aggiebq03+ said:
So you don't think insurance companies should get notice prior to a lawsuit getting filed, to try and work out settlement outside of going to court for extended periods of time?
I get that people need to be paid for work. I don't get why we are opposed to putting measures in place to reduce court times. Obviously if insurance companies have an economic incentive to underpay, which has been stated by several people as opposition for this law, it's equally obvious that lawyers have an economic incentive to lengthen court proceedings to increase "expenses".
insurance companies always know when they are going to be sued, and even if they didn't, attorneys always lead with a demand letter anyway. All this does is give insurers a free pass to squeeze consumers harder than ever until they get a form letter, and then let them ride for 60 days on the consumer's dime before making a fair offer to avoid litigation.
and there is no incentive WHATSOEVER for lawyers to lengthen court proceedings or increase expenses. Unless you mean the insurer's lawyers. but generally the carriers are so tight those poor saps are making under $100k per year anyway and the insurers are pressuring them hard to move the case quickly.
For perspective, I started my career trying cases for insurance companies, and later RAN a claims and legal department for a fortune 500 company with a $10m SIR, so I am not some ambulance chaser.
I never once lost a defense case at trial.
It was so easy, I have regrets about it. For example, I convinced a brazoria county jury that my hung over 'party girl' was not negligent for her accident. She rear ended and injured a poor old maid fairly badly, in the middle of the day, while the lady was waiting to turn. She never even slowed down, slammed her at 55 mph.
Insurer squeezed the old lady, and she had to file suit. 2 years later she hadn't seen a dime, insurer wouldn't even take my recommendation on paying her, and kept pinching her offer. There was some evidence that the maid's turn signal may not have been working, and her expert witness messed up some math. I shoved that mistake up his ass, and that was it. That lady never saw a dime, and her attorney spent about $8,000, and probably 300 hours on the case, and never saw a dime either.
Running the claims and legal department, I regularly told my counsel to refuse to settle lawsuit on any terms whatsoever, just to test the juries in different jurisdictions, and literally almost every time I did that, the plaintiffs, most of whom were actually injured and were at least arguably correct that our drivers were at fault, just dropped the case rather than incur the expense of trial. Never once did a jury in Texas pop us for doing that. Not once.
I don't do that work much any more, I actually felt guilty how easy it was to abuse plaintiffs and plaintiffs lawyers. The insurance industry bought and paid for the citizens against lawsuits movement, and juries today are far more abusive than the old days of out of control juries.
We never should have done 'tort reform'.... we should have done 'jury selection reform' and just gotten responsible people to serve on juries.
