*AGENT/FRIEND DISCLAIMER: I have several friends who are State Farm agents and at the same time kind and wonderful people. This is not meant as a slight against the agents of State Farm, but it is an accurate report of what the claims department of State Farm is doing now. Love you guys, but this stuff is going down and people should know.

While you were asleep in 2011 the Republican-controlled General Assembly of North Carolina passed a bill that is referred to as the “billed v. paid” legislation. This changed the Rules of Evidence to allow evidence of what was necessary to pay the bill, as opposed to what was actually billed, when people were seeking recovery for health care expenses. Here’s the text of the Rule:

“Evidence offered to prove past medical expenses shall be limited to evidence of the amounts actually paid to satisfy the bills that have been satisfied, regardless of the source of payment, and evidence of the amounts actually necessary to satisfy the bills that have been incurred but not yet satisfied. This rule does not impose upon any party an affirmative duty to seek a reduction in billed charges to which the party is not contractually entitled.”

The best way to explain what this means is to go back in time before it was passed.

In the good old days, when you were attempting to recover against someone who harmed you, what they owed you was whatever was billed by your health care provider, regardless of your health insurance adjustments. That meant that if your hospital bill was $5000, your health insurance paid $3000, and the hospital wrote off the other $2000 as part of their contractual adjustment with the insurance company, the bad guy in your case owed you the full $5000 because that’s what was billed.

Now, what is allowed into evidence, and therefore all a victim is allowed to recover, is the amount that is necessary to pay the bill. So in the above example, you could only recover the $3000 on that bill, even though it was billed at $5000.

That’s right, now tortfeasors get credit for the health insurance that you pay for. Super fair, right?

That’s sarcasm, by the way. Of course it’s not fair.

We aren’t in a position to change that law now, and maybe will never be, so we have to deal with it.

What’s unfortunate is that, as insurance companies are wont to do, State Farm’s claims department is taking its own unilateral and irrational interpretation of this Rule of Evidence. State Farm claims is telling victims of their insureds that they don’t have to pay any bills that aren’t paid by health insurance.

Go back and look at the text of the Rule. There isn’t anything that even comes close to, “Thou shalt use thine health insurance.” There is no such compulsion in the rule whatsoever. But State Farm is claiming that there is.

This may seem simply like an annoyance to those of you who aren’t in a claims situation right now. But here is where it’s getting really, really ugly: Many people in auto accidents sustain soft tissue neck and back injuries that they believe to be best treated by chiropractic care. Health insurance isn’t exactly friendly about chiropractic care, and the co-pays are dreadfully expensive. As a result, what most people do is simply go to the chiropractor, not use their health insurance, and have the bill wait until the case is settled. If they are forced to use their health insurance, then they would have to be shelling out $40ish every time they are treated, which is normally 3 times a week for a few months. Who do you know that can sustain that sort of expenditure? And why should they when they are the victim and didn’t ask for this in the first place?

Why shouldn’t State Farm do this? Several reasons:

• Nowhere in this revised Rule of Evidence does it say that a victim has to use health insurance. Period.
• Your health insurance is yours. You can choose to use it or not, and the insurance company of the knucklehead who just ran you over shouldn’t be able to tell you when to use it.
• When you try to take the path of least resistance as a victim in this situation, you are victimized further because using your health insurance is going to cost you more out of pocket when you go to a chiropractor. You bear more of the burden than you should, for an injury that wasn’t your fault in the first place.

What can we do? Well, the only real solution is to file suit over and over again and beat State Farm on this issue enough to cost them money and get them to change course. The problem with that is not many people want to file suit given the uncertainty, time, and expense involved. But that’s the reality we are facing now.

So the next time you think that personal injury attorneys are the reason that law suits are filed, stop and think about how insurance claims departments can necessitate this uptick in litigation because of their opportunistic and manipulative practices.

If you have an auto accident, call me. I would like to help. 919-929-2992.

Stereotypes are all over. Here are a few:

PI attorneys are take advantage of “the system” to siphon off money for clients who aren’t hurt as badly as they say and to make profit for themselves.

Claimants exaggerate their injuries for profit, and some even do this as a part-time occupation. They file false claims with insurance carriers and cost honest premium-payers money.

Insurance companies are megalomaniacal corporations with more money than heart and play a gambling game that they refuse to lose, along with their bought and paid-for politicians.

Are any of these exactly correct? What’s your opinion? I’d love to hear it. Here’s mine:

There are good and bad folks in every walk of life. There are honest PI attorneys and there are scheisters. There are claimants with legitimate injuries and claims and there are scammers. But do the scheisters and the scammers represent all of us? Obviously not. But do those bad apples make the rest of us look bad and cause problems? You bet.

Insurance companies are in a for-profit business and like the rest of us do their best to manipulate circumstances to their financial advantage. Who can blame them?

I can blame them. It’s a matter of scale. Insurance companies have vast resources, and have over the years spent a ton of time in money to mold a system that favors them. So when a person has a legitimate claim, it’s vastly unfair when a multi-billion dollar company refuses a $10,000 claim. How can the little guy fight and win? And how many times do they do this to almost powerless injured people each day? Thousands?

It’s a circular problem, I know. But think about it and see if there’s anything you can do to change the system. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Insurance companies do not want you to hire an attorney for your auto accident personal injury claims. This might seem intuitive to some, but trust me: it isn’t intuitive to others.

