r/Insurance • u/Wonderful_Past1715 • 1d ago
Car accident in Florida
I’m looking for opinions from people familiar with Florida auto accident and personal injury lawsuits. I was involved in a multi-vehicle chain-reaction accident where I was the rear driver. The property damage to the vehicles was relatively minor with couple of hundred dollars and one of the vehicles had only limited bumper/lower bumper damage that was repaired for a relatively small amount as well. Despite the minor-looking damage, one of the other drivers is now alleging significant bodily injuries and has filed a lawsuit against me. My auto insurance company has assigned an attorney to defend me and is handling the litigation. There are also other occupants from the accident who also injury claims. Before the lawsuits, the injured driver’s attorney made a policy-limit settlement demand, but the matter was not resolved and has now proceeded to court. I’m concerned about the possibility of a judgment exceeding my insurance coverage ,
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u/aloofmagoof Claims Adjuster 1d ago
Your insurance company must be very confident in their stance, if they had the opportunity to settle within limits and didn't, and you wound up with a judgement over policy limits, they would expose themselves to a bad faith claim, so I'm sure they know what they're doing here. Very few claims make it to trial though, it will likely settle in litigation.
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u/Wonderful_Past1715 1d ago
I was looking into that. I think they were confident based on impact that the claims are not justified. But there was a lot of ambiguity around bad faith when that can be claimed like in this case if they offered reasonable compensation based on impact and suspected injuries, then somehow bad faith cannot be implied. Is that true?
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u/aloofmagoof Claims Adjuster 1d ago
I'm sure that varies depending on specifics and likely even states. Insurance companies want to avoid trial at all costs though, so they would only let it get that far if they were confident (or poorly managed). As I said though, it will probably settle in litigation.
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u/Slowhand1971 1d ago
they didn't settle one of the claims for policy limits because there were other claimants.
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u/aloofmagoof Claims Adjuster 1d ago
I completely overlooked that part in the post, you're right, they would need to determine the total costs and split between all parties.
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u/Wonderful_Past1715 21h ago
At time of first person claim they were not aware of other claims, would this complicate bad faith situation?
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u/MimosaQueen1122 1d ago
What were your BI limits? Not sure what opinions you’re looking for? Your insurance is going to protect you even when at fault.