WE KNOW ABOUT AND EXPOSE THE INSURANCE COMPANY’S TRICKS

One of the first traps to avoid is to give the insurance company a written or taped statement. This is when you are most vulnerable. We find that they frequently will not take it down accurately or will spin it against you. With no knowledge of the law, you don’t know that what you were encouraged by them to say will damage your case and you will fail to realize that they have actually misquoted you so as to bury the truth. For instance, in a case where you negligently drove your car off a slick road and your wife and children were seriously injured; you have a duty to make sure they get the full benefits of the liability policy. The insurance adjuster however spins the claim against you as a challenge to your personal integrity and suggests that if you admit your carelessness you have let your family down because it was your fault that they now suffer. Of course, the opposite is true. If you are not at fault, you and your family will suffer financial disaster and the insurance company will not pay a dime. You will have deprived your family of the financial support they needed when they most needed it. The law recognizes that all of us are careless without meaning harm and that is the basis for the entire insurance industry taking billions of dollars per year from the motoring public. The only legitimate basis for this business model and for the insurance company drain on our budgets, is that the companies should then hold this money “in trust” to pay it back when one of us makes a mistake and harms someone, including our own family.

An example. A young daughter allowed one of the passengers in her father’s car to drive during a trip to a high school football game. Unknown to the daughter, the girl who crashed the car and injured her, did not have a driver’s license. Insurance policies, by statute, must cover everyone who drives the car as long as they have the permission of the owner to do so. This is true regardless of whether the driver is licensed or not. In this case, the insurance adjuster hired a court reporter and went to the seriously injured daughter’s hospital bed and while she was still in great pain and under medication, got a sworn transcript where she stated that her father had told her not to allow an unlicensed driver to ever operate the car. This statement was untrue but the adjuster got this 16-year-old daughter to say this by telling her that if she did not say it, she was guilty of a crime by permitting an unlicensed driver to drive. Refusing to pay the daughter’s large medical bills, thereby bankrupting the family, the insurance company caused the father to seek the help of the Maeder Team. We proved the lies the adjuster had told this vulnerable and innocent young girl and the jury threw out the sworn statement and found coverage. The case went to the Wisconsin Supreme Court two times before the insurance company finally paid in full. It is this kind of tenacious and unrelenting momentum that the Team has, that has won the admiration of the legal community and courts. They know that our clients get justice.

Another trap is to go on social media and discuss your case or your family’s problems resulting from the accident. The comments you post are accessible and some courts will order you to divulge your password so that these comments can be obtained by the insurance companies. The comments that support your case will not be admissible in court but any demeaning or questionable comments will be spun around by the defense to your detriment.

Another trap is to keep a “diary” of your life. It is amazing to the Team that some well-meaning, but totally clueless law firms require their clients to keep track of their daily activities in writing. Such a record can be obtained by the defense, so don’t do it. The good stuff cannot be used to support your case and the information that you don’t want to be divulged will be divulged. An apparently innocent comment, such as how much you enjoyed playing ball with your children, will be twisted around in court to attack your honest claim that you have a chronic back problem because of injuries sustained in the accident.

Another trap is to trust the insurance company. The adjuster will represent to you that he is your friend and that he will treat you honestly and fairly. An example is a family that had a minor child injured in a crash. The child had very serious head injuries that will impact her life forever. Because of her minor status, it was necessary to get a court to approve the settlement for it to be binding. In these cases, the insurance company will actually hire an “independent” lawyer for the child to be his/her guardian ad litem (a minor’s legal representative) to review the case and advise the court if it is a “fair and just settlement”. You do the math: what do you think the lawyer will do when he/she reviews the inadequate amount offered, if this lawyer is actually the lawyer who also does all of this insurance company’s defense business and, when the amount the insurance company pays this firm per year for its defense work is a large part of its total income? While courts try to carefully screen these cases to determine if the settlement is fair, the stage is set for a bad result. In these cases no lawyer has gone out and obtained another medical opinion to challenge whether the child’s head injury really has permanently damaged her or not, no one has suggested waiting for several years to see if the CHI (closed head injury) has really damaged the child’s “executive functions” that will only be able to be determined later after her brain develops. No one has sent the child to a psychologist to give her the necessary tests to see if, while there is no objective damage on the MRI, there is actual brain damage that will gradually over the years lead to her total or partial disability. In these cases, the insurance company had tied the hands of the lawyer they have hired to represent the child by preventing any pro-active efforts on his/her part and the court itself has no power to force the proper medical and legal development of the case. The child and ultimately, the parents, will suffer the consequences of this failure to understand that while you are taking responsibility for your child’s future, you are not really equipped to do so without the Maeder Team on your side.