A woman who sustained an ankle fracture settled for the stacked limits of $150,000 with her insurance carrier. She was involved in a bad highway accident caused by a hit and run driver. The difficulty in this case came in reversing the liability decision made prior to the attorney’s involvement.
The woman had given a recorded statement to her insurance company where she stated that she was “getting over” to exit Interstate 70 when the accident happened. The police report also attributed fault to the woman for “improperly merging.” Her insurance company placed responsibility for this accident on the woman for not checking her blind spot while merging lanes.
The liability decision was reversed by unearthing a few big facts. The police report listed the accident as occurring at the wrong mile marker, a small detail that held major implications as it showed the woman did not need change lanes to take her intended exit.
For the insurance company’s theory of liability to hold, there had to have been property damage on the rear passenger quarter panel of the woman’s vehicle. Her attorney requested someone from the insurance company go out to take photos of this area of the vehicle. Remarkably, the vehicle was horrifically mangled on almost every area except the passenger side rear quarter panel.
The police report was made without talking to the woman. The police gave their best estimate of what happened based on where the property damage was found, but they never had the opportunity to talk to the woman as she was whisked away from the scene by ambulance to the emergency room.
The woman was heavily medicated after surgery when she gave her recorded statement. Her insistent use of on the phrase “getting over” in the recorded statement did not accurately describe what she intended to say. She meant “getting over” in the sense that she was intending to exit the highway, not that she was actively merging.
The insurance company reversed their liability decision when it became clear that several major factors relied on during the original investigation were incorrect.
There were approximately $30,000 in specials owed. The vehicle she was driving had $50,000 of uninsured motorist coverage. She had four (4) other vehicles on the policy. We settled for the $25,000 stacked limits available of each additional vehicle for a total of $150,000.
