Recently, we settled a case for a young lady that was a passenger in a vehicle that ran a red light. In the intersection, her vehicle was t-boned by a VIA bus. This case had a lot of tricky issues due to the number of claims sure to be filed. We settled this case early for maximum limits.

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Justin Hill: Welcome to Hill Law Firm Cases, a podcast discussing real-world cases handled by Justin Hill and the Hill law firm. For confidentiality reasons, names and amounts of any settlements have been removed. However, the facts are real and these are the cases we handle on a day-to-day basis.

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Recently we were able to settle for what was a surprisingly good amount for a client. It was a case involving a car crash in which a car was T-boned by a VIA bus. This case had some difficulties. One of them was our client was very close family friends with the driver of her vehicle. However, that driver was at fault. Another complication was there was about 25 people on the VIA bus, Texas law provides that the insurance company can pay out whatever claims they want. They don't owe a duty to multiple plaintiffs to be fair to everybody. They can payout their money, wash their hands of it, and be done.

We knew this and we knew that provided some sort of need for speed. We had to hurry up and make sure that our client's rights were protected. Our client at the end of the day would be competing with 25 other claims, assuming those 25 other people were injured. Our client suffered serious injuries. She was a young lady, barely out of high school, suffered a very serious cut to her face, some broken teeth and some other internal injuries. Luckily for her, she had health insurance and she was able to get all the medical care she needed. She seems to be on a road to full recovery. We were able to resolve her case without filing a lawsuit, which is pretty rare anymore in these times.

The defendants understood that she had serious injuries. She had a scar on her face that would not heal anytime soon and the juries normally feel a certain level of sympathy for women who have injuries such as hers. On top of that, we expected the insurance company to toss all the money in a pot and tell everybody to fight over it. What was working in our favor was like most cases, we were the most aggressive. We pushed hard, we stayed on it. We got the insurance company everything they needed early on, and we told them we were going to be filing the case by a date certain if they didn't resolve our claim. I was surprised, and anymore in our industry it's pretty rare to be surprised, and I was surprised that they made a full policy offer for our client without having to file a lawsuit. It was much higher offer than I thought they would make, especially that early on.

On top of that, we were able to get a full offer of the under-insured benefits from our client's insurance. Our client was able to put this to bed without having to follow a lawsuit, be deposed, go to trial. It was a great result for her and is going to provide money to pay for her college.