003 Do You Have Enough Car Insurance? Car Accident Lawyers Explain

VERONICA:  Welcome to Lawyers in the House. You are in the house with me, your host, Veronica Waters. And who hasn’t ever wished they had a lawyer on speed dial?

ELLIS:  Three years.

VERONICA:  Three years. And he’s got, well, Emory University right on his CV as he went to law school right here in Atlanta.

ELLIS:  Yes, that’s right.  Sure.

VERONICA:  Sarah Neeland, who comes to us from University of Georgia and Tulane. Forward-thinking, problem solver, hard worker for her clients. And in their spare time, I know that both Ellis and Sarah do some volunteer work.  Children for Sarah. Trees for Ellis.  They’re parents, and they are just as hardworking for you as they are for their kids and their own families.

SARAH:  Well, Ellis and I actually know each other. We went to high school together, so we had a wandering path and ended up working together.

VERONICA:  And I also know that you had some time sort of as a prosecutor? You tried the prosecutor’s office for a while?

SARAH:  Just briefly.  It was not for me. It was not for me at all.

VERONICA:  How did you know it wasn’t for you?

VERONICA:  Yeah, but did you always think that you were going to end up in personal injury law?

SARAH:  No, I did not. It was a surprise for me,

VERONICA: Alright.  What she’s not telling you guys is that Sarah has a familial tie to Montlick. And I don’t know why she’s burying the lead on that, but she’s got like family members already at Montlick.  And I’ve always been asking folks, was there family pressure to go into the business?

SARAH:  No family pressure at all. No family pressure at all.

VERONICA:  All right. Have you guys ever had a case together?

SARAH:  Not yet.

VERONICA:  Is that something that would be good or bad?

SARAH:  I would love to try a case with my brother. It would be really interesting and I would love to see that happen, at some point.

ELLIS:  You would take lead council, of course.

SARAH:  Of course.

VERONICA:  Are the siblings going to duke it out over who’s first here?

ELLIS:  No, I didn’t. I started clerking for a federal judge right out of law school, and I actually worked for insurance companies before coming to Montlick, so I represented the world’s largest rideshare company.

VERONICA:  What’s fascinating about what you said is that’s what we’re here to talk about today, it’s insurance and how to make sure that you are truly protected by insurance.

SARAH:  It can protect a lot of things just depending on the type of coverage that you decide to purchase.

VERONICA:  What do I need to know about those sorts of limits?

ELLIS:  So, if you get in a car crash, for example, you’d expect the other person to have some sort of insurance coverage to cover any sort of medical bills you have, any expenses you have, any lost wages you have. But in Georgia, the law is that they only have to have $25,000, which sounds like a lot, and in most cases, it can be enough.

VERONICA:  How often do you have somebody come to you who does have enough coverage?

ELLIS:  Who does have enough coverage?  Not often enough.

VERONICA:  What?

SARAH:   I would agree, infrequently.

VERONICA:  Really?

ELLIS:  Yeah.

VERONICA:  What do you mean there isn’t?

ELLIS:  Our own client, who could use additional coverage for themselves in this incident. They did not select uninsured motorist coverage when they purchased their insurance policy.

VERONICA:  But it’s available no matter where I got my insurance.

SARAH:  It’s always available in Georgia, and actually in Georgia, in order to not have this coverage, you have to actually sign a sheet of paper opting out of having this coverage. But a lot of times, when someone has sent the insurance documents to sign, the boxes have been checked by the insurance broker, and they don’t really know exactly what they’re signing. And so, it’s news to them when they need to use uninsured motorist coverage, and they find out later that they may not have it at all. So, it’s really important to ask your broker and say, “What type of coverage am I purchasing?”

ELLIS:  Speaking of shopping for insurance, Sarah, what does it mean when your agent or your broker tells you about full coverage?

VERONICA:  It sounds like a freaking maze, right here. I’m completely lost. I wouldn’t know the first decision to make or the first thing to ask for. And I’m assuming that my agent is going to just point me in the right direction and tell me what exactly I need. Whether an agent or a broker, I’m not sure if they’re the same thing.

ELLIS:  Well, that’s a dangerous assumption, especially . . . Some of us have agents.

