About a year ago, I received a call from a grade school classmate inquiring whether he had to pay a $28.00 balance on a medical bill that had already been paid by Medicare. When I inquired as to what the nature of the bill was, he told me that he had sustained burn injuries about three years prior when he was attempting to help a friend prime the carburetor in a vehicle on his friend’s property. I had previously represented my childhood friend in an automobile accident in 1994 where we recovered $100,000.00, and I also had a successful hearing before an Administrative Law Judge and obtained Social Security Disability benefits for him in 2007 due to his ongoing back and knee problems which prevented him from continuing in his career as a certified automobile mechanic for various dealerships in the St. Louis area, but I had not been in touch with him for a while.
In discussing his situation with him, I explained that he may have a lawsuit, and he indicated that he did not want to do anything which would result in his friend having to pay anything out of his pocket. I agreed to that, and I filed suit against my client’s friend to determine if there was any liability insurance coverage which would cover this particular incident. After suit was filed, we determined that his friend’s homeowner’s insurance did not apply because it contained an exclusion which did not provide coverage if the negligent act occurred arising out of the use of a vehicle. We also determined that his friend’s automobile liability coverage did not apply because we determined that the vehicle that was involved was not a covered vehicle under the terms of his automobile policy. (This individual had a number of vehicles that he kept on his property that he collected as a hobby, most of which were inoperable.)
After determining there was no available insurance coverage from this individual, we filed a separate lawsuit against my client’s uninsured motorist policy, and after engaging in extensive discovery, we were able to obtain a settlement for all of the available coverage of $300,000.00 from my client’s uninsured motorist carrier.
If you have been injured in an accident and would like to speak with an experienced attorney, please call Thomas Gregory at Mogab & Hughes Attorneys at 314-241-4477.
