Legal Question in Personal Injury in California

What it means is that the injured party's attorney is considering suing your company and/or you for money in excess of the insurance limits of coverage. Your insurance company's being either slow or reluctant to pay the full policy limits to settle the claim may have a role in their decision to put the pressure on you this way.

What you need to do is to hire a PERSONAL attorney to represent you in this personal injury claim (ie, another one aside from the insurance company's attorney). Here is why. Your insurer may be trying to stone wall the claimant to see if they can wear them down and settle the case for LESS than the police limits, even though the value of the claim clearly exceeds it.

The obvious problem with this strategy is that it does so at YOUR risk. By not settling for full policy limits, they put your company or personal assets at risk. This is called "insurance bad faith." The lawyer that your insurer hired to defend this claim gets a lot of business from the insurance company. How much future business will you give them? Where will this lawyer's loyalties lie? Are you seeing why you need a private attorney? He need not expend a lot of time on this, but strategic occasional nudging (and threatening) can work wonders to get them to pay full policy limits, thereby getting you a full release from liability.

I have done personal injury litigation for over 32 years, and I can tell you that it is a chore to try to collect from people's personal assets. Personal injury lawyers would rather settle for policy limits and move on. The likely roadblock here is YOUR insurer, so you need to goose them to do the right thing.

If you want more information on this situation, you can see the following web site or call me for a free consultation.

http://negligentdeath.com/

I have litigated on both sides of this situation. Good luck

Was the letter from an attorney? They are trying to see whether you have anything they could get in case of a suit in which the judgment exceeds your insurance policy limits. If not, they will accept the limits for settlement because they can not get much if anything more from you If you have very little, I would tell them so that they do not try to go after you personally. If you have a significant amount, I would not tell them. You can only be forced to reveal the assets ilf a punitive damage award is entered.

Check with your employee as to their insurance coverage and if it secondary to your policy or does not provide any coverage.

Your insurance company should pay to hire your own lawyer (if not hire your own) and have the lawyer force the insurance company to settle the case within the insurance policy limits. Provide no information without getting your own attorney.