Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

my lawyer,my wife and i had made an agreement in the conference room of the court house when we were deciding whether to except the offer presented to us for a personal injury case. the agreement with our attorney was that if we except this offer now to keep this from dragging on for possibly years, that our attorney would pay all the medical bills and all the fee's and other charges that have been incurred do to a normal personal injury case, and that each of us,the attorney and my wife and i would split the remainder of the settlement equally. this did happen this way, except the attorney did not pay all the medical bills as we agreed on. he only paid the ones with liens on them, and that was not our agreement we made . it was to take care of all the medical bills. so now we believe he is in breech of our contract that we all agreed on in the court room. im sure you as an attorney understand that when you are in the room talking to your client, that you do make agreements like this. he didnt follow thru with his agreement to us and now we have a judgement against us for these medical bills. he said legally he only had to take care of medical liens, but our agreement wasnt just medical liens, we have never even heard of a medical lien, they are just medical bills to us, that should have been taken care of. what can we do about this, this is just wrong and now we are suffering from this financial disaster. it wasnt like he didnt have these bills, he did . he just chose not to pay them, which ment he made alot more money in his pockets over this,and we got stuck with the bills.


Asked on 10/24/12, 10:21 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Rob Reed Law Office of Robert A. Reed

You mention that the attorney split the remainder equally with you, so I am presuming the attorney did not make "more money."

The issue sounds like a potential medical lien that was not anticipated or known about. This might be a matter of legal malpractice, but it would depend on the obviousness of the medical lien (i.e., mentioned in medical records) or you told him about the medical treatment involved.

If this is a subrogation lien (your med insurance wants to be paid back), the attorney should have been notified that some of the treatment was covered by insurance.

Good luck.

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Answered on 10/24/12, 12:28 pm


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