Birmingham Injury Blog

One thing that is often surprising to our clients when they have been injured in a car wreck or truck wreck is that the health insurance company (BlueCross BlueShield, United, etc.) which has paid for medical treatment often has the right to recover the amount of money that it spent on medical treatment. This right is called a "subrogation" right, which means that the health insurance company can “stand in the shoes” of the injured person and recover its money from the wrongdoer.

When a health insurance company pays medical bills, it normally does not pay dollar-for-dollar but instead pays a percentage. It is that lesser percentage (for example $200.00 on a $1000.00 bill) that must be reimbursed. Normally, the health insurance company will negotiate with the injured person and will reduce the amount that it claims as subrogation by the amount of the attorney’s fee being paid by the injured person to his or her attorney. This makes sense as the injured person has hired an attorney to create a “pool” of money from which the health insurance company is reaching into and drawing from. So the health insurance company should have to pay its share of the attorney’s fee to create that. This has the effect of lowering the amount that the injured person must pay back to the health insurance company.

The law changed a number of years ago so that the Jury can now hear that the injured person has health insurance and how much the health insurance company actually paid. We will address this in a separate blog post, but we did want to alert you to this fact and to be watching for this blog post from us.

If you have been injured in a car wreck or truck wreck and would like to talk to us, we are always happy to schedule a free consultation with you.

Posted by John Watts & M. Stan Herring | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Car Wreck , Product Liability , Slip and Fall , Train Wreck , Truck Wreck

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A shockingly high number of Alabama citizens are killed in train collisions every year. Most of us here in Alabama experience train crossings at least periodically. Why do collisions happen and what are the legal issues?

We represented a surviving family member in a train case and the train lawyer demanded to know in the deposition whether the train had come off the tracks and hit the car. Or did the car pull out in front of the train. The answer was the car pulled out in the path of the train. The lawyer sat back with a smug grin as if he had discovered the theory of relativity before Einstein.

There is a lot of PR out there by the train industry saying that if you pull out in front of a train its because you were "racing" the train. This is just plain wrong. Now, some do try to beat the train or ignore the stop signs or are drunk but not everyone who pulls out in front of a train.

We have handled many train cases involving bad curves coming into the crossing where the train did not blow its horn and did not try to stop when it saw the car come onto the tracks.

The law in Alabama is that we must stop, look, and listen. But if you do that and you don't see or hear the train, and then pull forward and the train comes around the corner/curve, you can have that train on you before you know it. A good rule of thumb is for every mile per hour, it is 1.5 feet per second. So a train going a normal 40 MPH is covering 60 feet per second. Experts who we have hired talk about reaction time - the time it takes once you see or hear a train and the time to react. Maybe a second or two or three. Then the reaction time of the car when you hit the gas or reverse or whatever you do to try to get out of the way. All of those seconds are chewing up 60 feet each.

Train litigation can be very complicated with federal law preempting state law and often requires multiple experts but there are valid cases out there against negligent train companies - even when you are on the tracks when you get hit by the train.

If you have any questions about a potential train case, please contact an attorney experienced in litigating with the train companies so that you can get a good evaluation of your legal options.

Posted by John Watts & M. Stan Herring | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: Train Wreck

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