FAQ Friday with Gregory Herrman, October 20, 2017| Corpus Christi Personal Injury Lawyers

all right well hello everybody that's 2:30 again on Friday 10-4 FAQ Friday we have a couple questions today the first question is if I sue the other driver am i suing him or the insurance company okay so the way it works is in Texas you're not allowed to sue the other insurance company directly so somebody runs into you you've got damages you want to sue them the insurance company is who you're trying to get the money from because most people are what we call judgment proof meaning they don't have the money and you get a judgment against them you're not gonna collect though they'll take the money on the bank they will you know move quick some people even quit their job you know you get a get a million dollar verdict against somebody and he'd have any money he's gonna come to quit quit his job up and quit working he's not gonna keep working just to pay that million dollars off so so in most cases you know what you're doing is you're suing the insurance company but you know you're not allowed to style the case that way in Texas because when you go to court when you go to trial the jury's not supposed to know whether anybody has insurance or not so you don't name the insurance company you name the other individual you know John Doe Bill Smith you know whatever so he's the defendant on the on the pleadings on a lawsuit he has to show up to court to explain his actions but you're not really trying to get any money out of him most the time you you're trying to get money from the insurance company and you know you have a disagreement about what it's worth so this is how you're gonna determiners let a jury decide what the case worth but there is is you can't tell the jury that does insurance because then the jury will just go oh well it's just an insurance company so you know that's a word you know as much money as as as we can because it's just an insurance company so that's the theory and that's why you don't actually sue the insurance company you sue the individual but unless he's a millionaire or a billionaire you're not really planning on probably collected from that individual or unless it has a lot of assets but he's got a contract with his insurance company and the insurance company has agreed that any judgment against him that you get they will pay so the stolid case is always against the defendant for his negligent actions not against the insurance company but in general that's how I'm trying to get the collective judgment from is from the insurance company ok the second question is I don't want to go to court can you still help me and of course the answer there is yes of course we you know most the time we don't go to court anyway on cases about 19 about 95% of cases 98% get resolved before trial we won't even file a lawsuit without getting your permission you know just because you file a claim you know filing a lawsuit so you file a claim we'll do everything we can to get it resolved and if we think they're not offering enough and your claims worth more money we will recommend filing a lawsuit for you and of course it's your choice but even if we file a lawsuit doesn't mean you're going to court yet you know lots of times after we file a lawsuit insurance companies will agree let's reevaluate this claim and we're going to pay lawyers to defend this enhancer and that's gonna cost us a bunch of money so let's reevaluate it and lots of times just have to file suit they agree to pay more money and so you know we get your case settled immediately after we file suit but if they don't then what you still do is you set it for trial and you know trials are usually you know if you want to get a decent trial date you got to go about a year out anyway year year and a half sometimes even like two years out and so in the meantime you're doing a lot to discovery you're exchanging answers to interrogatories requests for productions request for disclosures and then they take depositions and the other side will want to take your deposition will want to take the other sides of depositions and what most judges do anyways they require you to go to mediation anyway before you go to court so so what what Allah generally happen is after you do all the discovery before trial you'll schedule for mediation and that gives you one last chance to settle the case before going to drown actually going to court and of the cases that we file suit on I would say probably 75 80 85 percent of those get resolved either during discovery or at mediation so you can still you know stay with the claim and say well if you claim all the way up to mediation and you know unless they decide to yank all offers which is really really rare they usually don't do that until like the Friday before trial if they know you just you know I'm gonna take the money anyway they just say our wills quit offer money but so you have a real good chance of getting your case done in mediation and and then usually right before trial that's when that's when they get serious lot of times when they say okay this case is definitely going you know we've been kind of bluffing and thinking we would have to pay the full amount but now it looks like we're going let's you know we'll give it one last one last chance on the Thursday before trial to Friday because they know then that their defense lawyer has to work all weekend getting ready for trial and he's gonna build them a bunch of money just for the weekend plus if it still doesn't get settled then he's got to build through the trial so lots of times they'll come up with more money right before trial we are literally on the courthouse steps so you know 99% of time you just cuz you come to us you're not gonna go to court but if your case needs to go to court we you know we'll take it to take a trial take the cord take it to appeal if we need to but it's your choice all along the way and if you say you know I don't want to do this anymore I want to take the money then at any point you can do that so but definitely coming to us is not it's not a final lawsuit and it's not going to court we can file a claim for for you and they give you what their best offer is and we can go from there so the decision is always in your hands well thank you for thank you everybody very much for your questions and we will see you again next Friday at 2:30