We all get tickets. None of us are perfect. We all speed from time to time, we all make mistakes. But as I’ve said for years, it’s not if we mess up, it’s how we handle our mess ups that define us.

So you got a ticket. How are you going to handle it?

On one hand, you might feel comfortable going to court and winging it. You’ve heard about the “PVJ” or whatever it is, so you figure you waive that around and it will probably work out, right?

YOU ARE PROBABLY WRONG! Negotiating a traffic ticket successfully involves knowledge of State Law as well as local practice and rules. This is not the type of thing that’s easy to just do on the fly. The consequences are harsh, too. Your insurance can go up astronomically for 3 years, and you might even lose your license.

If you’re debating hiring an attorney for your ticket, here are the reasons why you should:

1. The fee is less than your time. We are generally charging between $100 and $200 to handle a ticket, depending on the circumstances. Is it worth you missing a whole day of work, or maybe several, to save that money? Maybe it is, but it probably isn’t. Pay us, and you go do what you’re good at and we’ll go do what we’re good at.
2. The knowledge is worth the fee. You might not want to accept this, but traffic ticket law can be somewhat complicated. If you zig when you should have zagged, you can lose your license, or at minimum get huge increases (FOR THREE YEARS) on your insurance premiums. If you hire an attorney with experience in this area you’re much more likely to have an outcome that is favorable. You might think you can figure out how to do our job by reading a blog post or two. But I doubt it. Sorry.

Don’t hesitate to hire an attorney for your ticket. At least call one and talk about it. The best of us will tell you if you really don’t need us. Call me at 919-929-2992.

We’re all part of this gigantic social experiment, so in a macrocosm communication is VITAL to our survival.

On a smaller scale, communication is also VITAL to the success of your personal injury claim.

Why is this such a big deal? Well, communication is about information. And information is knowledge, and as you well know, knowledge is power. For the good and for ill, as well. Check it out:

Communicating regularly and in detail with your attorney is important. The knowledge you share about your recovery, your health care situation, your questions, and concerns helps to make sure the attorney is using his/her skills to address each aspect of your claim. Knowing what your recovery looks like helps him/her to prepare your case for best results, and speaking with your attorney can help make sure you’re doing the best that you can be doing on your end to ensure the success of your claim. This cannot be overstated.

AVOIDING communication of the negative sort is also important. Social media and injury claims are oil and water; they do not mix. I have never seen social media posts help an injury claim, so it makes a lot of sense to totally avoid discussing your claim – or maybe taking a complete break from SM – after your accident. Also, everything you say to an insurance company representative can and will be used against you. Don’t. Talk. To. Them.

In summary, talk to your attorney. Respond to his/her attempts to contact you. Don’t talk to the insurance company unless specifically told to by your attorney. These things can be the difference between good and bad outcomes on your injury claim. Like a lot of other things in life, it’s super simple, but super important.

Here in Chapel Hill, we probably have a LOT more pedestrian activity than most towns in North Carolina. With 25,000-ish students centered around Franklin Street, and many of them living off of nearby roadways and walking to bus stops, pedestrian v. car accidents are very much a concern. So let’s talk about some issues with pedestrians and automobiles.

RIGHT OF WAY…A CONFUSING QUESTION

Look to the light to see who has the right of way. That will pretty much always set the stage. However, NC law is a little mushy on this, because once a pedestrian is in the roadway, drivers have a duty to yield, even if the pedestrian shouldn’t have been there. This sounds crazy, but it’s not when you think about it; we’re just not allowed to kill people simply because they’ve made poor decisions. Having said that, what we have to do is what a “reasonably prudent person would do in the same or similar circumstances.” So that means if I’m going the 65mph speed limit on I40 at night and a dude walks across the road and I don’t see him in time to stop, that ain’t my fault. Conversely, if I’m on a 35mph street and someone jay walks, I can’t speed up to run them over, either.

YOU, OTHER DRIVERS, AND PEDESTRIANS

One of the tricky issues I see come up is when there’s a multi-lane street with a pedestrian crossing. When you’re driving and the car in the lane next to you stops for a pedestrian, YOU have to STOP TOO! I know, I know. I loathe rules that allow other people to make decisions for me. But this one makes sense. Once someone has stopped for a pedestrian, it’s best to just let them get across safely and not have to play real life Frogger.

CONTRIBUTORY NEGLIGENCE

This is the worst. Watch this vid for a more detailed description, but the short version is if a victim is even 1% at fault, they can’t get ANYTHING from the person who is 99% at fault. This is NOT the case is 46 other States in this fine Union, but here we are. This is a huge problem for most pedestrian claims in that there’s often an allegation that the pedestrian may have had the right of way, but they could have avoided the accident. There’s a counter to this, usually, but it’s all silly. This, however, is the NUMBER ONE REASON YOU SHOULD GET AN ATTORNEY IF YOU HAVE AN ACCIDENT!

Call me for help with any injury claim. 919-929-2992.

By now, you probably know that if you have an injury claim that you get money from, and Medicare paid for some of your treatment, you MUST pay Medicare back. There’s a whole process for this that your attorney can help you with. If you’re not an attorney trying to handle that, heaven help you.

What you might not know is that if you have a Medicare Advantage plan you might have a similar issue.

