FAQ Friday with Gregory Herrman & Scott Staha | Corpus Christi Personal Injury Lawyers

hello everybody welcome again to frequently asked questions Friday today we have mr. Scott Scott God is the lawyer has been been with me long has she been with me how long's 22 years 22 years so Scott once tell everybody something a little something about yourself I've been here 22 years I practiced in the litigation department handling personal injury claims trucking claims wrongful death claims I was born and raised here in South Texas and have practiced pretty much all over the state where were you born Victoria just uh just up the road and your brothers and sisters uh two sisters both still live in Victoria along with mom and I'm married yes I been married almost 25 years to a to a lawyer another lawyer [Laughter] all right well and uh no kids right no kids three dogs at least no gives you you know three dots all right are you know tell us about yourself Oh wonderful guy you are with what what's your favorite drink say that my my favorite free is a is a Grey Goose martini straight up dry with two hours all right and your favorite cut a steak rabbi rabbi rabbi anything else you want to snow about you before you started oh not that I won't William to review on Facebook live so Scott's topic is the question do I still have a claim if my medical bills were paid by insurance so basically they're saying hey you know I got injured but hey uh my bills got paid so you know I guess I don't have a claim do I actually you do you have a claim in the sense that along with any personal injury claim there are different elements to your claim in typical for example in a RA case you could have for example your medical bills both past and future you could have physical pain and suffering both past and future physical impairment both past and future if you had any type of cuts on you that resulted in scarring you would have a disfigurement claim in addition you would still have a property damage claim if you were the owner of the automobile or if you had personal items inside the vehicle that were damaged as a result of the wreck you would have a claim for those items of personal property that were damaged so just because your medical bills may have been paid by insurance certainly does not prevent you from asserting a claim for the many other elements that you have in addition although the claim the medical may have been paid you can still make a claim for the medical that was paid by your insurance because most insurance policies have what's called a subrogation clause in them simply meaning that if you are injured and they have paid your medical bills as a result of those injuries they're entitled to be repaid for those medical bills that they paid and so although you won't be repaying the full amount of the medical bills you'll be being paying back the segregated amount so yes you still have a claim and just don't think that if the bills were paid that your your claim is done and over with you should certainly consult with an attorney to advise you you should consult with Herman and Herman to advise you on other aspects of your client okay so I think you missed you mentioned disfigurement Eston future mental anguish past and future paid in separate mental anguish pain of suffering past future and property damage I don't think you meant mentioned lost wages are wage earning capacity I left that out that is another element if you were unable to go to work and as a result of that you lost out on on income or if you were injured and you cannot return back to work at all in the foreseeable future you would have a claim for loss of earning capacity which simply means that the money that you could have earned that you had the ability to earn in the future you can seek compensation for that also or is there some called loss of consortium yeah there is for example if you are if you are married you have your spouse would have a loss of consortium claim and what that is is it's a claim associated with the benefits associated with being married the enjoyment of y'all going out and doing things together the enjoyment of being husband and wife that would potentially also be a claim that that you would have what if you don't enjoy in husband or wife you don't enjoy doing man there's probably not much of a claim there for loss of consortium we're not kids have a loss of conversion plan the kid I think only in the context of if there was a death there would be a loss 'm of support a loss of enjoyment associated with if there was a resulting death and then you'd also have lost one heritance I guess true correct in other words that that which you would have inherited from your parent in the future provided that provided that your parents would have left you in your will you would be able to assert that kind of claim also all right let's go back to this subrogated interest you've done before it has a little bit of confusing them can you give us an example like let's say let's say you have a hundred thousand dollars of medical bills and insurance company pays well what do insurance companies typically pay let's say Blue Cross Blue Shield Humana and I don't care like what what percent would easy to pay or not say you a hundred thousand uh normally they pee they have a contracted rate that contracted rate is usually almost pennies on the dollar typically on a hundred thousand dollar bill you could expect to see a subrogation interest of somewhere between maybe twenty to twenty-five thousand dollars that would have to be repaid so definitely substantially less than the original bill was so let's cookie that him so nine thousand arms and Bill's the insurance would pay how much about about twenty to twenty five thousand and uh and they would you have to pay them back that entire twenty to twenty-five thousand no you actually can negotiate with them in many cases they will accept a reduction because what they're they're doing is the insurance carrier is receiving a benefit because of you because you went out retain an attorney to pursue this Klein they don't get a free ride so to speak they have to pay their fair share and in many cases we can reduce that subrogation interest on average probably a third of that in some cases 50% and depending on the facts we have once in a while been successful in getting a waiver of the subrogation interest and what does I mean waiver of a subrogation basically they agree to waive their subrogate in other words they they agree not that they will not accept any money they they won't demand any money for that subrogation interest which means you owe them nothing like a windfall it's a windfall to you so just that alone might be good reason our lawyer absolutely absolutely you should always consider hiring our consulting with and hiring an attorney the insurance companies that are out there are certainly not looking after your best interest they are looking after their own interest in their own