Motor Vehicle Accident

When Your Own Insurance Company Turns Against You

We tell people involved in Atlanta car accidents that as attorneys, we feel the most important insurance coverage you can get is uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage (UM) through your own car insurance company. This is the coverage that kicks in to protect you when you are injured in a crash caused by someone who doesn’t carry liability insurance at all or they simply don’t have enough insurance coverage to pay for the harms they have caused. In Georgia, many drivers carry the minimum limits of liability insurance mandated by law- $25,000. If you are involved in a crash and suffer any kind of significant injury, that amount of money will likely not even cover the medical bills you incur for your medical treatment. Because the drivers who carry the minimum limits of insurance are usually the ones who cause most of the car wrecks in our state (there’s a reason why they can’t get better insurance), UM coverage is a must.

But what happens when your own car insurance company doesn’t treat you fairly and refuses to compensate you for the damages you’ve suffered? Unfortunately, many injured victims in Georgia learn the hard way that their insurance company is happy to accept their premiums for UM coverage over many years, but when the time comes to pay out on legitimate claims, they are in for a serious fight. For instance, in one of our recent cases, the liability carrier for the at-fault driver was quick to pay our client the limits of their policy, but when it came time to pursue the money available under our client’s UM policy, her insurance company refused to negotiate after presenting her with a low-ball offer, forced us to file a law suit to protect her rights, and then failed to have an attorney present for important legal proceedings.

Public transportation is certainly a benefit, if not a necessity, for many in the Atlanta metropolitan area. However, travel on the rails or in buses, like driving in a car, is not free of risk. In a recent decision, Maloof v. Metropolitan Rapid Transit Authority, the Georgia Court of Appeals addressed whether it was appropriate to grant summary judgment in favor of MARTA in a negligence suit involving a disabled passenger traveling in a para-transit vehicle.

The accident at issue in the case occurred on April 13, 2005. On that day, the deceased, whose estate brought the instant lawsuit on her behalf, was traveling in a MARTA para-transit van. After the deceased boarded the bus, she backed her wheelchair into position, and the driver of the vehicle secured the wheelchair to the floor in four places and strapped a lap belt across the deceased’s waist. The deceased, however, declined to wear the shoulder harness. The deceased had traveled on para-transit buses before and had on all previous occasions declined to wear the shoulder harness. While making a wide right turn onto Piedmont Avenue, the para-transit van veered into an adjoining lane of traffic and, as a result, made impact with another vehicle. The contact was slight, but in an effort to avoid a more serious collision, the driver stopped abruptly, which caused the deceased to fall to the ground and break her leg. The deceased remained immobile for several months before passing away a little more than four months later.

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