Injury settlement question

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

My wife had an accident in August. The other party is at fault (I assume since she was rear ended).

She has cervical spin injury, brain damage, and lower back spin injury. The medical bill so far is more thank 20K and it is still going up every week.

After reading through this site, we have a attorney now. However, her attorney is not tell us how much the other party's insurance limit is. My question is:
1. Can her attorney do this or he may not know as well?
2. How can I obtain such information myself?
3. In case her limit is low enough that we think is under a reasonable compensation if maxed out. What is our option? Her attorney when we sign the contact does not pursue the other party personally.

Thanks for all advice.

At this point her attorney probably does not know the policy limits.

This will take a LONG time to settle. There is no point to worrying about things now. IF her lawyer finds out that they have a low limit, he will let you know. Until then, concentrate on helping her get better and let her lawyer handle the details.

I notice that you put an emphasis on LONG time to settle. Why is that? Does the settlement negotiation begin once her treatment is finished? Do you mean that this case will end up in court (or need to open a case and settle before court?) The property settlement (car damage) was handled by me and the adjuster was reasonable after I pointed out some facts. So we settled the property damage very quickly (although a few hundreds dollar below market price, but we are fine with it).

Settlement negotiations cannot begin until treatment is complete, that is correct. While this will probably not go to trial, her lawyer WILL probably have to file suit at some point both to protect the SOL, and to allow the discovery process to begin.

I have two more questions after I read through some other thread on this site.

We have signed the contract with my wife's attorney. But we signed it without knowing what would be a general practice for fees. The contract says that we pay 40%+cost if a case is filed. If the settlement comes in before case is open, we pay 33.33%.

1. Is this fair?
2. If not, can we re-negotiate with the attorney with the fee?

Thanks.

svchivago said:

I have two more questions after I read through some other thread on this site.

We have signed the contract with my wife's attorney. But we signed it without knowing what would be a general practice for fees. The contract says that we pay 40%+cost if a case is filed. If the settlement comes in before case is open, we pay 33.33%.

1. Is this fair?
2. If not, can we re-negotiate with the attorney with the fee?

Thanks.

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Most of the contingency agreements that I have seen is the same agreement with what you have: 33.33% pre-litigation and 40% after a complaint is filed.

Also as far as I know, to getthe policy limit before a complaint has been filed, the other party needs to consent to reveal their limit. Now, after a complaint has been filed, your attorney can get the limit through discovery, more specifically in the way Form Interrogatory.

Good luck.

Yes, that is normal. Filing a lawsuit costs money, not just the filing fees but all the other stuff that comes AFTER filing like discovery, depositions, etc. No, the time to negotiate was BEFORE you signed, it is too late now.