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.

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?

August 8, 2008

Settlement of Personal Injury Cases: The New York Times Article

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

There is an article in the New York Times today that concludes that it is best to settle most accident, malpractice, and breach of contract claims based on a recent study.

The basis for the conclusion is a study suggesting that defendants made the wrong decision by proceeding to trial, based on the offer and the outcome, in 24 percent of cases, and plaintiffs were wrong in 61 percent of cases.

Setting aside that these numbers do not even resemble the numbers of our lawyers – and probably 90% of the personal injury lawyers reading this – these numbers are hardly persuasive in reaching that conclusion. The reason is simple: if you bet on a horse that is a 50-1 shot and the horse has a 10% chance of winning the race; you will lose more often than you win but you are still better off making the bet (i.e., trying the case) than you are not making the bet (i.e. setting the case).

July 16, 2008

Montana Supreme Court Reverses Itself in Car-Pedestrian Accident Case

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

Click to enlarge

The Supreme Court of Montana rendered an interesting decision last week for an emotional injury claim in Allstate Ins. Co. v. Wagner-Ellsworth.

The case involves a car-pedestrian collision. Two brothers were crossing the street in front of their elementary school and one was seriously injured. Allstate settled this claim for the per-person policy limit of $50,000.

February 13, 2008

New Maryland Court of Appeals Opinion

by Ronald V. Miller, Jr.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals decided the Titan v. Advance case yesterday. Titan is a case where the Plaintiff alleged negligent repair of a roof that led to the clogging of a roof drain, which then resulted in the Plaintiff’s premises to flood. It is located on Eastern Avenue in Baltimore, Maryland, at Crown Industrial Park. After a three-day trial, the jury found in favor of the Defendants.

As you might have expected, the amount of rain after the job was completed was relevant. Defendants introduced, over objection, a certified copy of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s weather reports from Baltimore-Washington Airport, which reported rain patterns at the airport between the day the roofing work was completed and the date of the flooding off the roof. Plaintiff objected that the weather at Baltimore Washington Airport on that day was not relevant because it was 10 miles from the site.

The Maryland Court of Special Appeals, in an opinion by Judge Arrie W. Davis, found that the documents were relevant because the parties disputed the amount of rainfall. The court further found that despite the length of the documents, the jury could reasonably interpret the recorded rainfall amounts and the court needed no expert opinion to explain the documents. As to the 10 miles between the Baltimore-Washington Airport and the site of the property, the court concluded this went to the weight of the evidence as opposed to admissibility.