Just Say No: Lawyers Should NOT Take Fees on Voluntarily Paid No-Fault Benefits Like Wage Loss, Replacement Services and Medical Bills
Let me be clear: There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for a Michigan personal injury lawyer to try to take an attorney fee when an auto insurance company is voluntarily paying a crash victim wage loss and replacement services.
This practice by some lawyers who handle car accident cases in Michigan makes me cringe. It represents the worst excesses of my profession; and these personal injury lawyers have no excuse for doing this They are literally taking thousands of dollars that rightfully belongs to their injured clients for no reason.
If you have been in a car accident, and this is happening to you, this is my advice: Run (don’t walk) away. Find a respected lawyer who truly really cares about you and is trying to maximize the dollars in your pocket — not his or her own.
But… Attorney Fees on Attendant Care
Ok, I’m a lawyer, so sometimes I have to talk like one. Here’s one important exception to this black and white issue. It lies with attendant care (AC), also called nursing care services.
Attendant care is so complicated in Michigan, and the insurance abuse and outright fraud by insurance companies is so great, that when it comes to attendant care, it does makes sense to hire a lawyer right away to help you collect these important benefits — even if the insurance company is willing to pay an amount voluntarily.
Here’s the rub: Even with an attorney fee being taken, an experienced attendant care lawyer in Michigan can normally double or triple the hourly rate that an insurance company would otherwise voluntarily pay for attendant care. Also, an attendant care lawyer can also normally negotiate a higher number of hours per day that attendant care services should be paid.
Finally, after the string of cases allowing an insurance company to avoid paying attendant care, hiring an experienced no-fault insurance lawyer can stop insurance companies from later trying to evade paying the full value of attendant care services.
The legal pitfalls and obstacles are mind boggling in the area of attendant care law. Cases in Michigan have literally allowed insurance claims adjusters to lie to their own insureds about their right to collect attendant care. And there are many hyper-technical traps that allow an insurance company to get out of paying for attendant care, even when they have already made a promise to pay.
In the next in my series of blogs on insurance company abuse in Michigan (and the resulting excesses and abuses that has caused lawyers and doctors to “stare into the abyss”), I’d like to discuss the false Internet advertising and outright fraud committed by some personal injury lawyers both in Michigan and throughout the country. It’s important for accident victims to know that lawyer advertising on the web today is truly the wild west, with very little oversight and regulation.
Now, it’s more important than ever to look for trusted, independent third-party reviews of lawyers.
– Steven M. Gursten is recognized as one of the nation’s top experts in serious car and truck accident injury cases and automobile insurance no-fault litigation. Steve has received the largest jury verdict for an automobile accident case in Michigan in four of the past seven years, including 2008, according to a published, year-end verdicts and settlements report.
Related information:
For Michigan Lawyers: Pursuing Auto Injury Claims in Michigan
Car Accident Victim Testimonial
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