As a practical matter, in most lawsuits arising out of auto accidents, the jury never knows that the other driver has insurance.

This is old. It has been the law for over 100 years.

Why doesn’t the judge let the jury know about the insurance? Because lawmakers and insurance companies are afraid that if the jurors know that an insurance company is involved, they will award way more than the case is worth.

Because it is psychologically easier to tell a big insurance company to pay a lot of money than to tell that to someone who looks a lot like your next door neighbor – someone whose worst mistake might have been misjudging how much room he had to stop, or thinking about his job when he was supposed to be checking oncoming traffic at the stop sign.

There are cases when the insurance company does have to appear in court – usually when you file suit against your own insurance company, that is, in most cases, the uninsured or underinsured motorist carrier.

But usually, the insurance company just hires a lawyer to represent the person who caused the accident, and then they settle the case or pay any judgment against that person. And usually, the jury does not know about the existence of insurance – formally.

I think most jurors suspect heavily that the defendant is insured, but that is not the same as knowing, and making an award based on the knowledge.

Personally, I don’t like this. The jury learns about the victim’s health insurance, and maybe his or her auto insurance, because that company has a right to recover any benefits – like medical bills – they have paid because of the accident.

And I think: “Fair’s fair – what will be so harmful about learning that the guy who caused the accident has insurance?”

But then I look at my insurance bill. And I ask how badly I want to pay a higher premium. Because that is what will happen if the jury knows there is insurance. And that is why the law is what it is.

But you don’t need to just take this as a given. I make it my job to look for things that will give my clients an advantage. Suing the insurance company directly – which I do whenever I think I can make them appear in front of a jury – is just one of them.

If you want to know more about this, and about whether you can make the insurance company appear in court, you can call me, a Cincinnati Injury Lawyer. My phone is 513-621-4775. There is no charge for talking to me.

You don’t have to rely just on what you are reading. I would love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

This is wrong.

A generation ago, insurance companies started publicizing high jury verdicts, and claiming that juries were getting out of hand. They talked about a man who was trapped in a phone booth (remember them?) as a semi bore down on him who got a large award against the phone company because the doors stuck.

The insurance companies talked about an lady who was awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars when she suffered severe burns from spilling McDonald’s coffee on her lap (It was much hotter than it needed to be; there had been over 700 complaints to McDonald’s that the coffee was too hot, including a letter from Children’s Hospital in Cincinnati asking McDonald’s to lower the temperature of its coffee so kids wouldn’t get burned.)

There was never a crisis. The verdicts were awarded by ordinary Americans who work every day after studying the evidence presented by attorneys for each side, and being read the law by a judge. In fact, jury trials are guaranteed by the United States Constitution for almost every lawsuit that is worth over $20.00. The founding fathers did this because they knew the best protection against injustice – against being unlucky enough to draw a single unfair judge – was the ability to get a trial before a jury of your peers.

What was happening was that insurance companies were trying to keep jury verdicts low, so they could make more money – or, if they weren’t choosing their customers carefully, so they could lose less.

In any event, there certainly is no crisis now. When I started taking personal injury lawsuits, I considered a fair settlement to be five times my client’s total medical bills. Now, nearly all lawsuits settle for a number far below five times the medical bills. Why is this true? In part, because insurance companies publicized the verdicts they didn’t like, and jurors reacted accordingly, without realizing that a lot of verdicts are for much less than what many people consider fair.

And a lot of people who have been injured cannot file suits now because the law has changed (For instance, it’s now virtually impossible to sue a property owner for supplying inadequate security against crimes, or to sue law enforcement for engaging in reckless car chases.)

And there are still more people who, if they do sue, cannot recover more than a certain amount of money for their injuries – again, because the legislature has limited, or “capped”, the amount that can be awarded.

As I said, juries are made up of hardworking people, like you and me, who are trying as hard as they can to do the fair and just thing. They don’t always agree with me, but if they think your damages are real, they will award them. Whether they feel that way depends – in part – on how hard your lawyer works.

If you want to know what your lawsuit is worth, though, you don’t have to speculate. You can call me, a Cincinnati Personal Injury Lawyer. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

I cannot say this is always false – but it almost always is false.

People say this because they think that the lawyer’s fee will be so high that it will eclipse any bargaining advantage they will gain from hiring the lawyer. But this is hardly ever the case.

