Podcast Description
In this episode of “It’s No Accident,” attorneys Mark Nonni and Jaeson Homola discuss a significant case that turned into a bad faith lawsuit with an $11 million recovery. The case involved a car wreck in Orlando that left their client quadriplegic.
Despite the insurance company’s knowledge of the severity of the injuries, they dragged their feet in offering the necessary compensation. The attorneys delve into the duty of insurance companies to protect their insured and the consequences of their failure to do so. They also highlight the changes in bad faith laws that make it harder to hold insurance companies accountable.
Tune in as Mark and Jaeson shed light on the challenges faced by personal injury victims and the importance of understanding your rights.
Episode Transcript
Nonni
Welcome to “It’s No Accident”, a podcast about the challenges of personal injury and wrongful death law in Florida, one of the nation’s most complex legal environments.
Homola
You’ll hear compelling stories about real cases from our law firm in Tallahassee, that will help you better understand your rights and protect yourself from the negligence of others.
Nonni
I’m Mark Nonni.
Homola
And I’m Jaeson Homola.
Together
And this is “It’s No Accident.
Homola
One of the things that we’ve done with this podcast is we talked about some of the cases that we’ve handled and one of the more relevant cases to what’s going on in the legislature right now is a big case that we had that you handled a couple of years ago that I think the recovery was at the beginning of last year, but it was a it was a bad faith case and it actually was a standard car wreck case with really big damages.
Unfortunately, our client was involved in a car wreck down in Orlando and she ended up becoming quadriplegic as a result. And that case because of what the insurance company did in that case and we’re talking about one of the bigger insurance companies in the country, I mean, everybody listening to this would know which insurance company it is if we said the name but they did some things that rendered this case what’s called a bad faith case.
So can you talk a little bit about how that case came about and how that standard car wreck case turned into a bad faith case, which then in turn turned into an $11 million recovery?
Nonni
Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely a tough case, but also probably one of the most fulfilling cases I’ve handled just in terms of our clients were just the nicest, sweetest people. And I felt so bad for this lady who was leaving a concert in Orlando, a passenger in a vehicle, and the driver, basically pulled out when he shouldn’t have pulled out and they got T-boned and she was immediately, had a neck injury and immediately rendered quadriplegic, couldn’t move at all, completely immobilized. And it was a situation where and what’s kind of unique about this case, where she was a passenger in the vehicle, but the driver, is the one who messed up and was negligent, causing the wreck.
And they’ve been friends since high school, they’ve been friends for years and years and years and they knew, it was obvious immediately that she was a quadriplegic. It was obvious how bad these injuries were. And so the driver had told his insurance companies and the insurance company knew how bad it was.
Homola
So this would have been the insurance company for the driver of the vehicle that our client.
Nonni
That’s right. From the driver’s auto insurance company, they immediately knew how bad the injuries were. I think her initial stay in the hospital down in Orlando alone was like $1,000,000, right off the bat before they transferred her off to some specialty places. But the guy had $250,000 worth of insurance. The initial hospital bills were way like four times that.
Homola
So yeah, let’s look at it from his point of view. He’s sitting here. He knows that these lifelong friends of his were in his vehicle. He messed up. He caused a car wreck, and she’s badly injured. $1,000,000 in medical bills. And he’s talking to his insurance company. They’re telling him he only has $250,000 in coverage.
So what does he do at that point?
Nonni
Right. And so he’s telling them that basically, my friend is hurt, you need to pay my friend. They need help with the medical bills and stuff like that. And, the insurance company’s basically telling them, no, don’t worry, we’ll take care of it. Instead of basically jumping right on it and just paying the money to the people who which I mean, at that point, you know, it was just so obvious that these damages were going to be way more than his insurance policy.
And so, you know, the point of the insurance policy is to protect him and to protect his individual assets, and as soon as the insurance company pays that money, the people sign a release, and then his assets are protected and that is the whole point. Instead of doing what they should’ve done and immediately offering them the money, I mean, they should have done it within, a couple of weeks, certainly within like 30 days. Instead of doing that, they just dragged their feet and, waited and waited like six months before they finally offered him the offered them the money.
At that point, her medical bills were even higher. It was just crazy high and so basically what the insurance company did was hang their guy out to dry. They could have offered the money up early, got him a release, and protected his assets, which is what he’s been paying them to do every month and instead, they just dragged their feet and they didn’t. And that’s that’s essentially what bad faith is.
Homola
So think about it this way, what’s the worst-case scenario for the driver of the vehicle that’s at fault for causing the wreck? The worst-case scenario is that his friends are like, look, we need money to pay these medical bills. We don’t have the ability to pay these medical bills. You know, we wish your insurance company would have paid that $250,000 when the bills were lower, but now we’ve got three or $4 million in medical bills. We’re sorry. We’re going to have to go get a judgment against you. And they could go get a judgment against that.
Nonni
Right, she’s looking at lifelong care.
