What is the name of your state? Oregon
I'm trying to help a friend that was involved in a personal injury due to getting pinned betwen two cars and leg was broken in multiple places. After leaving hospital, 10 months ago, he called an attorney who that night came to his house and agreed to represent him on a contingency basis.
Oregon is a no fault state, both friend and person who hit him had same insurance company. How does an insurance company sue itself?
Anyway, they are wanting to settle now. There is no civil case, as person who hit him has nothing so just insurance coverage that is available. The last meeting with attorney I was asked to accompany him so did. The attorney had sent him a settlement agreement to review and sign giving him $100,000.00 of which attorney received 1/3 then payment of unpaid medical bills resulting in $12,000 to friend. His medical insurance has been paying the medical bills with trust agreement to be reimbursed on settlement. Attorney stated that medical insurance company had reduced their repayment(lack of word) by 1/3 but that they could possibly get them to reduce it by 1/2. My question to attorney, why doesn't agreement state that? He smiled.
Since then, I have collected medical bills and statement of insurance payments and find that payments have been made differently for same services, he has had 3 surgeries in regards to this accident. My experience in medical billing, is that importance of coding determines how something is paid. Friend has been told by attorney not to contact anyone of the doctors, insurance company...refer everything to him. That being the case, why haven't they noticed these discrepencies, some items just needed to be rebilled as insurance company was waiting for trust agreement. From what I've found I think about $3000 in bills can be recovered through insurance.
Attorney had copies of all insurance policies, although we pointed out to attorney that one of policies PiP was for $25,000. They had paid on different policy for $15,000. This has now been rectified, but shouldn't the attorney have seen this?
A large portion of medical bills have gone to collections, instruction by attorney not to pay, they are now being charged interest....who's responsible for interest charges?
My questions are:
1) Is he being properly represented? If not, what do we do?
2) Contingency fee, I always was under impression this was calculated after medical bills paid, not before.
Would appreciate any advice on this matter. We are meeting with attorney first of next week and I'm trying to get information together on how to go from here.
Thank you
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