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Insurance lawyers and adjusters spend hours poring over an injured party’s medical records, fervently hoping to find the “preexisting condition.” You’ve had a bad fall and hurt your lower back. But you had gone to the doctor ten years ago complaining of back pain. Maybe you even had surgery back then. Now the insurance company finds that, and you can bet they will try to use it against you. Their bad sidewalk didn’t cause your back pain, they will argue. You’ve had a bad back for years!

An experienced insurance industry lawyer will know how to counter that argument as well. The law allows you to recover for the difference between what your condition was before the accident and what it is after. In addition, the law recognizes what is called the “eggshell skull” plaintiff doctrine. In other words, if someone wrongfully causes brain injury to another person who happens to have an “eggshell skull,” the person at fault is still responsible for the injury. That the injured person’s skull may have been defective does not excuse the wrongful conduct. Don’t let the fact that you may have had a prior injury stop you from consulting with an experienced insurance industry attorney.

What parent hasn’t said those very words to their children? And what adult doesn’t remember their parents telling them exactly that? The alleged fault of the injured party is a valuable arrow in the insurance industry’s quiver. Blaming the victim can be a very effective strategy, and indeed the law allows for a reduction in the value of a claim to account for the victim’s fault. In trip and fall cases, the victim is in a seemingly impossible catch-22. If the defect was small (but still caused harm), then
the insurance company will argue there was no negligence in allowing that defect to exist. If the defect is large, the insurance company will argue that it still doesn’t have to pay because the victim was at fault for not seeing it.

Make no mistake, these are tough cases, but all is not lost. With the use of the right experts, such as engineers, even small defects can be explained to be the danger that they are. Local codes are often helpful in that regard as well. For example, if the local code mandates a sidewalk elevation of no more than half an inch, the insurance company can not then argue that a one-inch elevation is “trivial.” Likewise, an experienced insurance industry attorney may well be able to get around the “watch where you are going” defense. Of course, codes exist because people do not always watch where they are going. Perhaps the victim was distracted by a display window or was carrying bags and couldn’t see the uneven sidewalk.

Once again, the insurance industry plays on guilt. “Maybe I should have watched where I was walking. Maybe I shouldn’t make a claim.” You’ve made Jake from State Farm very happy. Instead, you should not hesitate to contact an experienced insurance industry attorney, who may be able to help!

I even have pictures of him with my kids! Dog bites account for roughly 1/3 of all homeowners’ insurance payouts. The injuries from dog bites can be horrifying, particularly to children who like to get their faces at the same level as the dog’s head. Yet many people are reluctant to bring a claim, even for horrible disfigurement from a dog bite. They think, “It was my fault; I shouldn’t have pet a strange dog.” Or, more likely, the dog was a family pet of someone you know. Perhaps even a family member. Again, music to Jake’s ears. Cha-ching for the insurance industry!

The reality is that, at least in Pennsylvania, dog bite claims are often more valuable than one might think. For one thing, the old “one free bite rule” that allows a dog owner to escape liability for the dog’s first bite is no longer the law. Also, the law now allows a jury to find from that first bite alone the dog was so vicious that its owners must have seen this coming.

We have seen countless negligent dog owners say that their little pit bull wouldn’t hurt anyone. And we really have had them offer pictures of the dog with their kids. But an experienced insurance industry attorney knows what questions to ask to determine if the dog owner should have seen something coming. Did the dog growl at strangers? Bark? Act strangely?

These are cases that can be won, even if, by all appearances, the dog was “fine” before it bit you.

Which brings us to another reason many people never bring valid claims:

Isn’t It Wrong to Sue My Family?

Well, it depends. But the reality is that if an injured party only wants to pursue a claim against the family member’s insurance company, they can do so. We recently represented a woman whose husband had completely accidentally and totally negligently injured her severely. The husband felt terrible about the incident and still does. The client certainly wasn’t going to go to court to get a large judgment against her husband, but he had homeowners insurance. Our client’s daughter happened to encounter one of our partners at church, who advised her that her mother could pursue a claim against the homeowners’ coverage.

This poor woman was badly hurt and, in fact was in a nursing home. She wasn’t “that type of person” to pursue a claim. After all, it was her husband who had accidentally injured her. She was finally convinced to pursue a claim, and we were able to get her a sizable settlement. She was never going to pursue her husband’s assets, which after all, were held jointly with her. But she did successfully pursue the insurance coverage, which, after all, she and her husband had paid for.

Don’t let the insurance industry profit from your guilt over filing a claim – guilt they help create and reinforce! Contact an experienced insurance company attorney to see if you have a valid claim.