lost wages

[homeowner]

What is the name of your state? Ohio
My husband and son were in an accident in which the other party was cited for failure to yield. Our work van for my husbands contracting business was totalled and several tools were destroyed. This was a month ago today. We have not received a settlement offer because the insurance company says the other party has not admitted liability and they have to do a full investigation. Due to the cut and dried nature of the accident, we involved our state dept of ins. My husband talked to them today and due to this person having state minimum high risk ins. We can only recover a certain amount. Her property damage limits will easily cover our van and tools. What I am wondering is under what type of coverage is lost wages/temporary shut down of our business covered. Is it property because that is the main cause. We have small medical bills for minor injuries as well. This would account for about a week and a half of not being able to work, but the lost van and tools are what really affected the lost wages of the claim.

I would also like to know if the insurance company refuses or lowballs our claim, would a lawyer be taking the insurance company to court for bad faith/unfair claims settlement. Or would we have to sue their client for only their policy limits. Just want to be prepared if worst comes to worst. Hoping it won't come to that.

Thanks!What is the name of your state?

[fejee]

Originally Posted by homeowner

1. What I am wondering is under what type of coverage is lost wages/temporary shut down of our business covered? Is it property because that is the main cause?
2. I would also like to know if the insurance company refuses or lowballs our claim, would a lawyer be taking the insurance company to court for bad faith/unfair claims settlement.
3. Or would we have to sue their client for only their policy limits. Just want to be prepared if worst comes to worst. Hoping it won't come to that.

1. lost wages or loss of earnings fall under the bodily injury covg.

2. i don't think there is any bad faith here on the part of the ins carrier. just becoz the carrier begs to differ in the value of ur claim doesn't necessarily mean there's bad faith. yes, if the carrier makes some ridiculously low ball offer, ur husband may wanna refer the matter to the dept of insurance.

3. u can sue the other party for more than the policy limits but if the court awards ur husband more than the limits, the other party's carrier would pay no more than the limits. unless the carrier rejects a policy limit demand from ur husband to settle and later the jury awards ur husband much, much more than the policy limits. in that case the carrier may wanna pay the judgment of the court than face a bad faith law suit from their insured.

has ur husband already made a demand to settle for the pol limits? if yes, what was the other's party's carrier's response?

one important thing to remember here is that ur husband should mitigate his damages as much as possible. what this means is that he should not just wait and rely on the insurance company to make a decision to pay his claim and continue losing that potential income he would have earned but for this accident.

good luck 2 ur spouse.

[homeowner]

Thanks for your reply. No we have not demanded a settlement for the policy limits, I didn't even know you could do that.We have already involved the state dept of insurance and are waiting to see if it gets resolved. We cannot doing anything about getting our business up and running again until we get a settlement to replace the van and tools. We came out of a slow year last year and were getting back on solid ground when this happened. We did not have collision due to the van being an older van and having a body shop man in the family. The damage is way over the value of the van and actually couldn't be fixed if we wanted to. That's our dilemma. This has for all intents and purposes shut down our business until this is settled. We did inform the insurance company that this needed to be settled ASAP so that we could get back to work. The accident was very obviously the other persons fault, failure to yield at a stoplight, was cited, pleaded guilty and paid the ticket. We had a witness who gave a statement at the scene who was directly behind my husband at the light and another witness who was in the ambulance and the driver apoligized for not paying attention and hurting my son. Now they are taking their time to determine liability in a very simple situation. That is what I am talking about by bad faith or unfair claims, just that fact that they are dragging this out and it is doing a lot of damage to our business and personal financial situation. This has been very frustrating and we just basically want to be back in the position that we were before the accident. Thanks again.