Virginia Personal Injury and Medical Malpractice Blog

Who Pays?

After an accident you should be submitting your medical bills to both your own health insurance company and to you car insurance company (if you bought medical payments coverage.)

The defendant's insurance company is not going to pay your bills as they are incurred.

You don't want your bills to go into collections.

Your own health insurance company may be entitled to be reimbursed later.

Another Good Reason to Have High Uninsured Motorist Limits

Think this guy was driving around "fully insured" and able to compensate his victims?

A man who has already served a full sentence for an accident which left a Chesapeake woman with severe personal injuries five years ago because he was “hotdoggin” drunk on a motorcycle will be heading back to prison.

On Monday, April 28 Chief Circuit Court Judge Mark Davis sentenced Joshua Bristol to spend five years in prison for maiming and another year for drunk driving. Two years and six months of the sentence for maiming were suspended provided that Bristol successfully completes two years of supervised released.

On July 4, 2003, Bristol struck April Mapp-Sawyer outside of Three Cheers restaurant and lounge in the parking lot in Cradock.

Mapp, who is unable to remember the incident, received severe personal injuries and has been unable to return to work since the accident.

Bristol first received a conviction for the charges in 2004, but appealed. The conviction was overturned by the Virginia Supreme Court in November 2006 because the court ruled that blood test analysis should not have been admitted as evidence because he was not officially placed under arrest when he consented to the test.

Bristol had already served his sentence of the first convictions when the high court gave its ruling.Prosecutors in Portsmouth decided to bring back the charges and Bristol was convicted again of the same charges in March.

Teaching Point from Attorney Ben Glass:

Dirtbags can legally drive in Virginia without insurance. It's one of those wacky things that go on here. Even if he bought insurance, he probably bought the minimum.

You can buy up to a million dollars of uninsured coverage from most car insurance companies.

They don't want you to know about it and they certainly don't (most of them) want to sell too many of those policies.

Why?

Because when they sell you a policy like that they are really insuring the dirtbag.

Not a good deal for them.