Getting in a car wreck can cause stress and anguish in many ways. You may be injured and need to go to the hospital, even if they’re busy and understaffed. Once you receive medical care, your medical bills may be an unpleasant surprise. If you need continued treatment, those bills keep showing up. Meanwhile, you might be unable to work for days, weeks, or even months due to your injuries. Your car might also be damaged or even totaled. If all of this isn’t bad enough, you may learn that even though the other driver is at fault, their insurance won’t cover all your costs – or they may be entirely uninsured! This situation can be overwhelming, but calling an Atlanta underinsured motorist lawyer may help reveal more options for compensation for your injuries.
There’s a reason attorney Ali Awad has millions of social media followers – he knows how to bring legal power to the people and how to help those injured by underinsured motorists. Few people have the legal knowledge to pursue their claim aggressively, but with the CEO Lawyer in their corner, they can go toe-to-toe with big insurance companies.
If an underinsured motorist has injured you or a loved one, you may feel like you’re out of options, but that isn’t always the case. To find out what else you can do to get your expenses covered, please call the injury and accident attorneys at the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm team for a no-obligation consultation about your case. The CEO Lawyer and his team seek compensation on your behalf using a contingency basis – that means they don’t get paid unless you do. You have nothing to lose by calling (404) 777-8800 to explore the options for covering your damages.
Car Insurance Requirements in Georgia
First, it’s essential to understand the state’s baseline of car insurance coverage. In the past, Georgia drivers weren’t required to carry any liability insurance, and as you might imagine, that led to a lot of problems. Today, drivers in the state are required to have $25,000 in liability insurance per person and $50,000 in coverage per crash. This may sound reassuring, but there are still a few issues.
First, some drivers remain uninsured, despite the illegality of the situation. The Insurance Information Institute estimates that around 12% of motorists in the Peach State lack insurance coverage. What can you do if you are injured in a car wreck caused by one of these uninsured drivers? You can sue the driver directly, of course, but often uninsured drivers don’t have enough money or assets to pay damages if you win. In this case, you may pay more in court costs to sue them than you will ever recover. If you have purchased uninsured motorist coverage, this may pay for some or all of your expenses, but there are also possible hangups with this type of insurance coverage. We’ll talk more about those later.
The second issue is that even motorists who meet the minimum auto insurance requirements for the state may not cover all your damages. $25,000 might sound like a lot of money – for some people; it might be more than they make in a year or more than their car costs. But when you think about medical bills you’ve had in the past and how much healthcare you may need to recover from a serious accident, you might realize that it’s not very much in terms of car insurance coverage. Your hospital bills alone could cost $25,000, especially if your health insurance doesn’t cover some or all of your treatment. Even with good health insurance, extensive medical care after an accident can be costly. The $25,000 could be quickly eaten up, leaving you with more hospital bills. Worse, there won’t be any money left over to fix your car or take care of regular household bills like rent and food while you’re out of work.
What If the Other Driver Has More Than the Minimum Coverage?
This represents the most favorable outcome. However, these policies cost more in premiums, so many people only purchase the minimum. Additionally, if your medical bills are very high, even extra coverage may not pay for everything. But there may still be other options for you to recover damages. You should always ask an Atlanta attorney who specializes in underinsured motorists to review your case to see if there are other opportunities to collect damages.
What If You Have Underinsured Motorist Coverage?
We certainly recommend carrying underinsured motorist coverage. In many cases, this will provide at least some coverage in the event that an uninsured or underinsured driver causes you harm. But there may still be coverage gaps.
For example, let’s say that you bought $25,000 in uninsured/underinsured motorist insurance (sometimes referred to as UM/UIM coverage). The limits of your policy may apply – it pays out $25,000, but you might still have additional costs. However, it is still better to have $25,000 in coverage than none at all if the other driver was uninsured.
But what if the other driver had some coverage, just not enough? Will you receive the $25,000 from your policy in addition to their insurance payout? Most people assume the answer is yes, but it isn’t always. It depends on the type of policy you purchased. If you bought “stackable” UM/UIM coverage, then you may be able to “stack” the policies and collect on both. The other driver’s insurance will pay out first, so if they have $25,000, you’ll get a check from their insurance policy. (This assumes the insurance adjuster doesn’t deny your claim. We’ll talk more about that a little later.) If this goes smoothly, your policy will kick in up to $25,000 in additional damages. (This also assumes your own insurance company doesn’t deny your claim, which can also happen.)
The other possible situation is that your UM/UIM policy is not stackable. Many people purchase “reduced” or “non-stackable” policies because these tend to be less expensive. Unfortunately, these may not pay out in an underinsured motorist situation. For example, if you have $25,000 in non-stackable UM/UIM coverage, and so does the other driver, and your costs are $35,000, you will get $25,000 from the first policy. Your policy gets an “offset” of whatever the other driver’s policy pays up to its own limit, so if the other policy pays $25,000, your policy won’t pay anything.
If this surprises you, you’re not alone. Unfortunately, many people don’t realize the limitations of non-stackable policies until they try to make a claim on one. And if you’re trying to remember which kind of policy you purchased, you’re not alone on that either. A lot of people don’t know until they need it.
What Are the Other Options If There Is Not Enough Insurance Coverage?
Every case is different, and your most reliable option is to contact an Atlanta underinsured motorist attorney who can guide you on the details of your case. Here are some potential options that may work in some situations:
- You may be able to sue the other driver directly to recover damages. This will likely depend on whether they have any assets you can recover. If you are likely to spend more to take them to court than you can recover, your attorney will likely advise against going this route.
- Make sure you’ve exhausted all possible insurance policies. Some drivers may think they’ve exhausted all their coverage when in fact, one or more insurance companies involved either refused to pay a claim or paid less than the policy limit for some reason. It’s prevalent for insurance adjusters to make offers lower than the policy limits, so we advise you to consult a Atlanta personal injury lawyer before accepting any offer from an insurance company, whether it’s yours or the other driver’s.
- Occasionally there may be other parties besides the other driver and their insurance company from whom you can try to recover damages.
- If all these options are exhausted, and you still have more medical bills than you can pay, your attorney may be able to negotiate with healthcare providers to at least get some of the bills lowered.
What If the Insurance Company Denies Your Claim?
This can happen for all sorts of reasons. An insurance adjuster’s job is to find an excuse not to pay out claims. They often claim the accident was somehow your fault, especially since Georgia has comparative negligence laws that state the other driver’s insurance does not need to pay anything if you were more than 49% at fault. They may also claim the particular type of accident isn’t covered under the policy for one reason or another. These are only a few of dozens of possible excuses the insurance company may have.
What should you do? Don’t try to negotiate with the insurance carrier yourself. You may not be able to accurately gauge how much you deserve in damages in the first place. Worse, the insurance adjuster will probably start asking questions about the accident and try to trip you up. They will take anything you say and twist it to fit the narrative that you were at fault. Plus, you may be having this conversation while in pain from your injuries or on strong drugs for the pain. For these reasons, it’s advisable to avoid speaking with the insurance adjuster on your own. Instead, contact an Atlanta attorney for underinsured motorist cases for a free consultation. They may be able to negotiate with the insurance carrier for you to get you fair compensation.
With the experience and knowledge to tackle your claim, the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm will fight to earn you the compensation you need to recover after your serious accident. Contact us online or call (404) 777-8800 today.
