While we still believe that North Carolina's use of contributory negligence in personal injury cases is antiquated, harsh and punishes injured people, we can no longer support the version of HB 813 now being debated by state lawmakers. Quite simply, some the the provisions that have been added to the bill as it has made its way through the N.C. General Assembly do not protect the interests of injured people.

So, we must join the N.C. Advocates for Justice in withdrawing our support for HB 813.

As a law firm that advocates for injured people, we still believe that North Carolina must move away from contributory negligence and toward comparative fault in these cases, the compromise bill currently proposed sacrifices too much

North Carolina is one of only four states that allow the doctrine of contributory negligence as a defense in auto accident and other personal injury cases. Contributory negligence is a harsh and outdated way of denying help to people hurt in accidents. Under current law, if you’re even 1 percent responsible for an accident, you CANNOT recover damages from the person who injured you, even if that person is 99 percent at fault.

The original HB 813, which we supported, sought to correct that injustice by switching from contributory negligence to comparative fault. Under the comparative fault doctrine, juries determine how much fault lies with each party in the accident and then award damages based on those percentages. The injured party is allowed to recover only that percentage of damage caused by the other person. Under the much fairer comparative fault standard, an injured person would still be able to collect a percentage of an insurance settlement to cover medical bills and compensate for injuries. Now, these victims get nothing.

State lawmakers are preparing to vote on legislation that will impact anyone who is hurt in a car accident or suffers a personal injury that is someone else’s fault.

North Carolina is one of only four states that allow the doctrine of contributory negligence as a defense in auto accident and other personal injury cases. Contributory negligence is a harsh and outdated way of denying help to people hurt in accidents. Under current law, if you’re even 1 percent responsible for an accident, you CANNOT recover damages from the person who injured you, even if that person is 99 percent at fault.

HB 813 seeks to correct that injustice by switching from contributory negligence to comparative fault. Under the comparative fault doctrine, juries determine how much fault lies with each party in the accident and then award damages based on those percentages. The injured party is allowed to recover only that percentage of damage caused by the other person. Under the much fairer comparative fault standard, an injured person would still be able to collect a percentage of an insurance settlement to cover medical bills and compensate for injuries. Now, these victims get nothing.

It could happen to you or someone you love.

Imagine that you’re driving home after picking up your child from school or coming home from a dinner date with your spouse. You have the green light, but just as you’re crossing through the intersection, another car runs the red light. You see their headlights and you know the other driver isn’t going to stop. But in the nanoseconds leading up to the crash, you don’t swerve and you don’t blow your horn. Because all you can think about is your loved one.

The other driver’s insurance company will argue that because you saw the car coming, and didn’t do anything to prevent the collision, you were partially at fault for the accident. Because of contributory negligence, that’s enough to kill your claim and leave you saddled with medical bills resulting from the crash. All while the other driver’s insurance company gets off scot-free.

How little can 1 percent be? In North Carolina, insurance companies have used contributory negligence to deny auto accident claims because the injured person:

• Failed to honk when passing another vehicle that sideswiped them
• Failed to look both ways when passing through an intersection with a green light and then was T-boned by another car whose driver ran a red light
• Failed to slam on the brakes in the seconds before another car slammed into theirs

Though someone else was clearly at fault in each of these examples, the victims weren’t able to collect insurance payments for their injuries because they were slightly responsible for these accidents. Does that seem fair?

We don’t think so either. That’s why we’re asking you to call, email or write your elected officials in the N.C. Senate and tell them to SUPPORT HB 813! The bill has already been approved by the state House, and the state Senate is expected to vote on the measure during the current session of the North Carolina General Assembly.

It’s very important that you let your state senators know how you feel and how you want them to vote on this bill. The insurance industry is lobbying them aggressively to keep the current doctrine of contributory negligence. They’re twisting the facts, spreading misinformation and spending thousands every week on an advertising campaign aimed at killing HB 813.

You may have heard their radio commercials claiming that automobile insurance rates will go up if the proposed legislation becomes law. That’s simply not true. Insurance lobbyists are distorting the truth to protect their industry's profits at the expense of what's fair for everyone.

FACT:
Before neighboring states South Carolina and Tennessee switched from contributory negligence to comparative fault, auto insurance premiums were much higher there than in North Carolina. Since the change, premiums in those states have increased at a much slower rate than premiums in North Carolina.

The insurance companies also assert that more accident claims will be paid if this new law passes. We certainly hope that’s the case because accident victims in North Carolina have too long been denied fair compensation for their injuries. It’s important to remember that with comparative fault, victims won’t be getting money they don’t deserve. Insurance settlements will be determined by each person’s level of fault.

Victims finally will be getting the justice they deserve after more than a century of unfairness under contributory negligence, a standard designed to protect insurers at the expense of suffering people.