A couple years ago, a family tried to hire me. The insurance company had offered them $17,000 for an injury their daughter had suffered in an accident. In the accident, she had been knocked out, and she had a very small scar on her face, where her cheek had been penetrated by a ballpoint pen.

I told them I didn’t think I could do any better, and not to hire me – because I would have to charge something, and I didn’t think that the insurance company would pay enough more to justify my taking their case. Basically, I would just be charging them for filling out the paperwork to get the settlement approved by the probate court, and I thought they could do this themselves.)

The family went away, and – because the girl was 15 – they applied to the local probate court judge to approve the settlement.

The probate judge said that he could see her scar from the bench (I could not see it from ten feet. If she ever misses a date because of the scar, I will be surprised.) He would not approve the settlement until they had seen a lawyer.

They came to see me again. This time, I said I would take the case. I charged them based on a percentage of what I could get more than the original offer. I wound up getting the original insurance company to pay its limits of $25,000.00, and then getting another $10,000 from their underinsured motorist coverage insurer.

So – bottom line – I got the insurance companies to pay roughly twice what was going to be paid before, and my clients received – netted – $10,000 more than they would have received without me.

Obviously, this case was not typical. But I cannot think of a case where my client lost money for hiring a lawyer. Almost always, they get more money than the insurance company’s original offer.

One more thing – even if you don’t net a dime more – I think hiring a lawyer is worth it so you can get rid of the stress of talking to the insurance company. Most people don’t know what they can say to them without hurting themselves, and without worrying about it before and after the conversation. Most people aren’t used to it.

But I do make money for my clients.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK.

But you don’t have to rely just on what you are reading.

You can call me, a Cincinnati Personal Injury Attorney. My phone is 513-621-4775. There is no charge for talking to me. And you can make your decision on whether to hire a lawyer after we’ve talked about your lawsuit.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

“I’m from the insurance company and I’m here to help you.”

A lot of people think insurance companies want to be fair.

At the risk of paraphrasing Mitt Romney, insurance companies are people. This does not mean that those people want to jump out of their socks to give the company’s money away. Insurance company adjusters and managers get fired if they pay too much on claims.

The companies have controls – claims committees, limits of authority, quotas, computer programs setting claim values – which keep them from paying too much. I have always thought that if they underpay, they get promotions or raises.

Maybe the company is conscientious about making fair offers, in order to resolve claims without their having to hire a lawyer – or maybe they are afraid of bad faith lawsuits. So I cannot say that an insurance company will not make a fair offer. It’s just that they don’t Have much incentive to be fair, and they have every incentive not to.

How can I prove this? Virtually every time I take over a lawsuit from an accident victim who has been dealing directly with an insurance company, the offer goes up – substantially. It goes up not because they want to be fair, but because they think that a lawsuit will result in attorney fees and a large damages award.

So – even when a claim is well within the adjuster’s authority – he or she is going to have a bias in favor of offering less, and paying less. Like the time the adjuster offered my client $1500 plus their medical bills (which were $4000 net) before the client came to me. After I sent in all of the medical bills and records, and explained in detail how the accident affected my client, the insurance company paid $18,000 total after I got involved.

But if you’re reading this, you obviously are interested in what you see. So why don’t you give me, a Cincinnati injury lawyer, a call.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

I originally called this blog “The secrets about lawsuits” – then I decided that “myths” was a better word. Most people think that a “secret” is true, and a “myth” is false.

If you know me, you know I am not a big believer in secrets, at least not in the sense that you can intentionally keep important information away from someone who wants to know it. When I married my wife – who had two children – I soon realized that I had few secrets that were both keepable and worth keeping.

But a myth is just something that people can believe. It can be true, false or true and false.

People believe lots of things about lawsuits that are either wrong, or only partly right. Here is a list of things people believe – some are true, some are false, and some are true and false -based on their questions to me:

1) “You should cooperate with the insurance adjuster because he is trying to help you.”

2) “You will net more money by settling your lawsuit without using a lawyer.”

3) “There is a lawsuit crisis in America. Juries are ready to award really big bucks to accident victims.”

4) “The Insurance Company Appears In Court.”

5) “The insurance company won’t pay big dollars without a big crash”

6) “You won’t have to file suit; the insurance company will settle the case because they are afraid of a lawsuit.”

