Armchair Lawyers, UNITE!
 

Background: December 2013, snowing hard, already several inches of fresh snow on the ground. My wife was driving home from work at about 1:00 am and while going through a stale green light, a 17 year old in a Mazdaspeed3 tried to jump from the opposing left turn lane onto a parallel road. Needless to say, he didn't quite make it. She broadsided him at about 40 MPH. As luck would have it, a cop saw the entire thing, and several other witnesses were kind enough to stop and make written statements. By the time I got there, the car had been towed away, and she was layed up in the local Hospital. No major injuries, released at about 8:00 am.

3-4 days later, we get a call from a local attorney who claims to set people up with other attorneys who help people to negotiate with insurance companies. They do not require any form of payment unless they win the settlement, and then take a small cut ( 30% of total payout after all bills are paid) So we agree to become his clients. We follow doctors orders and she does about a month of physical therapy, and we submit all bills to the lawyers office. In the meantime, we use my insurance company to have the car repaired as the other parties insurance company was dragging their heels severely. After several months of haggling with the other parties insurance company, we have all bills submitted and the "attorney" is "negotiating" the settlement with their insurance company.

Here's where it sucks. The Hospital that she went to refuses to bill my insurance. They are waiting until the settlement is finalized and they intend to take their payment out of that. My attorney wants them to bill my insurance as well, but says they have no legal obligation to do so. I'm worried that this is going to affect our credit, as an outstanding bill is looming in our name. Every time I call the lawyer, he's "working on it" but it seems no progress has been made. It's approaching one year since the accident, and we're still waiting on resolution. In retrospect, I should have never got involved with said attorney, but it's a little late for that now.

Looking for any advice/tips/tricks to getting this resolved. Should I just fire this lawyer? I'm afraid to do so as he has ALL the information on the case, and I wouldn't know how to proceed.

Advice or cat pictures would be appreciated.

Lawyer cat is on the case!
https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1412154362
Since you are waiting on an insurance settlement, the hospital should defer your payments.
Have you personally contacted the other driver's insurance? Your lawyer really sucks if he hasn't been able to get anything out of them for a year.

just sue everyone.

fuck them all.

ill await my summons.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1412168554

I have not made any attempt to contact the other parties insurance company. I do agree that this lawyer sucks though. A year seems like an incredibly long time to wait for a settlement.

When you sleep with dogs, sometimes you get fleas. The lawyer you hired is scum and you should never have hired him. This should be a warning to others. Never hire a lawyer that solicits you.

Your insurance company would have handled the repair and gone after the other guy's insurance company for reimbursement. Your medical expenses would have also been paid by your auto insurance carrier and then they would have gone after the other driver's insurance company to recover their funds. Your insurance company would have also recouped any out-of-pocket medical expenses paid at the time of service minus any deductible pursuant to that policy. Then you could hire a reputable attorney to recoup any deductible and lost work compensation, less his fees. If your wife's injuries were minor enough to allow her release within a few hours of being seen at the hospital, the attorney would possibly have advised against even pursuing a settlement unless there was permanent damage or extensive loss of income.

Now this unscrupulous lawyer has you over a barrel and, signed contract in hand, will either wreck your credit or extort funds from you to be released from your contract to save your credit.

That's quite a knot you've tied.

I agree with everything you've written except for this.

We haven't signed ANY paperwork with the guy. None. His claim is that there is no obligation to him and his firm, and he will only receive payment/have us sign any contracts after we have seen the final settlement offer and we agree with it. If there is no settlement, there is no fee.

And funny enough, he just texted me as I was typing this with an offer from the other parties company and will be sending a settlement statement soon.

Maybe he's monitoring this thread...

If the hospital is in-network, they need to be submitting their charges through insurance, and they should have done so immediately. HOW your wife got hurt is of no relevance to the health provider, ONLY to the insurance companies at hand here. (auto vs. medical.)

Medical insurance companies are usually (and almost certainly in your case) "pay and pursue," which means they will go ahead and pay the claim as normal, then get their money from whomever will be footing the extra in the end.

Also see: Subrogation


Basically, the hospital sucks dicks and you need to tell them to take the dick out of their mouth and remind them they it doesn't matter to them why your wife was there. Just that she WAS there.

If hospital is out of network, then get to submitting that shit yourself.

Whew! You really had me worried the lawyer was just stringing you out. I hope it ends well.

Me too.

Hey Ben, I tried to get the hospital to bill my insurance, and they wanted us to sign a form saying that we were liable for the accident and there was no settlement being discussed. Does this sound legal/proper to you?

No. WTF? Hospitals do not make claims about liability. That is the sole responsibility of the insurance companies, and it seems like that issue was determined right away. Don't sign that shit.

I had a minor fender-bender a while ago. We had witnesses and all was well and their insurance paid for all damages. Soon after the accident, we were contacted by a lawyer asking about it and if we needed representation. Until this happened, I never heard of the term "ambulance chaser" referring to a lawyer. I hope it all works out for you.