Homola
Right. There are some behind-the-scenes things that happen with regards to the medical liens and if the insurance company pays that money quicker, the health insurance companies don’t have the ability to put a lien on the case. So, if you get that money quicker and you’re able to show the health insurance company that you’ve settled the claim already, they can then attach those medical bills to your case and they can’t can’t try to recoup that money.
So the quicker the insurance company pays out more money, that’s actually gonna go into the pocket of the individual that has the medical bills. So that’s why it’s so important for the insurance company to pay quickly.
And you know, you also brought up a point that the insurance companies should have paid the money. Not only should they have paid the money, but they actually had a duty to pay the money. What duty does the insurance company have in that situation to their insured?
Nonni
The duty is to protect their insurer from a judgment, protect their client, their customer from having to come out of pocket and lose their assets, or, pay their personal assets to cover everything that happened.
And yeah, so they should have offered the money if they would have offered the money early on. The clients said they would have certainly accepted it. They didn’t want to end up in some big lawsuit with their friend from high school. And like you said, that they would offer early on more that money could have in their pocket instead of getting sucked up by the medical bills and like I said, that they dragged their feet and, you know, just unfortunately, what we did, what we see a lot of the times is just, not doing what they should have done and driving up and trying to stall and delay it out.
Homola
Right. And the interesting thing about that case is what was it like, It’s like three or four months have gone by and the insurance company still was saying, we’re investigating, we’re investigating. I think they said we don’t know how bad her injuries are. We kept saying we’re investigating. We don’t know what caused the wreck. It was clear-cut. I mean, it was right there was no there was no doubt.
Nonni
Right, exactly. There’s no doubt. I mean, it was clear-cut. The client’s husband, he was in the vehicle with her, they were in there together. He got hurt, but not nearly as bad. He’s calling the insurance company, week after week, month after month, to follow up and see what’s going on, because his buddy is telling them, they’re going to pay you the money. Don’t worry. Don’t worry. And every time, the adjuster basically is like, we’re still investigating. After a few months of that, he’s getting pissed off. She’s still paralyzed. Like, what do you mean, how is she doing?
Homola
Yeah. She didn’t miraculously become not a quadriplegic overnight.
Nonni
Right. And so, you know, the one thing also that in the bad faith situations, a lot of the times, the thing that is unique about this case is a lot of the times, the insurance companies.
Whether it’s true or not, they can kind of hide behind the fact that they don’t know how bad the injuries are and the longer it takes them to realize really how bad the injuries are, the clock doesn’t necessarily start running they should go ahead and get money.
And so it was unique in this situation is the fact that they’re the insurance company’s client, the person who’s at fault was so close friends of my client to where they came. They knew everything right off the bat. There wasn’t it wasn’t like it took the insurance company two months to figure out how bad her injuries were. And they knew within 24 hours.
So it was made even worse, more egregious that they would have just kind of dragged their feet and did what they did. Right.
Homola
It was never the intent of our clients to even get attorneys involved in the case. The crazy thing about that case is they call our office, they talk to you. They were referred to you by a family friend. They call the office. They talk to you. We immediately send a letter of representation to the insurance company. And literally the next day there was an adjuster from the insurance company at our office with a check saying here we are tendering the money, we’re paying the money. We’ve realized we need to pay the money. Right? So I don’t think it’s any coincidence. It’s no accident that they end up at our office the next day after an attorney gets involved in trying to try to pay the money after three or four months of giving this poor guy.
Nonni
Yeah. Six months.
Homola
So after they’ve agreed to pay the money, I mean, how does the case go from? I mean because at that point you would in a standard car wreck case, the case would be over. They paid the money, but at that point what it what we do?
Nonni
Yeah. At that point it had been six months and that $250,000 wasn’t going to really put any of that money in their pocket. We basically said thanks but no thanks and didn’t accept the check that they dropped off that day and proceeded with the lawsuit, which was a difficult decision.
They didn’t want to have to sue their friend for life. But, you know, we proceed with the lawsuit. He ended up going out and getting his own separate attorney. So now he has once we filed a lawsuit, the insurance company hires an attorney and then he ends up going out and getting his own separate attorney to basically try to protect his assets, because the insurance company’s attorney, they’re not so much worried about protecting his assets. Unfortunately.
It’s kind of a weird relationship there where you have an attorney that’s hired for you. But the attorneys also working for the insurance company.
Homola
Right.
So who’s that? Whose interests are they actually protecting their insurance company or their insured? And it’s always a weird conflict of interest there. But, they’re allowed to do it. So in cases like this, usually what happens is the individual will go out and actually hire their own attorney to protect them so that they know that they’re getting the protection that they want. It’s an attorney that they can choose on their own, not someone that’s just given to them by the insurance company.
Nonni
Exactly. So we went through the lawsuit process that took a while. We did a bunch of depositions and stuff and eventually ended up settling, for $11 million, which was a great result, and gave her definitely the money she needed to take care of herself for the rest of her life.
