What happens when there’s more than one person injured in a car accident, and there’s only one at fault party? Does that mean that you’ll be getting less money for your injury claim? The answer is (more than likely) yes. And here is why.

To give you an example of how auto accident injury claims work when there’s more than one person injured, and there’s only one at fault party, we’re going to use the example of the at fault party’s insurance company being a “pot of money”. Meaning, that pot of money is going to have to be split by all the individuals that were injured in that accident.

When you see an insurance policy or a declaration page, typically you’re going to see liability coverage. In that liability coverage you’re going to see two numbers. The first number being a smaller number, second number being a larger number. Usually it’s increments of $10,000/20,000, $25,000/50,000, $50,000/100,000. But what do all these numbers mean? That first number is going to be the amount of liability coverage that that person has for one individual person that is injured in that accident. The second number is the amount of money available for all the individuals that are injured in that one accident, meaning if there’s more than one injured person in that accident, then there’s a lump sum of money that they’re all going to split.

To give you an example. We recently had a case, which where there was three injured parties in that potential claim. What does that mean? If the at fault driver that caused the car accident has $100,000/300,000 in bodily injury coverage then there is going to be $300,000 are going to be tendered globally, more than likely, depending on the extent of the injuries. In this case, there’s two individual people that were involved in the accident that were in a scooter and their injuries are pretty extensive. So what happens then? The insurance company calls all the attorneys that are involved in the in the claim and they let us know, “Look, we’re going to tender the $300,000. We need to get together for what’s called a global mediation.”

What is a global mediation? this is when all the parties get together and discuss how they are going to split the bodily injury policy limits amongst all the injured victims. And what happens in that case? The attorneys present there cases in front of a mediator and at that point we show the type of injuries that their clients have had as a result of this accident. At the end of the day, hopefully all the parties could agree on certain numbers for each of their clients and everybody hopefully walks away happy. Typically that’s not always the case.

With the rainy season approaching in South Florida it is important to be aware of any slippery conditions there may be in the common areas of you condo or residential community. The attorneys at Ferrer Law, PA have represented individuals with various injuries like back injuries, bicycle accident, brain injury, burn injury, car accident, catastrophic injury, dog bites, Lyft accident, medical malpractice, motorcycle accident, neck injury, negligence, negligent security, nursing home abuse, pedestrian accident, personal injury, premises liability, products liability, serious injuries, slip and fall, train accident, trip and fall, trucking accident, Uber accident, and wrongful death throughout Miami-Dade, Broward, and the rest of the state of Florida. If you or a loved one has been hurt due to the negligence of a condo association or residential community, call the Ferrer Law, PA, at 305-697-2224 for a free consultation.

 

 

 

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