more conservative).

But the primary reason insurance companies seek jury trials in smaller auto accident cases in Maryland is because it tortures Maryland auto accident lawyers. The insurance companies do this, not motivated by spite—well not primarily anyway, but because it is a good global tactic. A significant number of auto accident lawyers in Maryland are reticent to sue. The threat of getting a small case going through the Circuit Court ringer is even more daunting to many Maryland injury lawyers. I’m not saying it should be. But it is for those seeking the path of least resistance.

October 7, 2008

Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund’s Finance Companies Take a Hit

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Baltimore Sun reports today that Maryland Insurance Commissioner Ralph S. Tyler ordered nine premium finance companies – companies that finance the Maryland Automobile Insurance Fund premiums, which consumers are still required to pay in full – to stop charging ridiculously high finance charges. Two of these finance companies also must refund money to consumers because, incredibly, they charged interest in policies never issued. The Baltimore Sun article suggests this will save MAIF’s customers about $100 a year.

These finance companies exist because of a quirk in the law that requires MAIF to make customers pay in full for their premiums. Since most consumers cannot afford this, these drivers turn to predatory lending companies. Everyone from MAIF itself to Ralph Tyler has argued that MAIF should allow its insured drivers to pay premiums over time, like virtually all the rest of us.

Unfortunately, MAIF drivers, who typically have poor driving records and/or terrible credit histories, have no lobbyists in Annapolis. MAIF’s competitors (particularly, as this blog discusses, State Auto) and these finance companies have lobbyists, which is why this nonsense was allowed to continue. Hopefully, 2009 is the year that the Maryland legislature finally gets its act together and gets rid of this nonsense.

October 3, 2008

Personal Injury Claims Against AIG: Will They Get Paid?

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I have received several calls from clients with personal injury claims against AIG fearing their claims are unprotected.

Yesterday, we got a call in one of our AIG cases. Someone from Resolute Systems called and said that AIG had given them the assignment of settling large cases. They are setting up settlement conference days in Philadelphia for some pending AIG cases. We were given November 5-6 as dates for these mediations.

I suspect AIG is looking to capitalize on the panic and induce below market settlements. I have no proof of this.

September 30, 2008

Property Damage Claims: My Dad’s Battle with Ameriprise and Thoughts on Handling Property Damage Claims Without a Lawyer

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Last year, my Dad was in an auto accident where the Defendant admittedly ran a red light. Believing in his superhuman ability to drive an automobile, he did not have collision insurance on his car.

The insurance company, which shall remain nameless (Ameriprise), denied liability claiming that my father did not react quickly enough to avoid the accident Ameriprise’s theory was that Dad is 71 years-old and therefore must have reacted too slowly to avoid the accident. What Ameriprise didn’t know is that my father was driving home from playing three grueling sets of tennis in the summer heat with me. I’ll bet money he can react better than the Ameriprise adjuster that denied the claim.

So I sent them a draft complaint and discovery in the case and they quickly changed adjusters, accepted liability, and threw in $500 for his injury claim even though he sought no medical treatment (which we never would have asked for had they paid on the property damage claim).

September 26, 2008

Colossus and Allstate

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

I received this email from a personal injury lawyer in Maryland this morning:

I have an MIA complaint involving Allstate offered the number provided by Colossus and now, of course, refuses to produce any Colossus manuals, etc. Do you have some useful Colossus materials?

I don’t. Maryland’s bad faith law is recent and it makes relevant lines of inquiry from Maryland accident lawyers that before would have been irrelevant including, as this email suggests, how Allstate values first-party uninsured or underinsured accident cases. If any lawyer out there has anything that might be of use that I could pass along, will you drop me an email?