Kurt Erlenbach

Today in court I had before me a fellow who was not paying his child support. He had been out of work for most of the last year. He had been hit by a car while riding his bike, and according to his lawyer he had a hospital bill of $118,000, with no health insurance. He owed over $12,000 on his child support. He had settled his case against the driver for the policy limits of $10,000, and he had no uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage, so the 10k was all he was going to collect. They wanted me to figure out how to split up the cash.

After the hearing I asked the lawyer what had happened in the crash. Turns out the guy was salmoning up the road when he got hit. So there were a few lessons from that hearing - ride correctly, and carry plenty of insurance. UM insurance is the best and cheapest form of insurance a cyclist can have.

Pedaleur

Policy limit of $10,000??? Is that a typo?

Kurt Erlenbach

Florida has no required liability insurance, only a $10k minimum PIP. Many drivers have no liability insurance at all.

GeoBigJon

Holy cow that sucks, I feel for the guy, you can't squeeze blood from stone.

Buddha4

so who got the 10K the hospital or the child?

Kurt Erlenbach

I punted it to let the hospital, lawyer, and grandmother (although the grandmother, who is raising the child, is getting TANF, so all the money goes to the state) settle it in mediation. I did not, however, find the guy in contempt for failing to pay his support.

commenterose

Seriously that is what I thought and I was thinking why so small? He could have done it with other insurance companies. I know they have policies that they need to observe and implement. But if you know someone from the inside of any companies for sure that policy is no longer existing every time you meet with your friend.

Zaneluke

Feel bad for the kid.

alhedges

Does uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage apply if you are on a bike?

Having said that, $10,000 is almost criminally low - the minimum in my state is $40,000, and I think that's much too low.

bikepro

I sometimes think Texas is in the dark ages as relates to DWI enforcement, etc, but we certainly have a requirement for liability insurance. The people in Florida need to get into the 20th Century, at least, and require meaningful liability insurance.

bluefoxicy

You are going to see this guy again when he comes back for the other $108k. $10k liability insurance doesn't mean $10k liability limit; it means the insurance will cover that. The guy has been found liable, his insurance is off the hook as they paid as their policy dictates; however, he can now be sued for his remaining liability.

Of course, as you know, this is not your place to comment or to rule on liability; the case you have is for child support and where to put money. Just remember, if it lands on your desk rahec, you can't squeeze blood from a stone; if you can get at the guy's financials (dunno if you can order him to release that kind of thing, but it would certainly be in his interest), garnering his wages for what he can safely handle is better than sending him to the streets so he can lose his job. The phrase "You'll never see that money" comes to mind ...

This is going to turn into a mess. As someone who was sued for medical (my insurance company handled the suit and paid up, then dropped me), I can empathize with both parties (though in my case, I think the b*tch was just a c*@%b!@*#; she sped up and hit my car when I turned, and I took it as "at fault by failure to yield on green" ... I think she overplayed her medical problems, didn't have a scratch on her and I heard she settled real quick for less than her bills when my insurance company wanted to start an investigation).

But I digress. I'm sure as a judge you've noticed the legal system is--by necessity--woefully inadequate for the world. The world is too messed up and confusing to do an air-tight arbitration system on; judges constantly see things and all they can do is go



and then try not to screw it up worse, despite best efforts of the lawyers.

Kurt Erlenbach

I didn't get into the details of the settlement, because all I was doing was the child support part. But usually when a plaintiff settles with the insurance company, the settlement releases the defendant from further liability, so the defendant probably could not be sued. Also, from talking with the lawyer about the crash, the cyclist appeared to be largely at fault - he was riding against traffic and there were conflicting statements about whether the cyclist swerved into the car (which, we all know, cyclists do all the time). I suspect the insurance company threw in the the low policy limits to get the release, without worrying much about liability. So in the end the driver is off the hook, the lawyer will get his third (probably), the hospital will get screwed (by collecting a few thousand of its $118,000 bill), and the state will not recover the welfare money it's paying to support the child.

unterhausen

since the cyclist was riding the wrong way, it seems to me that the 10k was a charity settlement more than anything. This happened to my FIL, he was a victim in a multi-car pileup started by an uninsured motorist, and they found him at fault because he was the only one with insurance. Even then, he ended up making payments for years.

rekmeyata

Obviously the cyclist guy couldn't afford insurance which means if he would have bought min uninsured motorist that would have provided him with only another 10k, still no where near enough to pay for the hospital bill.

It's true, people should carry plenty of insurance, but if your out of work you have to feed yourself and put a roof over your head, so the insurance goes out the window and the person takes a gamble that nothing will happen...and most of the time their right.