And, you know, I’d say it’s even more so a good result because, from the client’s perspective, we didn’t have to go to trial. They didn’t want to go to trial. Most of the time, clients don’t would rather not go to trial. Without getting too deep into it, in a bad faith situation, a lot of times are going to be in two trials. The first trial against the person who caused the wreck to determine, how much the jury is going to award for that. And then a second trial took over whether or not the insurance company acted in bad faith. We were able to avoid both of those and get the whole case settled for, well above the policy limits of $250,000, which meant all that extra money, on top of that was all coming from the insurance company, not from the driver. They’ll come from the insurance company because they basically acknowledged that they had broken the law and acted in bad faith. Of course, they wouldn’t admit it on paper or paper or anything. But the fact that they paid so much more than the $250,000 indicates that, yeah, without having to go to any trial in the case, they knew they kind of stepped in it.
Homola
Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting because I mean they have a duty when as soon as they know that the case based on the information that they’re getting, as soon as they know that the case is going to be a case that is potentially reasonably valued at more than what their insurance policy limit is, they have a duty to tender that money.
Right. So, the argument on our end was you had six months and they have a duty to investigate as well. They don’t just get to sit around and wait for the documents to be handed to them. They actually have a duty to investigate. As soon as a claim complaint comes in, they have a duty to go out and investigate and determine on their own as to whether or not the case warrants paying their policy limits.
And in this case, I just don’t think there was any question. I think the insurance company knew there wasn’t really any question that if we went to a jury trial and, these facts got put to a six-person jury, they were going to determine that there was bad faith involved here. And that they should have paid the money probably within the first couple of weeks.
Nonni
Yeah. And that’s what I thought. I mean, at least certainly within 30 days, so that was a few years ago. That’s how the bad faith laws worked before. Earlier this year in March, there were a lot of laws. They got changed and one of them was bad faith, right?
And so everything we just described today probably would not happen that way. because, without getting super into the weeds about what the new law is, essentially the law has been changed now to give the insurance companies more cover, you could say. Makes it harder to hold their feet to the fire and successfully sue them for bad faith and basically give them more outs. I mean, do you want to talk about that a little bit?
Homola
Yeah. So what are the things that the legislature did? Obviously, the insurance companies were coming to them and they’re like, look, you know, we don’t want to be on the hook for more than what our policy limits are, regardless of the fact that we may have violated their duties to our insured. We want you to help us out. Please. pass some laws that are going to protect us or give us some safe harbor. So one of the things that the legislature did is they put in place a safe harbor provision for these insurance companies. And it basically says that they have a 90-day safe harbor. At the point where they have the information that they need to tender the policy limit, which is also, that’s a moving target, that’s a question in and of itself.
But as soon as they reasonably have the information that they need to tender the money, that starts a ticking clock for them, that they have 90 days. So it’s either they have the information or the the injured party or their attorney has demanded the policy limit. So, what you’re going to see now is you’re going to you’re going to see not so much investigation going on by the insurance companies and they’re going to say, well, you know, we didn’t know.
We didn’t know that the injuries were this bad until we got the demand from the attorney. So in the case that we had, the argument would have been, well, we didn’t know that the injuries were that bad. And as soon as the attorney said that they were willing to settle for the $250,000 we were on their doorstep with the $250,000, when in reality they had six months and, you know, they could have they could have tendered the money.
So in today’s climate and the way that the law is now, we would have had a much more difficult time, I think, with this fact based on. Yes, in fact, I don’t even know if it would have moved forward.
Nonni
Right.
Homola
And it’s unfortunate because, the insurance company, they want to hold onto their money as long as possible. I mean, I don’t I don’t think it’s a secret. They’ve got these are billion-dollar companies. They’ve got lots of people running, lots of numbers. They know exactly how long they need to hold onto their money in order to turn a profit.
So the longer they can hold onto that money, the longer they can make money on that money. Right, they are investing it all. So if they can hold on to $250,000 for six months as opposed to two weeks, you know, they might be able to recoup that money in that period of time.
Nonni
And then, you know, you do that in not just this case. Can you do it in 20 or 30 cases? I mean, it adds up.
Homola
So it’s interesting because you listen there was there were some people that when they were the legislature was in committee and they were there was testimony on these bills. You have these insurance adjusters come in and say, we want to get we want to pay these these these claimants who want to pay and we’re dying to pay them.
But, you know, it’s a lot of lip service because yeah, you want to pay them, but you want to pay them, you know, $2,000 on a $50,000 claim. Right? So but you know, that was a case that I know you’re really proud of. I mean, I’m proud of that. I think we did an amazing job. We had great clients, and the best thing about that case is they’re going to have she’s going to have enough money to cover her medical expenses that she’s going to need moving forward because she’s got a long road ahead of her and she’s going to have what she needs.
Nonni
Absolutely. You know, like I said, it’s always in all cases, it feels good to help people. But it was especially rewarding in that situation where she wasn’t going to need so much care down the road in the future. Now she can afford to get the best care and not just the bare minimum, so to speak.
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