- July 7th '08: I got out of work on my FZ, and a car rushed out of a parking lot to my right, trying to make a left hand turn in front of me. I ended up hitting the front left panel of the Mercedes, flew in the air and landed 30-40 feet away on the other side. More details here: http://www.600riders.com/forum/fz6-general-discussion/6389-accident-last-night-v3-0-destroyed.html
- I did not answer any questions on the scene of the accident ("not sure officer, I can`t remember right now")
- I ended up at the hospital and luckily I didn`t have any broken bones or anything serious (just a badly broozed right shoulder)
- Would have been WAY worse without my gear (specifically leather jacket with shoulder kevlar pads + helmet). So wear your gear
- I got home late the same night, and called my lawyer first thing the next morning.
=> Do NOT call your insurance, do NOT call the cops, don`t do anything before you talk to your lawyer. This is important as anything you say may be used against you later on.
- My lawyer really took care of everything:
* recommended a chiropractor and made appointments for me,
* recommended a MRI facility and made appointments for me,
* dealt with my insurance and the other party's insurance to expedite the settlement,
* made sure to double check everything I had to sign to make sure I wasn`t getting screwed (and it saved me),
* gave me excellent advice about how to involve my own health insurance, to have them cover a LARGE chunk of the bills,
* negotiated all the medical bills to reduce them considerably (try to do that yourself and they`ll send you packing...),
* told me how to setup payment plans for all the medical/hospital/ambulance/doctor/etc.. bills, to avoid having delinquent bills that could have affected my credit score,
* + lots of misc stuff...
In other words, getting a lawyer in case of an accident involving another party is essential imho... I would have been screwed without one for sure.
Here is break down of the process (how it happened for me at least):
- the other party got a ticket on the scene of the accident for failure to yield traffic. There were also witnesses on the scene who talked to the cop, so the case was fairly straight forward, i.e. the other party was at fault.
- in this case, there are 2 main categories: property damage (your bike), and everything else (medical bills, lawyer bills, pain & suffering...). You may take care of the property damage ONLY (when you talk to the insurance companies, never say anything about the accident or anything related to it), since you know best what your bike was worth. Everything else is taken care of by your lawyer.
- In my case, I created an Excel spreadsheet, listing a fair market price for the bike (check local classified...), along with all my mods (including comments about whether I still had the receipts or if I paid cash for used parts), and the price of all my damaged gear (leather jacket, helmet...). I sent the spreadsheet to the other party's insurance (it is your choice whether you want your own insurance to cover these costs -and they'll get their money back later from the other insurance-, or the other party's insurance, I chose the other party's insurance as my own insurance would not cover the gear and a bunch of aftermarket parts... in other words, they were stupid and did not want to work with me). The other party's insurance on the other hand reviewed my list and offered a price without asking for any receipts... They offered $9k for property damage, which was basically what I was asking for.
- As mentioned above, my lawyer took over for everything else. Typically, in a case like that, the rule of thumb is that you add all your medical bills together, and multiply that number by 3 to get your final settlement amount. For example, if your medical bills are $10k, the total settlement paid by the other party should be $30k. Then, 1/3 of that money goes to pay the medical bills ($10k), 1/3 to your laywer ($10k) and the last third to you for pain and suffering ($10k).
This rule however depends on a few things, but mainly what insurance you and the other party have... my case was a little different, because:
1) the other party only had $15k max for liability
2) I did not have under-insured insurance (I do now though!!!)
In other words, we only had $15k to play with (property damage is not included in this and was paid out to me up front).
So again, we "only" had $15k in my case, so my lawyer had to be creative... basically, I had to call my health insurance, and have them issue payments to cover ALL the medical bills... they are obligated to do so, even though they would subsequently expect to get their money back from me... However, the trick here is that once my health insurance paid out, my lawyer contacted them and claimed that since I was not "made whole" after the accident, it was their responsibility to cover part of the bills.
From there, my health insurance exercised their status and relationship with the hospitals/doctors/etc... and the $20k+ bills I had were suddenly transformed to $15k... my health insurance actually ended up covering most of these, but I was left with around $5k-$6k of bills left over, which my lawyer negotiated down to $4.5k...
SO......... to summarize:
- I got $9k for my bike (way more than I actually put in my bike lol),
- out of the $16k liability coverage of the other party, 1/3 was for my laywer, i.e. $5333, $4500 went to pay the left of medical bills, and the rest is for me, i.e. $6200
Basically, thanks to my laywer, I got around $15k out of that accident. Without my laywer, I would have had about $23k of medical bills, and $16k to pay them...