SARAH:  Well, it may include uninsured motorist coverage, but you may have elected to have what I was just talking about — that “reduced by” or traditional coverage, which really wouldn’t be full coverage if you’re in, let’s say, the situation.

VERONICA:  Is it possible for me to have too much? Can I be over insured? Is that a thing?

ELLIS:  No. No.

SARAH:  Absolutely not.

VERONICA:  Okay, that’s good to know. You cannot have too much. Is that like under the umbrella policy type thing or whatever?

SARAH:  So, you can have umbrella coverage and actually you can add an umbrella to not only protect your home, but also your uninsured motorist coverage.

VERONICA:  Okay, this is really good to know. And the wheels in my brain are spinning because if it’s okay, I think I’m going to have you guys actually look at my insurance because I really need to know whether or not I’m protected.

ELLIS:  Give us a call, 1-800-LAW-NEED.  Call a lawyer.  Do not talk to any insurance companies until you talk to your lawyer. The insurance companies, they’re smart, they’re sophisticated, and sometimes, if you don’t know any better, you can do things that will harm your case. For example. Let me tell an example, a case I just had last year.

VERONICA:  It’s like a high-pressure sales pitch. Like, you got to sign this. You got to agree to this right now, or it might go away completely. We don’t know what we’re going to be able to do if you don’t say yes now.

ELLIS:  Yes, exactly. And they’re recording you. And in the state of Georgia, they don’t have to tell you that they’re recording you.

VERONICA:  They’ll come over your social media.

ELLIS:   Oh, absolutely. That’s a great point, too. They will. So, you got to be very careful. Call your lawyer as soon as possible. Call our firm 1-800-LAW-NEED, it’s free. It doesn’t cost you anything at all. Just give us a call. We’ll make sure that you’re protected and you don’t do anything that gives them ammunition to use against you.

SARAH:  Sure. And it’s very confusing. Don’t feel bad. My husband, I explain to him frequently. It’s confusing and there’s no way around it. It’s confusing. But uninsured motorist coverage is there to protect you in the event that you are hit by someone who does not have any coverage if they caused the accident or if they are underinsured and do not have enough coverage to cover your injuries and your losses as a result of an accident.

VERONICA:  And so, the basic is $25,000.

SARAH:  It’s actually not as much as you think. And I’ve had friends who have switched from some insurance companies that they were paying for years and years and being loyal to, to maybe a different company that provided them better coverage at a cheaper premium. So, you don’t really need to be loyal to these companies. You really need to check your rates every year and just find the best coverage to fit your needs.

VERONICA:  Sarah does it?  Ellis does it?

ELLIS:  Absolutely. Rates, plans, insurance companies, they change all the time. They have specials, they have deals. And so, I talk to an independent agent. She finds me the best deal. I tell her what I’m looking for, how much coverage I want, and she provides me a menu of options. So, it’s something we do every single year.

SARAH:  It’s a scary position to be in because what you’re doing to yourself, is you’re opening up yourself and your family, possibly, to possibly being sued personally. And if that happens and there’s a judgment against you by a court, and you can’t pay that judgment, you may have to declare bankruptcy.  And that could affect your entire life.

VERONICA:  Yeah, I think if you have insurance, it should be like your lawyer, your personal injury lawyer, right?  You hope you don’t ever have to call on it in a crisis, but if you do, you want the very best.

SARAH:  Or exceed the $25,000 limit.

ELLIS:  Yeah, absolutely. A single ER visit could exceed the $25,000.  One single ER visit, and that’s not including any orthopedic visits, any physical therapy visits you need after that.  It’s not including your lost wages. So, $25,000 may seem like a lot of money, but with the cost of health care in America, that $25,000 is often not enough to cover even the smallest injuries.

ELLIS:  Sarah, you can go first.

VERONICA:  Sarah goes first.

SARAH:  Okay. Okay, so let’s see here. Okay, so . . .

SARAH:  I think you can do better. I think you can do better.

ELLIS:  Wait, have you seen?  (Gasp)

SARAH:  I see.  Okay, so you can definitely do better, Veronica.  I’m not going to call out what insurance company this is, but I think you can definitely protect yourself a little bit more.

VERONICA:  It’s right there on the screen, and I literally have no idea whether I’m protected or not.

