Facts:
My client is a medical doctor. He was driving his car on I-75 when he was rear ended and forced off the road and into a tree. The impact caused him severe injuries to his mid-section, his neck and his knee. He was taken to the hospital in Sarasota for an evaluation.
After he was released from the hospital, his main area of concern was his knee. He had just had a total knee replacement and he felt that something was wrong. After the surgery, but before the car accident, the knee was working just fine. But now, he had acute pain and went to see his surgeon.
He was given a scan of the knee and it was determined that the tibia was loose and that he needed a correction surgery to the knee.
He had the knee revision surgery. It also caused him to miss about a month of work while he recovered.
The case:
His medical bills were very high due to the hospital visit and the surgery. He had health insurance and there was a lien. We found that the driver who caused the car accident only had $10,000 of insurance. That was paid very quickly. The bigger issue was his own underinsured motorist coverage. He carried a $100,000 policy.
We made the demand to his car insurance carrier for the $100,000. Not only was my client a doctor and was going to be a sympathetic witness, he had over $215,000 in total medical bills and lost at least $15,000 in lost wages. We thought it was going to be a simple tender of the policy limits. It wasn’t.
The Settlement:
Even after the clear injury to the knee, the surgery and the lost wages, the insurance company offered $80,000, not the full $100,000. Remember, this was his own insurance company too. This is a perfect example of how insurance companies try to save money.
In response, I said that I would not accept anything less than the full policy limits. I filed a Civil Remedy Notice, or CRN. It is a notice filed with the Florida Department of Insurance that a company is acting in bad faith. It allows you to then go after the insurance company in excess of the policy if you win the case.
Within about a week of receiving the CRN, the insurance company paid the full $100,000.
We were then able to get his lien reduced and maximize the amount of money that my client received. He was thrilled with my work and happy with the resolution of the case.