pocketbook and their goal is to basically get you to accept as little as as possible and or just outright deny your claim figuring that if you do not have an attorney you'll just go away so you should always always consult with an attorney and get the best advice you can on how to preserve your claim and also how to how to maximize what you're entitled to for your injuries and damages and lastly let me just let's talk a little bit about hospital liens how excited those work and is there any way around them or any way to get around not paying the hospital back well if the hospital hasn't actually gone out and filed a lien they have a much more difficult time of being able to assert an interest in your settlement pro see and just people don't know what I mean what does that mean go follow lean let's go buddy what that means I mean they think oh my I guess my house has a lien the bank's got a lien on my house or the IRS I didn't take my taxes IRS put a lien on my stuff my bank account but what is hospital and what gives I'm very he it's all these things against you it's not much different then AHA then for example a a tax lien or a mortgage what it does is it is under the property code Texas property code there's a per engine that allows a hospital to go out and to file a document down at the county courthouse and this document basically says we provided services to this individual as a result of of a car wreck or other personal injury and what it says is if you collect any monies we are entitled to be repaid for those services that we provided to you there are some strict requirements that a hospital must comply with in filing these liens in certain cases if they don't for example if the individual does not seek services within 72 hours but basically three days but say four days later goes to the hospital hospital is not permitted to file a hospital lien because the services must be within the first 72 hours also the services for example if it's if it's a very severe injury that requires hospitalization over a long period of time anything over a hundred days would no longer be permitted under a hospital and it's only the first 100 days they also have to file ad in the county in which the services were rendered if they file it in a different County it's not a it's not a valid lien and if they attempt to follow lien against for example what we call uninsured motorist or underinsured motorist coverage which is your own personal coverage a hospital lien does not attach to those proceeds it only attaches to proceeds from a liability policy belonging to the responsible third party that caused your injuries there are a number of ways to attack the lien first and foremost there are again some technical requirements but one of them is is the the bill must be reasonable the services the charges must be reasonable if they are not that is a basis to attack the hospital leaning it requires a little bit more effort because you do have to go down and file a an action in order to determine what the reasonable amount of the the bill is in many cases we have been fairly successful in negotiating down the hospital liens on average 50% on average sometimes even a little bit more than that now what if those bowling forgets to following or they file in our own County or they you know have something they don't mean one year your other tests well they don't have a lien in other words they can't hold up your settlement money doesn't mean you don't owe the bill but they it won't hold up your settlement you won't have to specifically withhold a portion of the settlement funds to pay that bill but once again does it mean you don't have to pay them they just can't be entitled to the two the first share of monies from the the settlement so it's a whole lot easier to negotiate with them if they don't have a lien or they miss filed the lien absolutely if they do absolutely so and you know what we do a lot of times is we give give the money to the client and say look if you want to sit wants to negotiate hospital for you since they don't have a valid lien we'll do it but we need to give you the money first so before they go follow-on and right and now we can just say it you know we'll pay you five dollars a month for the next you know twenty years and they don't want to do that so they'll agree to a hugely discounted amount just so they can get something absolutely any anytime you have any time the hospital has knowledge that there is a there's an attorney involved there their whole mindset changes about how much money they're going to be able to get from the patient that they treated we have found that many many times that that clients can get a much better deal from a hospital when for example they don't realize that there's been an attorney involved until much later down the road they can usually cut a pretty good deal hospitals are willing to work with patients unless they realize that there's a lawyer involved and then they want to play hardball and try to extract as much as they can out of the settlement to pay the bill but that's what the lawyer comes in to correct play hardball with correct all right well anything else you want to add on the subject uh other than if you've been involved in them in a car wreck serious injury please come see us we can certainly help you all right all right well we're out of time here but let me just mention a couple things so the scholarship entry deadline was December 1st it's it's over we are picking winners right now we are down to the top ten and I can tell you that there are some Texas people in the top ten so stay tuned next Friday December 21st we are going to announce the the winners of the pride of the scholarship prizes 1st place is $2,500 second place is 15 third place is a thousand and we're gonna start the scholarship again in January and for next year so if you didn't get in this year and make sure you get it next year but stay tuned one week from the day we'll we'll make the announcements also stay tuned because we are going to have a contest to get people to register to vote we had a pretty good 2018 where we got a lot of new people registered to vote and then a lot of them the register didn't go vote but we're hoping to get more people registered to vote and get them a turnout for the 2020 elections of any special elections in between so it's really really important we think for democracy for people to be registered to vote so we're going to come up with a contest and probably giveaway monthly drawings for everybody that registers to vote so because we don't want you guys waiting to the last second to register to vote and then you forget or you know it's raining outside or whatever so anyway stay tuned for that we'll make that announcement hopefully next week also so until next time we will see you guys next Friday same time same channel and Scott thanks for joining us here you're welcome enjoy all right be happy to come back anytime all right we'll have you back