The dirty little secret insurance companies don’t want you to know

Most of us are good citizens and buy liability insurance to cover us in case we cause an accident. Some people buy minimum liability coverage and others buy more.

When you purchase this insurance, you do so not only to comply with the law, but also to protect yourself and your property in the event you cause an automobile, motorcycle, or other motor vehicle accident.

Now let’s say you have an accident that is your fault; report the accident to your insurance company; You think your insurance company will cover you according to your insurance policy, right? WRONG!

If you read the fine print on your insurance policy, you’ll notice a lot of language that most non-lawyers wouldn’t understand. The gist of the language in plain language is that by accepting the insurance policy, you agree to cooperate with the insurance company if they decide to litigate, and the insurance company is the one who decides whether a case will settle, not you.

Insurance companies are all about making tons of money and paying as little as possible. Since the advent of legally mandated insurance coverage (Proposition 213 in California), insurance companies have become very arrogant because their coffers are full of your money.

Instead of settling meritorious claims, they are forcing claims to be litigated in court in an attempt to prevent personal injury attorneys from obtaining fair compensation for their clients. They know full well that personal injury attorneys don’t have as much money to litigate as they do, so their ploy is to starve personal injury attorneys and ultimately make it harder for people injured in accidents to recover. In the end, it is consumers and people injured in accidents who are hurt, while large companies make more profit at their expense.

Even people who cause accidents and have adequate liability insurance to cover the claim are being victimized by insurance companies.

Insurance companies are experts at deception. With their money, insurance companies fund politicians and run media ads blaming personal injury attorneys for making insurance rates so high. What they don’t say is that the backlog in court is because the insurance companies didn’t settle the claims as they should in the first place.

Now let’s go back to the example of you causing an accident. If the insurance company is unreasonable and refuses to settle a case at or below the policy limits, then you will be dragged through the legal system. You may have to respond to discovery, appear for depositions, and even take time off to go to trial. This is a long and arduous process that you didn’t think you would have to deal with when you purchased liability insurance. Surprise!

If you lose at trial, the insurance company will in most cases pay the judgment, but guess what; YOU WILL HAVE A JUDGMENT AGAINST YOU ON YOUR CREDIT REPORT and in the court file! Thanks to your insurance company, your credit has just been damaged through no fault of your own.

It’s fair? I assure you that it is not. She paid for the insurance; the insurance company could have settled the case for you within the limits of your policy; instead, they decided to litigate in an attempt to minimize what they have to pay in order to keep their profits high. They did it without any regard for your credit report, or without your name appearing on the public record as if you had a judgment against you.

Many insurance companies have in-house attorneys; some use outside attorneys. These attorneys are supposed to do what is best for you. The reality is that they do what is best for the insurance company. This is the latest conflict of interest. Ethically, the attorney the insurance company uses to represent you owes a duty to you, not the insurance company. The reality is that the attorney gets his marching orders from the insurance companies.

An example of a worst case scenario is the recent Hurricane Katrina disaster. Have you read about all the poor people who are being screwed because their insurance companies don’t cover them for the insurance they paid for?

It’s time for America and consumers to wake up and smell the roses. It’s not the trial lawyers who are the problem; it’s a big business that wants to screw the little guy so they can make more profit at his expense. Some have made this a political issue. I even heard President Bush talk about tort reform and blame trial lawyers for the nation’s health problems.

Every time here a wrong reform remember one thing; you’re about to get screwed! Any time your right to recover damages is violated in a court of law, you will be the victim, while big business gets the mule!

By Norman Gregory Fernandez, Lic., © 2007