Conclusion: if you are ever in an accident involving another party, get a lawyer!!!! You won`t regret it.
- I did not answer any questions on the scene of the accident ("not sure officer, I can`t remember right now")
- I ended up at the hospital and luckily I didn`t have any broken bones or anything serious (just a badly broozed right shoulder)
- Would have been WAY worse without my gear (specifically leather jacket with shoulder kevlar pads + helmet). So wear your gear
- I got home late the same night, and called my lawyer first thing the next morning.
=> Do NOT call your insurance, do NOT call the cops, don`t do anything before you talk to your lawyer. This is important as anything you say may be used against you later on.
- My lawyer really took care of everything:
* recommended a chiropractor and made appointments for me,
* recommended a MRI facility and made appointments for me,
* dealt with my insurance and the other party's insurance to expedite the settlement,
* made sure to double check everything I had to sign to make sure I wasn`t getting screwed (and it saved me),
* gave me excellent advice about how to involve my own health insurance, to have them cover a LARGE chunk of the bills,
* negotiated all the medical bills to reduce them considerably (try to do that yourself and they`ll send you packing...),
* told me how to setup payment plans for all the medical/hospital/ambulance/doctor/etc.. bills, to avoid having delinquent bills that could have affected my credit score,
* + lots of misc stuff...
In other words, getting a lawyer in case of an accident involving another party is essential imho... I would have been screwed without one for sure.
Here is break down of the process (how it happened for me at least):
- the other party got a ticket on the scene of the accident for failure to yield traffic. There were also witnesses on the scene who talked to the cop, so the case was fairly straight forward, i.e. the other party was at fault.
- in this case, there are 2 main categories: property damage (your bike), and everything else (medical bills, lawyer bills, pain & suffering...). You may take care of the property damage ONLY (when you talk to the insurance companies, never say anything about the accident or anything related to it), since you know best what your bike was worth. Everything else is taken care of by your lawyer.
- In my case, I created an Excel spreadsheet, listing a fair market price for the bike (check local classified...), along with all my mods (including comments about whether I still had the receipts or if I paid cash for used parts), and the price of all my damaged gear (leather jacket, helmet...). I sent the spreadsheet to the other party's insurance (it is your choice whether you want your own insurance to cover these costs -and they'll get their money back later from the other insurance-, or the other party's insurance, I chose the other party's insurance as my own insurance would not cover the gear and a bunch of aftermarket parts... in other words, they were stupid and did not want to work with me). The other party's insurance on the other hand reviewed my list and offered a price without asking for any receipts... They offered $9k for property damage, which was basically what I was asking for.
- As mentioned above, my lawyer took over for everything else. Typically, in a case like that, the rule of thumb is that you add all your medical bills together, and multiply that number by 3 to get your final settlement amount. For example, if your medical bills are $10k, the total settlement paid by the other party should be $30k. Then, 1/3 of that money goes to pay the medical bills ($10k), 1/3 to your laywer ($10k) and the last third to you for pain and suffering ($10k).
This rule however depends on a few things, but mainly what insurance you and the other party have... my case was a little different, because:
1) the other party only had $15k max for liability
2) I did not have under-insured insurance (I do now though!!!)
In other words, we only had $15k to play with (property damage is not included in this and was paid out to me up front).
So again, we "only" had $15k in my case, so my lawyer had to be creative... basically, I had to call my health insurance, and have them issue payments to cover ALL the medical bills... they are obligated to do so, even though they would subsequently expect to get their money back from me... However, the trick here is that once my health insurance paid out, my lawyer contacted them and claimed that since I was not "made whole" after the accident, it was their responsibility to cover part of the bills.
From there, my health insurance exercised their status and relationship with the hospitals/doctors/etc... and the $20k+ bills I had were suddenly transformed to $15k... my health insurance actually ended up covering most of these, but I was left with around $5k-$6k of bills left over, which my lawyer negotiated down to $4.5k...
SO......... to summarize:
- I got $9k for my bike (way more than I actually put in my bike lol),
- out of the $16k liability coverage of the other party, 1/3 was for my laywer, i.e. $5333, $4500 went to pay the left of medical bills, and the rest is for me, i.e. $6200
Basically, thanks to my laywer, I got around $15k out of that accident. Without my laywer, I would have had about $23k of medical bills, and $16k to pay them...
Conclusion: if you are ever in an accident involving another party, get a lawyer!!!! You won`t regret it.
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