7) “You can settle your lawsuit before you are done treating, and get a lot of money right away.”

8) “A chiropractor will help your case.”

9) “Insurance Lawyers Are Well Paid.”

10) “Punitive damage awards can make a huge difference in the amount the jury awards.”

In my next 10 blogs, I am going to talk about these things people believe. If you are like most injured people, you probably have heard of at least one or two of them. This is your chance to find out.

But if you have a question about any of these things, or about anything else with your personal injury lawsuit, you don’t have to read the blog – you can call me, a Cincinnati Injury Attorney, direct! There is no obligation, and no charge for talking to me about your question.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

I feel that the services who rate me give me very high grades. I will talk about that in a minute.

But I would not pick a lawyer based on his or her evaluation by a ratings service. Rating services tell you something, but they are not the best way to pick a lawyer.

If I needed a lawyer in a given location, I would try to find the best lawyer I knew who was familiar with the location. Then, I would call that lawyer and tell him what kind of case I had, and ask him who he would recommend.

I would do this because good lawyers recommend good lawyers, and take seriously any request for advice. A good divorce lawyer in Hamilton, Ohio probably would not want to handle a personal injury lawsuit himself, unless he also practices in that area – but he would sure know the best personal injury lawyers in Hamilton.

Having said this, a number of rating services have awarded me the highest rating which they can award.

AVVO, a website that rates attorneys on a scale of 1 to 10, has awarded me a 10. My Avvo page is here.

Martindale-Hubbell.com, a rating service which rates attorneys as AV, BV or not at all, has awarded me its AV, or Preeminent rating. There is no higher rating. In the words of Martindale Hubbell:

“An AV Rating shows that a lawyer has reached the height of professional excellence. He or she has usually practiced law for many years, and is recognized for the highest levels of skill and integrity”

My peers (other lawyers) and clients both rate me at 5 on a scale of 5 on other rating scales published by Martindale – Hubbell. (In essence, Martindale rates lawyers on three separate scales – its own scale, peer evaluations, and client evaluations.) Here is my page with Martindale.

And I have been listed as one of Ohio’s Super Lawyers for 2014. From the Super Lawyers website:

Super Lawyers is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high-degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.

No more than five percent of the attorneys in a state can qualify to be Super Lawyers. The list is published once a year. To see my Super Lawyers Page, click here.

Of the ratings, I guess Super Lawyers is the best – not as many attorneys are listed, and the process is very selective. But Martindale Hubbell is the oldest. I think more people are familiar with AVVO, partly because it is simpler to understand, and because more people know about it.

Ratings are like the “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval –you’re better off with it than without it. But you can get good products that don’t have the seal, and you can get a bad product that does have the seal.

Lawyers are like that. Each ratings service collects data to determine how well a lawyer is thought of by other lawyers – and that can give you some indication of how well equipped that lawyer is to represent you.

As I said, if I was looking for a lawyer, I would call another lawyer first.

But if you’re reading this, you obviously are interested in what you see. And if you’ve gotten this far, you’ve already done more research than about 95% of the people who hire lawyers. So why don’t you give me, a Cincinnati injury lawyer, a call.

Other lawyers refer their clients to me all the time. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

They don’t always. But those records can tell a whole lot.

The most obvious thing they can tell is the medications you got for your accident, and what they cost. The cost of your medications is part of your damages – what you are entitled to be repaid by the insurance company for the other driver. So, theoretically, if you are hurt bad, and your doctor is prescribing a lot of medication, this information can help you.

But think about it. Those records can tell how often you are getting refills. So if you are not taking the medications according to schedule, the insurance lawyer can argue that you are taking too much medications, or too little. Does too much medicine make you an addict, ready to lie about pain to get another fix? Does too little medication make you a faker, lying about pain to make it look like you’re hurt worse than you are?

Most of the time, neither one of these applies. But you can’t be sure.

More than once, I’ve looked at histories of medications, and questioned whether the patient had a pain problem or was an addict. Another time, after a trial, a nurse who was sitting as a juror told me that while there was a consistent record of medication purchases, the doses were minimal – so the plaintiff could not be in the amount of pain she was claiming.

Once when I worked for insurance companies – I don’t anymore – I started a closing argument by telling an arbitration panel – truthfully – that the person asking them for money had taken 18 different medications in the five days before the accident.