It’s important to think about this. Why wouldn’t an insurance company want you to hire an attorney?

The way to the answer is, oddly, by answering another question: What’s always the most important thing to insurance companies? That’s an easy one…money!

Take this into consideration:

In 1995, Allstate produced a training manual for its claim adjusters [Allstate Insurance Co., Unrepresented Segment Training Manual, 15-30, July 1995]. This document stressed the importance of convincing claimants to represent themselves and not retain an attorney. Why? Allstate explained its position with a number of telling statistics: With settlements under $15,000 injured claimants represented by an attorney averaged $7,450 in a total settlement. Those who represented themselves to Allstate averaged only $3,464.

So what does this boil down to?

Personal injury claims are an example of a zero sum game. That means that every time the insurance company saves a buck, you lose a buck. So if there’s anything you can do to turn that around – where you get a buck and they lose a buck – and put the profit on your side, shouldn’t you do it?

Hiring an attorney does just that; it puts you in a position to turn the odds in your favor and help you get the compensation you deserve on your claim.

If you have a personal injury claim, an auto accident claim, a slip and fall claim, a dog bite claim, or anything like that, call an attorney. Better yet. Call me. 919-929-2992.

This is less of an informational piece than I have routinely been providing, but more of a positional piece that is my opinion, for what that is worth.

I heard through the grapevine that a tragic accident happened here in town and the family of the victim hired a Cary lawyer.  What the what?! Why a Cary lawyer?

If you have an auto accident or slip and fall or dog bite in Chapel Hill, wouldn’t it make sense to hire a Chapel Hill Personal Injury lawyer?

This is of course not to say that out of town lawyers can’t do anything. There are tons of great attorneys out there and they can do marvelous things for their clients.  But in making the decision to hire an attorney, location might be something that is worth considering.

Yeah, I know.  For years I’ve been saying, “Location doesn’t matter!  I can handle any injury claim in NC.”  That is still true.  The converse is true as well: Other attorneys not in Chapel Hill can handle claims here, too.  That’s great.  What I’m arguing is that if you have an injury in Chapel Hill, it makes more sense to have a Chapel Hill attorney than an out of town-er.  Here are a few reasons why:

1) I would assume, though not necessarily always correctly, that if you are injured in Chapel Hill you either live, work, or are a student in Chapel Hill.  That being the case, my proximity to you makes interaction far more convenient.  My Chapel Hill clients drop stuff off all the time, and can often chat with me about their case at a moment’s notice.  Isn’t that worth something?  Conversely, while an out of town attorney could competently handle a case situated here, is it as convenient to stop in and see him?  Not necessarily.

*Before you decide to argue with me about me talking out of the other side of my mouth and asking to be hired for out of town cases, check this out:  It’s a completely separate argument!  While I may not be as close to out of town clients, I do have an overwhelming amount of accessibility to communication.  I answer my own phone, I respond to emails, I return voice mails, I have a mailbox, of course, and I even have a live chat on my website.  If you’ve worked with me before and another attorney, tell me: Who was more accessible?  I bet I win that every time.

2) If you don’t live or work here, then you would benefit from having someone who is local and can bring that familiarity of place to the handling of the case.  Being local I have many helpful connections in town and am likely far more familiar with where your accident happened than an out of town lawyer.  Case in point: I was hired to represent a student who was run over on campus.  When her parents described to me how this happened, I immediately knew the crosswalk involved because I had seen and heard of near misses there myself.  I was able to quickly get footage of the scene at a relevant time and get a favorable disposition for my client.  I’m also in the Orange County Courthouse regularly.  So why would you want an outsider?

I bet in some situations the victim or family live elsewhere, so they get an attorney closer to them, or someone whom they already know.  That’s fine. I get it; I can’t win ’em all.  But to me, if you have an incident leading to an injury in Chapel Hill, then it only makes sense to keep it local and hire a Chapel Hill attorney if you need one.  Namely me.  So do that.

919-929-2992.

There are thousands of traffic tickets handled every day in North Carolina. Most of those are handled by the defendants themselves without the benefits of an attorney’s advice. When they are handled that way – what we call pro se in this business, which is to say without an attorney or for yourself – it’s very easy to mess things up. Here are (what I think to be) the Top Traffic Ticket Errors in North Carolina:

3. Pleading to something you don’t understand: People often have no idea what is best for their driving record/insurance points if they don’t have the proper training. I often hear people say, “Just use a PJC! That’s what I did.” In many cases, that’s your third best option, meaning there are two other superior ones, and in some cases, it’s worse than just pleading guilty. Before you decide to plead guilty to something, know the consequences.
4. Paying it off: This is similar to Number 3. When you pay a ticket off you are pleading guilty to your original charge! Do you know the consequences of that? It’s almost never a good idea to do that. You should not make that decision without knowing what will happen as a result.
5. Not showing up: Missing your court date for your traffic ticket is like getting shot by an arrow and thinking that if you just ignore it, that arrow will just fall out and everything will be just fine. That is never going to happen. And the longer you wait, the more things can get nasty. To use another metaphor, things can snowball and get bigger and worse as time goes on. You can get arrested, lose your license, get worse charges and eventually, possibly, go to jail, all because you missed your court date for a simple traffic ticket. This is the worst and most avoidable error in NC Traffic Tickets.

Now you know. Really, the best thing for you to do is to call and attorney and get some proper advice.

Call me if you are reading this because you probably need help. 919-929-2992.