If there is evidence that the accident was at least mostly caused by someone else’s negligence (usually another driver), yes. However, most cases are settled by making a claim and negotiating with an insurance company. If these efforts don’t work out, you can sue the insurance company, the other driver, or the responsible party for your damages.
Motorcycle accidents often lead to severe injuries for the bike rider. You may be in pain, facing large medical bills, and out of work while you recover, which can cause financial strife for many people. If this sounds familiar, it’s important to get sound legal advice as soon as possible. Attorney Ali Awad is an experienced motorcycle injury attorney who opened the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm to help people seek compensation for their injuries. It rapidly earned the title of Fastest-Growing Law Firm in the country, beating 499 others. When you need legal advice about a motorcycle crash, don’t hesitate to call the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free, no-obligation consultation to better understand your options.
Who Pays the Bills After a Motorcycle Accident?
As with other motor vehicle accidents, motorcycle crash claims usually begin with considering the available insurance policies and the amount of damages. In most situations, we make a claim with the at-fault driver’s insurance carrier first. Sometimes this goes smoothly, the claim is approved, and the client receives compensation without much resistance.
However, there are also many cases where the process is more contentious. Insurance adjusters are trained to minimize financial risk for their employers, so if you were under the impression that their job is to help you with your bills, that’s not the case. We’ve seen many circumstances where clients made a claim with the other driver’s insurance carrier only to receive a denial for various reasons:
- One of the most common insurance company excuses is that the accident wasn’t their client’s fault, so you should pay. Fault is not always clear-cut in every collision, and sometimes both parties may be partially responsible. We’ll talk more about what this means for your case a little later, but the important takeaway is that you should avoid talking to the insurance company until you’ve had a chance to speak with a motorcycle accident personal injury lawyer. There are many situations where a client’s innocent remark is held up as proof they somehow caused the accident.
- They may also claim that their policy doesn’t cover the specific circumstances of your accident for some other reason. Insurance policies can be confusing and difficult for most people who aren’t legal experts to understand. Just because the insurance adjuster interprets a specific clause to mean they don’t have to pay your claim doesn’t necessarily mean that a judge would agree. Don’t give up without talking to an attorney.
- Sometimes the policy limit is lower than the client’s damages. In this case, we will look for other available insurance policies or third parties who may have contributed to the accident and seek compensation from them. Depending on the type of insurance you have, your own policy may pay for some of your damages in some situations.
Comparative Negligence and Determining Fault in a Motorcycle Crash
As we mentioned earlier, many vehicle collisions are not caused solely by one driver. Georgia uses a system for personal injury law called “comparative negligence” statutes. If a motor vehicle accident or other personal injury case goes to court, the jury will be told to assign a percentage of blame to each party involved in the incident. Sometimes it is 100 percent one person’s fault. For example, maybe a car pulled out right into the path of your motorcycle (this is a very common scenario in motorcycle crashes). If that was the sole reason for the accident, it should be fairly easy for a jury to decide the crash was the other driver’s fault.
But what if you were also going a little bit above the speed limit? What if your headlamp was off, even on a cloudy day, making your bike harder to see? The other driver would still be in the wrong for turning in front of you, but the jury might decide that you were also 20 or 30 percent at fault.
In situations like this, you can still collect damages from the other party or their insurance carrier, as long as you were less than 50 percent at fault. Your damages will be reduced by the percentage you are found to be at fault. Now you understand why the insurance company may try to pin the crash on you. Although most cases settle out of court, if the insurer can convince you that you were mostly at fault, you might feel a claim is hopeless and give up. Even if you don’t, you may agree to take less money than your claim is worth if you think your settlement will be greatly reduced in a court case. Either way, the insurance carrier comes out ahead.
In reality, even bikers who made mistakes that contributed to an accident often only have a small percentage of responsibility in a crash. Never accept an offer from an insurer until you’ve had the opportunity to talk with a lawyer about your accident.
There are also situations where there is very little evidence of fault either way, especially if there were no witnesses other than the motorcyclist and the other driver. The insurer may argue that if you can’t prove the accident was their client’s fault, they don’t have to pay you. They don’t even have to say it was your fault, just that you haven’t proved it was their client’s. In these cases, we usually put our investigative team to work canvassing the area where the crash happened, knocking on doors, looking for missed witnesses, and checking for footage from traffic or doorbell cams. Frequently we can recover more evidence that the other driver caused the crash and restart negotiations with the insurance carrier.
Call a Motorcycle Accident Attorney at the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm
If you or someone you love were seriously injured in a motorcycle collision, please call the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm for a free review of your case. If you decide to move forward and we take your case, we offer a no-win, no-fee guarantee, so there are no up-front costs to pay. Call the injury and accident attorneys at the CEO Lawyer Personal Injury Law Firm at (470) 323-8779.