Maybe most important – if you are taking significant doses of prescribed medication on the schedule set by your doctor – your prescription record can make a convincing argument that the pain from the injury is affecting your life, and you are doing your best to get better.

The other thing you have to know – if the case goes to trial, the insurance companies will probably get this information. You cannot hide your prescription history, and they will get it straight from your pharmacy. The judge will make you sign an authorization permitting them to look at it.

So be good, and take your meds. If you think they’re too much, or too little, or you are allergic, call your doctor and talk to him or her about it.

And finally, the insurance company doesn’t always think to ask for this information. So I often try to get it before filing suit, and sometimes before making a demand on the insurance company; it’s good to know important information before the other side knows it.

If you have this question, you should call me. I am a Cincinnati injury attorney.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

The adjusters are trained not to pay for bills without getting a release because the insurance company is afraid it will wind up paying for treatment unrelated to the accident and it will be stuck.

I talked about this in an earlier blog I posted.

There are some reasons why this policy makes sense. Often, prior injuries are a factor in medical treatment, and insurance companies are reluctant to pay for treatment that stems primarily from a prior injury.

Additionally, insurers are afraid of encouraging overtreatment – they don’t want to get stuck for large physical therapy or chiropractic bills. And they think if they don’t pay for it, it won’t happen.

I respect these reasons, but I think that often nonpayment is a dumb decision. When there is a lot of treatment immediately after an accident, and visible physical injuries – stitches, broken bones, objectively indicated injuries that could not have been caused by anything but the accident – and clear liability, the insurance company should step up and pay what it owes.

Doing this would reduce a lot of pain – physical and mental. People would not get as mad at insurance companies. Paying obvious bills probably would reduce the number of lawsuits, and possibly even attorney fees; if the medical bills are paid, there is less to fight over.

I even had one senior insurance company adjuster tell me that he thought this would be a good policy.

But no one I know is doing it, except on a very limited basis.

If you have this question, you should call me. I am a Cincinnati injury attorney.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.

Eventually. But really, not until you settle the lawsuit. And not when you want or need them to.

The trucker’s insurance doesn’t have to pay anything until (1)they settle your lawsuit or until (2)there is a judgment against the person they insure. Which means there has to be a trial. Which means a delay of a year after suit is filed.

When it happens, that payment will come as a lump sum. It will be your responsibility to pay your medical bills, and anything else you owe, out of that lump sum.

So what does an insurance company do when a trucker it insures hurts you? It doesn’t call you up and offer to pay your medical bills. Maybe it pays a few bills – an emergency room bill, or an ambulance. But even if it does this much – and most don’t – it will stop when it becomes clear more treatment is needed.

Then you will get a call from the adjuster, telling you he might give you more money, but only if you sign a release. And once you sign the release, the money stops.

Why? Because once you sign a release, you have no way of making the insurance company pay you any more money.

And the insurance company thinks it doesn’t makes sense to pay money unless you are willing to sign a release. To the insurance company, you are a problem it wants to be over.

What can you do about this? Your best option is to use your health insurance to pay your medical bills. If you don’t have health insurance, you still might have Medical payments (Medpay) coverage, which often provides up to $10,000 to pay auto accident medical bills, and is part of your auto insurance.

If the accident happened in Kentucky, or if your car is insured in Kentucky, Kentucky PIP or nofault may pay your bills – again up to $10,000.00.

If you don’t have health insurance or medpay coverage, you may be able to get treated at a public hospital, like University Hospital in Cincinnati, or at another hospital that will treat you without proof of insurance. These hospitals are harder and harder to find, but they are there.

And by the way, everything I said about the trucker’s insurance also goes for car insurance. Car insurance companies won’t contribute substantially to your medical bills before settlement either. I will talk about why in another blog.

If you have this question, you should call me. I am a Cincinnati personal injury lawyer.

I’d love to talk with you about this. Other lawyers refer their clients to me. And if you decide you‘d rather hire someone else, that’s OK. My phone is 513-621-4775.

Because all situations are different, and because there may be other facts pertaining to your case that I don’t know about, you should not rely on this answer for legal advice. I am not your attorney, and no lawyer client relationship has been formed. All discussions are limited to Ohio law unless otherwise indicated. And past performance cannot be used to predict future results.