Finally, we have a chance to protect the victims of personal injuries.

Please, contact your elected officials today and ask them to support HB 813. Tell them that current law is too harsh and needs to be reformed. You’ll find contact information for North Carolina’s state senators at the end of this letter. You can learn more about the fight for fair justice in North Carolina by visiting www.fairjusticenc.com.

Thanks for your help in passing this much-needed reform that protects injured people. This is a law that could impact all of us

We need you to call, write or email your state senators as soon as possible and tell them to support HB 813, which would change the standard in personal injury cases from contributory negligence to comparative fault.

We'll be writing more about this issue in the coming days, but here's a quick primer on what's at stake, courtesy of  North Carolina Advocates for Justice.

All of us expect our civil justice system to be fair, but in North Carolina it's not. Unfortunately, insurance lobbyists want to keep it that way with empty scare tactics.

Our state is one of only four that clings to contributory negligence, a harsh and outdated way of denying help to people hurt in accidents. Under "contrib," even if you are only 1% percent responsible for an accident, you cannot recover damages from someone 99% responsible.

Comparative fault, used in 46 states, allows people to recover damages from those most responsible for causing an accident. It's a fair system that does not mean a rise in premiums.

The bipartisan House Bill 813 aims to introduce comparative fault as the new and improved law of the land. But insurance lobbyists are trying to stop this change by distorting the facts. Unlike what insurance lobbyists say, neighboring states with comparative fault have seen premium rates slow down.

Follow this link to find out who represents who in the state senate and how to get in touch with them.

In this case, a woman with Stage 4 breast cancer tried to collect disability insurance. But Cigna repeatedly denied Susan Kristoff's claim for short-term disability.

Cigna said she had not proven a disability. Sick and with bills piled up, Kristoff says she considered something drastic.

"If I wasn't going to be getting better, I didn't want to sink the rest of my family, so I spent two days in bed crying and thinking about suicide," she said.

Instead Kristoff hired an attorney. In short order, Cigna reversed course and paid her short-term benefits. Then with her lawyer's help, she applied for the much more important long-term help.

When asked about deny-and-delay, an insurance industry spokeswoman skirted the issue.

"I think our community has every incentive to continue to get better and that's what we strive for," Susan Pisano, a representative of the insurance company trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, said.

[Reporter] Chris Cuomo asked Pisano, "What is the incentive for the insurance company to do things quickly when there is no penalty for doing things slowly?"

"Well, you set up punitive damages as the sort of holy grail," Pisano replied.

Cuomo pointed out that punitive damages were set up to encourage companies not to delay coverage, knowing that there could be stiff financial penalties down the road.

"And I think that the people who wrote the law said they weren't gonna do that because they wanted to be encouraging employers to offer these benefits and they did not want to build in a costly and protracted, you know, court situation," responded Pisano.

Because of the reviews, New Jersey, in particular, has the highest number of backlog cases in the country. Most workers there have been waiting more than a year for payouts and with a few hundred unlucky people waiting almost a decade.

At least one lawmaker in Congress is acknowledging the problem, and he’s not even from New Jersey!

U.S. Rep John Tanner (D-Tenn.) has introduced a bill to exempt all settlements under $250,000 from Medicare’s scrutiny and force Medicare to quickly review cases. Representatives from over a dozen states have joined the bill, which awaits action.

The American Association of Justice report examines tactics that insurance companies used in denying claims after Hurricane Katrina.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the insurance companies:

• attempted to shift blame for the $135 billion in storm damage to flooding, which is not covered by most insurance policies, when in fact wind accounted for the vast majority of home losses and damage.
• used misleading statistics to convince the media and through them the general public that losses weren't as significant as they truly are.
• Attempting to influence engineering firms and others involved in evaluating damage from Katrina and the causes of it.
• Underestimated the value of damage
• Misled policyholders into their waiving rights 
• Dropped or weakened policies after pay-outs

The insurance industry also has a history of poor-mouthing, claiming financial losses when, in fact, statistics show that insurance is a robust and very profitable business.

Through its advertising efforts, the insurance industry has positioned itself as a savior, the consumer's best friend in a crisis. But the opposite is true. The insurance industry consistently takes advantage of people in need and mistreats them. Insurance companies are no friend to injured workers, to car accident victims or to homeowners who have suffered catastrophic damage.

Here's the full report. 

This time the culprit is Good Morning America Radio on XM Sattelite Radio.

Recently, the show's host reported about a lawsuit that a New Jersey man filed after suffering third-degree burns at Starbucks.

Here's the gist of the Starbucks burn lawsuit, as covered by a New Jersey newspaper:

A Wayne man filed suit Thursday against a local Starbucks, claiming his hand was scalded by overly hot tea from an improperly lidded cup.

