The Power of Litigation and Trial
JB Law recently settled a very difficult case for an amount of money the client never imagined. And they did so without even having to take a deposition.
It involved a significant injury at a Palm Beach County construction site. The client suffered numerous fractured ribs and ultimately needed a chest reconstruction due to the negligent actions of an employee from a different company on the construction site.
When JB took over the case, he realized that the legal standard was not simple negligence but gross negligence, which is a much more difficult threshold to reach when trying to win a case. JB knew that the extent of the injury was the strongest part of the case and focused on the injury, not the more difficult legal standard.
JB secured law enforcement’s records and videos from the scene, including a video of the negligent employee admitting that he accidentally injured the client. And instead of trying to negotiate with the insurance companies involved, JB immediately filed a lawsuit, so the insurance companies knew this was a serious case. JB wanted the maximum of insurance money for his client.
After filing the lawsuit, there was a dispute between two different defendants about who actually employed the negligent employee. While the parties were working that out, JB demanded they both pay their insurance money to his client. It was unlikely that they would both pay, but it put them both on notice that JB was not taking less than the full amount of whichever insurance policy ultimately covered the negligent employee. This also had the added benefit of potentially invoking Florida’s bad faith laws, which require insurance companies to pay more on claims where there is a reasonable basis to believe a case is worth the full policy limits.
After the insurance companies for the two defendants argued amongst themselves for a few weeks, they settled on Defendant B as the party who employed the negligent employee.
After being told that Defendant B’s insurance company would handle the case, JB again demanded their policy’s full limits. Each demand package included all the medical records and bills from the accident and outlined how much pain the client has been in and will be in the future. This prevented the insurance company from later saying they did not have all the information needed to assess the claim. It also kept the focus on the injury and not the difficult legal standard of gross negligence. This aggression appeared to perplex the insurance company and put them in a position where they either had to pay the full $1,000,000 policy limits immediately or risk a verdict at trial that could be 3 or 4 times that amount in a bad faith case.
Finally, after JB demanded the policy limits on three separate occasions, the insurance company tendered its full $1,000,000 policy limit. All this was achieved without taking a deposition or attending a hearing but utilizing the power of litigation and trial to get a great outcome for the client.