Your a judge, you know that the biggest reason for the high cost of insurance is the law suits that go on, and most are just people out looking for an easy buck. If this country had passed tort reform all, or at least most of this crap would have stopped and our insurance prices would have came down. But your not going to pass tort reform when most of the congress and senate officials are former lawyers or studied law. So this craziness will go on and on while we pay more and more for insurance. And a national health care system won't make it any better, in fact it will be worse if you imagine that, but just look at countries that have national health and how their citizens are treated and you will discover it's a bad bad system; in fact England is trying to end national health because it doesn't work and it's bankrupting them.

fuji86

FL is notorious for uninsured motorists. Miami has Jackson Memorial System/Hospital and that's where everyone without insurance goes. Actually one of the finest facilities as it's partnered with the Univ. of Miami. Anyway, as far as insurance goes, everyone is a catatrophic event from bankruptcy. I guess they have max limits now on what certain things can be sues for. But for this guy, even the max sounds like a fortune he may never earn in his lifetime ? And sometimes, it happens to an individual that will never, ever be justly compensated. You probably felt like the POTUS with the debt and deficit with this case, only it's an individual. You could've come down hard on him, but really piling on instead of punting the problem, keep on ringing up the fines, he'll never pay it, you'll send him to jail and then he gets meals and a bed, even healthcare curteousy of the tax payer and you take the burden off his family.

Reminds me of a recent news story, guy is unemployed a couple years from retirement, no job, no healthcare, he chose to rob a bank for $ 1, gave the teller a note stating that, said he'd wait for the police in the lobby quietly sitting in a chair. He goes to jail gets free healthcare and when he gets out, he's eligible to receive his retirement and will live quite nicely off that. He chose prison over trying to get a job in this miserable economy.

gcottay

Also with UM, this also seems to make some of the case for mandatory liability insurance laws with minimums that reflect the damage that can be done with a motor vehicle.

mnemia

Yes, ideally I think that the minimum coverage should be something that would cover say, all of the damages in 95% of crashes. The counterargument I've heard is that if the states raise the minimums too high, then more drivers will just drive uninsured because they won't be able to afford the premiums (and that the uninsured motorists will disproportionately be the worst drivers, because their premiums will be even higher based on their poor past driving records). But a) that would just transfer more of the burden of covering the uninsured drivers' damages onto other people's uninsured motorist coverage, which is already the case when they are are severely underinsured, and b) that's not an argument for not having high minimums so much as it's an argument for more strenuously and effectively enforcing the laws against driving while uninsured.

unterhausen

I know of someone that ran up a $30k emergency room bill -- he was never admitted as an inpatient. $10k coverage is just unrealistic.

dougmc

Yes, but the minimum in Texas is only $30k -- that can easily be burned up in the first hour of medical care after an accident. And Texas's minimum here is pretty typical.

mnemia

Yep. I have liability coverage for $250K per person/$500K per accident/$100K property damage, and sometimes I feel like even that is inadequate. I don't understand why someone would WANT to drive around with so little coverage when they could potentially be sued for so much more. And I only pay about $50/month for all my auto insurance coverage, so there's little excuse. Of course, it's only that cheap because I have a perfect driving record, but if you have a demonstrated bad track record then that's all the MORE reason you would want higher coverage (since you should be telling yourself that you're someone who might actually need it).

rekmeyata

If you earn a living and own a house you need to carry really good liab insurance and if you own a business or rental properties you need to go beyond that. I carry 100/300 on both liab and UMBI plus 300k on the home...but I also carry an umbrella liab coverage that covers an additional, meaning any suit that goes beyond the car or home liab, the umbrella coverage takes over for up to 5 million. It's kind of like the car and home liab are the deductibles, those coverages pay first then the umbrella will pay, and the limits on the car and home are the min amount of liab I can carry and get the umbrella protection. These umbrella coverages are relative inexpensive and the company I have the car and home with only charge me $69 a year for each million. I also have disability insurance in case of an accident along with medical insurance to cover those bills.

For example, I have a pool, and some friend comes over with a kid and they go swimming, the kid drowns and the friend decides he needs money more then a friend so he sues me for 3 million. My homeowner would pay the first 300K then the umbrella coverage would pay the next 2.7 million...assuming of course the court settles for the initial asking figure which they usually don't. Now my friend could remain friends if out of the goodness of his heart and out of the 3 million he receives buys me a nice deep water fishing boat!! Of course the insurance company can't find out he did that then we could both be jailed for fraud.

Poguemahone

Of course, there are states like Virginia where you can legally drive a car entirely without insurance:

https://www.dmv.state.va.us/webdoc/ci...nsured_fee.asp

Please note that I've lived here thirty plus years and never once had the state check to see if I carried motor vehicle insurance-- I think those penalties only come in after you've crushed some poor innocent.

I love pointing this out when drivers here start complaining cyclists should be required to carry insurance. It's also an excellent argument to carry uninsured motorist coverage. Estimates are about nine percent of Virginia motorists carry no insurance at all.

KD5NRH

I never notice the limit increase, but then I've carried more than double the minimum for years because you can only have UUMC up to the amount of liability coverage you carry.

bikepro

Not to get too far afield, but if you have any assets, you really need to carry more than the minimum libiality coverage. If you are liable for an accident, even if your insurance does not cover the medical expenses, you are still liable and can be sued. On the other hand, carrying adequate coverage is always the responsible thing to do.

bluefoxicy