Antonio Couso and his wife, Lucy, were at a Starbucks on Route 23 in Wayne on March 12, 2006, when the spill occurred, according to the civil suit filed in state Superior Court in Paterson.

Fort Lee lawyer Rosemary Arnold, representing the Cousos, said that "when he went to pick up the cup, the top wasn't on correctly. The top came off.

"When you as a consumer go into a Starbucks and order tea and the lid is on the cup, when you pick up the cup, you have a right to expect that the server has put the lid on properly," Arnold said.

Unfortunately, the insurance industry and corporations have conditioned Americans to believe that all personal injury and products liability lawsuits are frivolous, when in fact the contrary is likely true. Most attorneys won't pursue personal injury cases unless the plaintiff has a legitimate claim, in other words, a real injury that requires extensive medical treatment and that deserves compensation.

Of course, the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit came up in the GMA Radio discussion. The case involving 79-year-old Stella Lieback, who was burned after ordering a cup of coffee at the McDonald's drive-thru, has been widely misreported and misrepresented. A jury awarded her $3 million in punitive and compensatory damages for her injuries.

Here are the facts, in brief, courtesy of Liebeck's attorney and the Center for Justice & Democracy:

• By corporate specifications, McDonald's sells its coffee at 180 to 190 degrees Fahrenheit.
  Coffee at that temperature, if spilled, causes third-degree burns in two to seven seconds
• Third-degree burns do not heal without skin grafting, debridement and whirlpool treatments that cost tens of thousands of dollars and result in permanent disfigurement, extreme pain and disability of the victim for many months, and in some cases, years.
• McDonald's admitted that it has known about the risk of serious burns from its scalding hot coffee for more than 10 years -- the risk was brought to its attention through numerous other claims and suits. in fact, from 1982 to 1992, McDonald's coffee burned more than 700 people.
• McDonald's admitted that it did not warn customers of the nature and extent of this risk of burns.
• Liebeck's treating physician testified that her injury was one of the worst scald burns he had ever seen.

Unfortunately, cases like the $67 million pants lawsuit where a Washington, D.C. judge sued a dry cleaner for losing his favorite pair of pants, help keep the myth alive.

Fortunately, there are people trying to tell the other side of the story. InjuryBoard has produced a video called "Mr. Fancy Pants," the first in a series that examines the realities of the American civil justice system.  The video, available on YouTube,  is a powerful counterpoint to the tort reform movement.

Among the options:

1. Prevent workplace injuries and illnesses through employee training and reviews of high-risk areas.
2. Shop around for the best insurance policy.
3. Consider self-insurance..

Visit the blog for more on each topic.

More examples of how the insurance companies have distorted public perception of workers' compensation fraud.

http://scsenatedems.blogspot.com/2007/03/workers-compensation-makes-insurance.html

As this article candidly explains, these auto insurance carriers are paying less and less on injury claims, but still continue to increase the premiums for their customers. Meanwhile the insurance companies continue to inundate the media with advertising that casts them in the role of helper and hero. The result is this: more and more jurors are coming to jury duty with the preconceived notion that the plaintiff must be greedy, committing fraud, or looking for a big payday.  

The CNN article even quotes a former juror who said she assumed that the plaintiff in the case that she heard had already received payment for injuries and other damages from the insurance company and that she brought the lawsuit out of greed. In reality, the accident victim's insurance claim was never paid, and she lost in court.

The revelations in this article won't surprise attorneys who represent injured people. Large auto insurance carriers have been using this hardball tactics for years when addressing claims. They have a huge incentive -- profits -- to continue to act this way in the future. 

Furthermore, discussions about offers and demands for settlement may not be discussed in front of the jury. So even though it is routinely the case that the offer of the Auto Insurance Carrier is an amount less than the injured party's medical bills, leaving the Plaintiff with no option but to file suit, the jury doesn't get any of that information. These are just two examples of information juries routinely want to know, but are prohibited from receiving.

Then the Defense Attorney launches into an attack on the nature of the injuries, which invariably in these minor impact cases are soft tissue, muscular type injuries. Common sense would tell you though that there won't be objective evidence of these musclar, sprain/strain injuries.

Think about when you have worked out hard at a gym, or injured you back moving furniture, or pulled a hamstring running. Would you be able to get objective evidence that showed your pain? Strain? No. Does that mean it doesn't hurt or that you didn't need treatment? No. Ironically, these are the exact kind of injuries you would expect a person to have in a minor impact case. Would you expect a minor fender-bender to rupture internal organs, break bones, or cause severe head trauma? Of course, not. 

Naturally, Allstate and State Farm declined to be interviewed regading the content of the CNN article. Draw your own conclusions from that. Rather than participate in the discussion or defend themselves against the commentary in the article, they chose to simply issue one-sided statements. My guess is their hope is that the general public remains unaware of this ongoing problem, and just keeps paying their monthly premiums.