I represented a man in his 20’s who was T-boned by a driver. The other driver had $10,000 of bodily injury (BI) liability insurance with Star Casualty Insurance Company.
My client was driving down a neighborhood street and the other driver reversed into the passenger side of my client’s car. Because the other driver violated my client’s right of way, he was liable for the accident.
I do not believe a ticket was issued. Regardless, a ticket has no effect on a personal injury case in Florida. My client had very little, if any, comparative fault because he had the right of way and there was virtually nothing that he could have done to avoid the crash.
I did not see a diagram of the accident in the short crash report so I created a diagram (below) of the accident below using a free program called accidentsketch which is very user-friendly. In the diagram:
- The car that my client’s was driving is in the green.
- The other driver’s car is orange.
The accident happened in Miami-Dade County near Cutler Bay, South Miami Heights and Richmond West. Star Casualty is a small insurance company that is located in Miami.
An MRI revealed a suspected non-displaced clavicle fracture.
My understanding is that most of the auto insurance policies that Star Casualty offers carry $10,000/$20,000 of bodily injury liability insurance. If you know of any large bodily injury liability insurance policies offered by Star Casualty, I would love to know about it.
I wrote an article on why accident victims should provide medical records to the insurance company as soon as you receive them.
Once my client advised me that he wanted to settle his case, I quickly forwarding all the medical records as soon as possible to the bodily injury liability claims adjuster (Ana Cabal) for Star Casualty and demanded the $10,000 policy limits.
I gave the adjuster seven days or so to respond to the demand. The adjuster commented to me that she had never received a demand that did not include medical bills.
I cannot imagine that being possible given that adjusters may have a caseload of 200 cases at one time. She asked me why I did not send her the medical bills.
I told her that I sent her what I had at the time and I told her that value of my client’s bodily injury claim was greater than her insured’s bodily injury liability limits.
The day or so before the deadline – that I had given the adjuster to settle the case – I received a call from Star Casualty. They told me that they would not send me the check by the next day.
I told them that they had plenty of time to get the check to me and that I would not extend the deadline. They told me that she would not have the check to me by the deadline but would mail it instead.
I told her that they can do that at their own risk and that they would risk exposing her insured to an excess judgment for not acting in good faith and protecting their insured’s interest.
The next morning a courier hand delivered the policy limits check. Unfortunately, there was no uninsured motorist insurance for my client to make a claim against.
My client tried to get Personal Injury Protection benefits from State Farm Insurance Company.
Did someone’s carelessness cause your injury in an accident in Florida, or on a cruise or boat?
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