Atlanta Personal Injury
Attorneys

With offices in Columbus and Atlanta, Affleck & Gordon stands ready to provide a free case evaluation. Affleck & Gordon’s personal injury attorneys have provided assertive and effective representation for years to maximize their clients’ personal injury compensation. If you are looking for passionate and results-driven representation, you need not look further for legal representation. Fighting for your rights for over 30 years, Affleck & Gordon will aggressively pursue the benefits you deserve. Contact the personal injury attorneys at Affleck & Gordon to ask about a no-cost case evaluation. 

Personal injury laws cover a vast range of events including:

• Automobile Accidents
• Slip-and-Fall accidents
• Animal Attacks
• Medical Malpractice
• Nursing Home Malpractice
• Premises Liability
• Product Liability
• Scaffolding Accidents
• Negligent or Inadequate Security

If you’ve been in auto accident or had another serious personal injury, the attorneys at Affleck & Gordon are ready to listen to you and explain your rights. Call us now at (404) 990-3945 for a free consultation.

Who Pays Your Medical Bills After an Accident That's No Fault of Your Own?

Insurance adjusters frequently claim that the insurance company will pay your medical bills. What an adjuster may be withholding from you is that they will eventually consider your medical bills as part of a general settlement. The adjuster might agree to pay your past medical bills if you sign a general release. Beware – signing such a release may be forfeiting critical aspects of your case. Signing a release could unjustly waive your right to compensation for lost wages, future medical bills, and pain and suffering.

Instead, you should be prepared to initially pay your own medical bills. If you have medical insurance or a medical pay policy with an automobile insurance company, you can use either of those to pay your medical bills. If you have no medical insurance, some doctors may be willing to see you based on a lien. In such a case, the doctor in question agrees to treat you because they have reason to believe you’ll be able to pay them from the proceeds of a settlement or verdict. Not every doctor is willing to treat on a lien, so it may take some research and legwork to find one that does.

Eventually, in most cases, we will send a settlement demand to the adjuster after you have received treatment to see if we can settle your case without taking it to trial. We will include your medical bills as one component of your case in such a settlement demand. We usually provide itemized billing from the physicians who have treated you. We also provide estimates of your future medical costs along with the value of other damages like lost wages and pain and suffering. If the adjuster is unwilling to settle for what your case is worth, we then file suit, go to trial, and ask a jury to order the party at fault in your injury to pay your medical bills, along with other damages such as your physical and mental pain and suffering.

What Is An Insurance Policy Limit and How Will It Affect My Case?

When you purchase insurance for your car, you pay different amounts for different levels of coverage. In Georgia, the state minimum coverage is $25,000 for an individual and $50,000 for an occurrence or accident. This means if there are several people injured in an accident, the coverage is limited to $25,000 for each person and a total of $50,000 for everyone combined. You can always purchase a policy with higher limits, but the premium will be higher.

If you are hurt in an accident, the other driver’s insurance policy will limit how much money you can recover from that person’s insurance company. If your medical bills exceed $25,000, but the other driver only has a state minimum policy, more likely than not, you will only be able to recover $25,000 from the other driver’s insurance company. Therefore, at the outset of the case you should obtain a copy of the other driver’s insurance policy to determine how much coverage they have. 

In theory, you are not limited to the insurance policy for compensation. You could receive a verdict larger than the other driver’s insurance policy and convince the other driver to pay you directly. In reality, this is normally not very practical. Someone with state-minimum coverage usually will not have cash on hand to pay you. 

Increasing your uninsured motorist policy helps protect you from drivers holding only the minimum state-mandated insurance. Uninsured motorist policies are in reality underinsured policies. If your case is worth more than $25,000, your uninsured motorist policy pays the amount above and beyond the other driver’s policy limits. Therefore, if you can afford the increased premiums, it’s prudent to consider increasing your uninsured motorist policy.

Contact the Affleck & Gordon team today to learn more about how we can protect your rights after an injury.