Many of these Medicare Advantage plans have what’s called a “right of reimbursement” or “subrogation” claim.  That means that in a situation where we obtain for you payment in compensation for incurred medical expenses from an at-fault party, then your health plan may have a right to get paid back what they paid out.  Normally if this is the case, they or a company they hire, reach out to you to investigate this.  If you get a letter about this, YOU MUST NOT IGNORE IT! IF YOU HAVE AN ATTORNEY YOU MUST BRING THIS TO THEIR ATTENTION! Your attorney probably can’t effectively investigate this for you with your plan. 

If you have a Medicare Advantage plan it would be most wise for you to contact your health plan, make this inquiry – does the plan have a right of reimbursement for third party claims? – and let your attorney know the response.  Failure to do so can leave you owing them after your settlement money is gone, and can impact your coverage as well. 

This is not the type of thing you want to ignore. You can end up thousands of dollars in debt and lose your coverage. You’ve been warned.

Oh, lort. This stuff can get really complicated…but here it goes:

Most of you are familiar with the idea of a worker’s comp claim…you get hurt at work, you have the right to certain protective benefits. Most of you are familiar with auto accident injury claims…someone runs into you and you hope to be able to recover what you lost as a result of their negligence.

But what happens if you have an auto accident claim WHILE you’re working? Can you have a worker’s comp claim AND a personal injury claim at the same time? YES! But be careful how you handle them.

I could write FOR DAYS on what you are entitled to with each of these claims and how they might intersect, but that would make for a long blog post that no one would want to read. So let’s just summarize:

What should you get from worker’s comp? Mostly just three things: Payment for your time out of work due to your injury, payment of your medical expenses, and to the extent that you have permanent impairment, payment for that. There are lots of little nuances in there, and they aren’t quite as nice as they sound, but they’re something.

What should you get from a personal injury claim? I’ve written on this previously, so check this post out. But suffice it to say you should be able to recover for whatever you can prove was proximately caused by the negligence of the other driver…normally this is full payment of your medical expenses, lost income, and something for pain and suffering. The main difference with worker’s comp is that there is NO PAIN AND SUFFERING IN WORKER’S COMP.

But here’s the big problem: The Worker’s Comp Lien. Whatever worker’s comp pays for, they’re going to want you to pay them back from whatever you get out of the related injury claim settlement (what they’ll call the third-party claim). This can result in the classic “Robbing Peter to pay Paul” metaphor, but there’s a lot that your attorney can do to help you navigate this issue. Sometimes we can help to limit the payment of the lien, and sometimes we can make it go away totally! What you DON’T want to do is handle your worker’s comp and personal injury liens claim without considering this, because you might end up just taking lots of money from one insurance company and giving it to another. And that’s not what any good-natured American wants now, is it?

Anyway, if you have a worker’s comp claim resulting from an auto accident, call me or another attorney before it gets too wacky. 919-929-2992.

I recently quoted my fee to a potential client for handling her ticket and she said, “That’s expensive!”

I thought that was an odd reaction. But being the self-reflective and awesome person I am, I didn’t argue with her. I just pointed out that I think it’s probably less expensive than risking the loss of her driver’s license or having her insurance rates go up for 3 years, but the choice was hers.

Maybe that wasn’t the best salesmanship in the world. While I admit that part of what I must do in my business is selling my service, I feel that there’s a line to be drawn. I’m not going to pander to you and beg for your business. I will, however, tell you what I charge for the valuable service I offer, and here I’ll tell you what you get for it:

• If you hire me, YOU don’t have to go to court, I do that for you
• I analyze your driving record and make a choice as to the preferred disposition of your ticket, as I can tell what impact each disposition might have on your record (prior tickets can impact this one, and vice versa!)
• I use my knowledge and experience to get you the best deal available in order to minimize the impact this ticket will have on you
• If your ticket isn’t handled appropriately, you could risk losing your license, or maybe having your insurance rates increase for three years! Sometimes that increase will be 100%

I can then only leave it up to you. Do you know how to do what I do? Do you want to bet on it? If you’re OK with the consequences of being wrong, then have at it! Maybe you keep your license! Maybe you don’t! If you’re not comfortable making that bet, then pay me a few bucks and let me do it right. I really don’t think you’ll regret it.

This happens more often than you’d think: You’re driving in North Carolina, you’re involved in an auto accident, and one of you has an auto insurance policy from another state. Seems like it would be simple. But it ain’t.

North Carolina is a liability state. That means we all (should) carry liability insurance to cover our mistakes, meaning if we cause an accident our insurance should pay for the damages to the person whom we damaged. There are several other states who are very similar in that regard. Some other states have variations of no-fault coverage, often called PIP, which stands for Personal Injury Protection. In those states, your auto coverage covers your own losses when anyone causes an accident. And there are variations of those. Some have a lot of coverage, some have a little of that, then they turn into liability policies. Some have PIP and your health insurances is precluded from getting involved. It gets weird fast.

So what happens when you’re in this situation? It’s my favorite lawyer answer: It depends. Who caused the accident, and who has the out of state policy? Is it a PIP policy? Does that help or hurt? How does the PIP interact with health insurance? How does it interact with liability coverage? Will we be robbing Peter to pay Paul? Ack!

This stuff can get really complicated really quickly. That being the case, doesn’t it make sense to get an attorney to help you investigate your coverage situation and help you navigate your course? I think so. If you’re in an accident, call me at 919-929-2992.