Legal Question in Personal Injury in Nevada

Re: Personal injury

Welcome to my frustrating world of dealing with health insurance companies when there is a personal injury.

Very likely your health insurance contract obligates you to pay them back. If you have an attorney there is a strong argument that when your attorney gets the settlement check, your attorney has an obligation to honor their claim. This is the current position the Nevada State Bar takes based on current Nevada Supreme Court law. (When I started practicing in Nevada in 1981 the standard of practice among attorneys was that if the client didn't want to pay back the insurance company or even pay the health care providers, that was the client's business; the attorney simply took his fee and gave the rest to the client if that was what the client wanted.)

There are various arguments available to reduce the amount paid back to the insurance companies or even not to pay them back. Typically insurance companies must pay their share of attorney fees if an attorney was used to get the settlement. If you can document good faith and reasonable efforts to contact the insurance company which were ignored, you may have an argument that they waived their right to get paid back. Undocumented phone calls which are just your word that you spoke to some clerk at the insurance company aren't much of a defense to repayment. Proof of mailing the insurance company letters which they ignored would be helpful to you.

As a practical matter, the insurance company is probably--emphasize probably--not going to come after you for repayment if you settle after litigation and during all the time of litigation they never mentioned to their claim for reimbursement.