SARAH:  It can be really scary. And I think a lot of people probably listening don’t know what some of the coverages mean that’s on their declarations page that they’re paying for. And it’s really important to know what you’re paying for because it may be, going with a different insurance company, you get better uninsured motorist coverage for the same price.  Or maybe paying $10 extra a month, I don’t know, I’m not an insurance broker. But that could change whether you have medical payment coverage or rental coverage or something that you may need in the event that you’re in an accident.

VERONICA:  But I got to be proactive and ask for it. It’s not just going to be something that’s offered, which is crazy, because I would think that my insurance agent or company would say, “Here, here.  Buy this, you need this, you need that.”

SARAH:  I wish I knew. I don’t understand why insurance agents don’t actually tell people, and maybe they are, and it’s maybe being misunderstood, I’m not sure. But most of my clients don’t understand what type of coverage they have, and it’s extremely frustrating to them when they realize that they don’t have coverage that they thought they had or that they didn’t have enough coverage. But it happens all the time.

SARAH:  It happens every case that we work with. I think this would go without saying for me and Ellis. We’re always trying to maximize the way coverage can affect somebody. But we’ve had clients who have tragically lost their lives. Lost limbs. And we’re just working through the insurance coverage.

VERONICA:  You guys are coming into people’s lives, or they come into your lives at, like, really hard times when there’s maybe not just physical injury.

ELLIS:  Our top priority is to help guide the client, not just financially, but help them find the medical providers that they need, give them the help that they need so they can get better. That’s our top priority, is making sure our clients can put this behind them, get better as quickly as possible and move on, and then help them find the money they need to pay for these medical bills and take care of the lost wages that they lost.

SARAH:  Absolutely. I think it happens every day, all the time, because people call us thinking that they may have had more time under the statute of limitations, which it’s something in Georgia, that is generally two years to bring a claim or to file a lawsuit, but not in every case.

VERONICA:  Sarah, what if it’s a hit and run?

SARAH:  So, if it’s a hit and run and the person leaves the scene and the person is never located, then you are relying on your uninsured motorist coverage if you have any injuries. And that also goes if you don’t have collision coverage so to cover your car when there’s no one else to go after.

VERONICA:  Wow. Thank you so much for spelling that out for us, Sarah. I think it’s going to be really helpful. I might ask you off the air about something that a friend actually told me about just three days ago. And she said that her friend heard a loud noise outside, went outside to see somebody driving away after hitting her parked car.

SARAH:  That’s awful. And unfortunately, we hear this all the time. It really depends on if she has collision coverage on her policy, because collision coverage will cover her car in the event that it’s hit by another car. If she has comprehensive coverage, that’s something that would cover her in the event that she’s hit by something that, generally, doesn’t involve a car. So, a tree falls on the car or something like that. So, if she has collision coverage, then she should be protected.

ELLIS:  Just keep in mind, a lot of people think that they are covered in that kind of a situation, or they’re covered if they’re getting a car crash and it’s their fault and they have insurance coverage to fix their own car. But a lot of times the only coverage required by the state of Georgia is liability coverage. That’s to pay for somebody else’s car and somebody else’s medical bills. So just make sure, check your policy.

VERONICA:  That brings us to this week’s Montlick closing argument. Each and every week, we promise you that there is a nugget that you’re going to be able to walk away from us with that’s going to help improve your life or the life of your loved ones, somebody you know, somebody you love. This is what you want to pass along to them.

ELLIS:  All right. If you take one thing away from this show this segment today. Shop your coverage every year. Purchase as much coverage as you can afford. Talk to an independent agent. Understand your coverage. Talk to that independent agent. Run through hypotheticals with the agent. What happens if I get in a wreck in this situation? What happens if somebody I get in a wreck with doesn’t have coverage? And if you have any questions, call us, give us a call. It’s free. Doesn’t cost you anything.

VERONICA:  So, I can call you if I think I have a case, but what if I just want to ask about my insurance?

ELLIS:  Give us a call. We handle hundreds of thousands of these calls every year.

VERONICA:  Good to know, Ellis. Thanks so much to Sarah Neeland and Ellis Liu making sure that we are protected with our insurance. Finding out that Veronica is not so much protected, but she’s going to shop her rates and she’s going to do a better job for next year’s policy.