Houston Personal Injury Attorneys – Smith & Hassler

One morning on the way to work you are rear-ended while waiting at a red light.  You are hurt and your car is badly damaged.  Your car was not safe to drive and has been towed to a storage lot.  The driver who rear-ended you apologized at the scene and told you she was at fault.  The police officer who investigated the accident issued the driver who hit you a ticket for rear-ending you and told you the other driver is at fault.

That afternoon you called the other driver’s insurance company and set up a claim.  They said they cannot provide you with a rental car right away.  The accident was clearly the fault of their insured, so why no rental car? You’re without your car through no fault of your own and you are frustrated…is the insurance company giving you the run-around?

The answer is that they are probably not giving you the run around.  Before an insurance company will accept liability for a claim and start doing things that cost them money (like providing you with a rental car), they will want to investigate the claim.  At a minimum they will want to speak to their driver and ask them how the accident happened.  The insurance company will also want to verify coverage, by making sure that their driver’s insurance policy was in effect on the date of the accident and that the person driving was a covered driver under the policy.

Even the most efficient insurance companies typically cannot complete an investigation within hours of a car accident, for example: they may have trouble reaching their insured to get their version of events.  While you have called and reported the claim, and you may have provided your version of how the accident happened which is completely correct and truthful, the insurance company will not make a decision to part with their money based ONLY on your version of what happened.

It is frustrating to suddenly be without your vehicle due to someone else’s carelessness and you have ever right to feel frustrated. But…think of it this way: if you got a bill in the mail from someone you didn’t know saying you owe them $1,000 and you need to mail them a check, you would want to know why they think you owe them money.  You wouldn’t just assume you owe them money because they say so and mail out the check.  You would try to figure out if you really owed the money before you paid.

Try to be patient. Even if you are frustrated, don’t take it out on the insurance adjuster.  There is an old saying: “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”  Adjusters are people too, and they are more likely to help out people who are patient and polite than people who scream at them or behave unreasonably.

If you have been injured as a result of a motor vehicle accident, typically the earlier you get sound legal advice, the better. For example, Smith & Hassler strongly recommends you do not give a recorded statement to the other driver’s insurance company.  You can call Smith & Hassler for a free consultation regarding your motor vehicle accident claim and speak directly to our attorneys.  We can help you by talking you through the process and helping you understand what to expect.

Tim Miller, founder of Texas EquuSearch, has filed a lawsuit against Casey Anthony seeking to recover the $112,000 it spent on the search for 2-year old Cayleigh Anthony. The suit was filed Tuesday July 12th, 2011 in Orlando, Florida. Tim Miller spent a month in 2008 searching for Cayleigh. Miller and nearly 4,200 workers and volunteers traveled to Florida to participate. Casey Anthony didn’t report her daughter missing for 31-days and claimed she didn’t know what happened to her little girl. EquuSearch went to Florida to search for Cayleigh because they were asked to come by Cindy Anthony who is Cayleigh’s grandmother and Casey Anthony’s mother. Texas EquuSearch relies on donations for funding and Mr. Miller said he owes it to those who donated money to recoup the approximately $112,000 spent on the search for Cayleigh, which he says is about 40% of the organization’s annual budget. The lawsuit also says that Texas EquuSearch turned down requests for help from 15 other families because they had committed so many resources to searching for Cayleigh.

There has been some speculation as to whether Casey Anthony, acquitted last week on charges that she murdered Cayleigh, may profit from the tremendous media attention to the murder trial, perhaps through film rights to her story or a book deal. So-called Son of Sam laws exist to stop criminals from profiting financially from their crimes, including by selling their stories. These laws often allow states to seize the proceeds of such sales and use the profits to compensate the murderers’ victims. The catch with Son of Sam laws as applied to the Casey Anthony case however is that the accused criminal must be convicted of the crime for the laws to apply. Casey Anthony was convicted of lying to investigators, but whether that conviction is sufficient to invoke any Son of Sam law that applies remains to be seen.

Son of Sam laws notwithstanding, any media outlet that pays Casey Anthony for her story, her time, or anything else, should prepared themselves for a significant public backlash.