Legal Blog

Mark Baus Scheduled to Speak at State Bar of Wisconsin Seminar

 

Mark Baus will be speaking at the Wisconsin State Bar Center in Madison on September 24, 2010 at a seminar entitled “Interpreting Medical Information.”   This seminar is aimed at assisting attorneys and other legal professionals to understand and accurately interpret information contained in the medical clinic and hospital records.   Mark’s presentation at this seminar will focus on different styles in documenting patient medical information including the “SOAP” methodology and health care providers’ use of often-confusing abbreviations and technical medical terminology.

Car Insurance – The Sky is NOT falling in Wisconsin

The last legislative session brought some changes to auto insurance in Wisconsin. The new laws changed the minimums limits required for certain types of coverage, such as liability limits and medical payment limits. Most policies that we see in the cases we handle had policy limits above the minimal limits that were in effect before 2010, and I did not believe that was going to change policies for most people.

The positive change that we see in the new law involves uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage. Prior law allowed companies to include language in its policy that would reduce the limit of that coverage by other sources of insurance. A person who thought they had $100,000 in underinsured coverage could never receive that amount, as it would be reduced by any amounts the driver(s) who caused the accident had, or other sources such as workers compensation payments or disability coverage.   In some cases that underinsured coverage was reduced to zero, much to the surprise of our clients who thought they had good coverage.

When the law changed to prohibit this type of clause in the policy, the insurers complained that rates would jump dramatically.

When I received a renewal packet from my auto insurer, I first checked to see if the new language on uninsured and underinsured coverage was in the policy. It was. I looked at the declarations page, and the premium seemed to be in the range I remember it before the accident. I did check renewal with the same company for the same coverage, for 2009. The premiums for uninsured motorist coverage went down by $6 for myself, and $4 for my wife and son.

The claims of a dramatic prince increase were completely unfounded in my case.  I am relieved that insurers can no longer bury these exclusions in their policies.  Now, when your insurance policy says you have $100,000 in coverage, you truly have $100,000 in coverage.

Community Based Residential Facility – Nursing Home Service Agreement Warning

If you are placing your loved one in a community based residential facility or a nursing home, the agreement that is signed on admission may include a clause that would require you to bring a claim against them within 90 days, instead of 3 years as is allowed by law.   The group home or nursing home contract may also limit the amount of money you may collect for injury.   This may not seem unreasonable.   However, imagine a circumstance where your loved one is allowed to fall out of bed due to the negligence of the nursing home staff.   Your loved one sustains a fractured hip and is thereafter hospitalized and ultimately confined to a wheel chair.  Even if your loved one’s medical bills to treat the fractured hip exceeds $100,000, the nursing home will try to limit its responsibility.   And, even if a person knew about the extremely short time limit, the injuries themselves may prevent acting within 90 days.  This is unreasonable. A trial court recently denied enforcement of these two clauses in the service agreement, and the matter is now on appeal. 

If you or a family member needs to consider one of these facilities, you should look for and ask about these limitations. If they are there, ask the provider to cross them out, or look elsewhere.

Something Insurance Companies Don’t Want Jurors to Know

In many car accident cases, slip and fall cases, motorcycle accident cases, truck accident cases, or general liability cases, insurance companies try to blame the claimant for causing the accident or the injuries. When this happens, a judge is typically required to give the jury a question on its verdict form asking the jury not only if the defendant driver was negligent in causing an accident, but also whether the claimant was negligent in causing the accident or their own injuries.  The evidence that is required to ask such a question, called a “contributory negligence question”,  is minimal. Whenever any evidence of negligence is introduced, the judge is required to add such a question. The fact that the judge is asking about contributory negligence does not mean that the jury needs to answer “yes” to that question.

What happens if the jury answers “yes” to a question about negligence of the claimant? The jury is told to allocate the fault or negligence between the parties, using percentages.  The insurance companies and other defendants prefer to keep jurors in the dark about what happens when a claimant is negligent.  What does assigning a percentage of negligence to a claimant mean?

This is how it how it works:

                1. An injured party’s damages are reduced by the percentage of negligence assigned to the plaintiff. If the jury awards $100,000, and determines the plaintiff is 40% to blame, the plaintiff recovers $60,000.

                2. However, if an injured party is more at fault than a defendant, the injured party recovers nothing. In the above example if the injured party is 60% to blame, and the defendant is 40%, the injured party recovers nothing.

                3. In cases where there are multiple defendants, for instance a multi-car accident, this comparative negligence law can work a hardship, as the negligence of each plaintiff is compared to each defendant individually, rather than as a group. If the claimant was 40% at fault, and there were two defendants, each 30% at fault, then the plaintiff recovers nothing. Even though the collective negligence of each defendant was 60%, it does not matter because the comparison is made with individual defendants.

The working’s of Wisconsin’s comparative negligence laws are not generally known by the public, and the insurance industry would like to keep jurors in the uninformed. There have been reported instances where a jury intends to award a claimant money, but because of the comparative negligence system in Wisconsin, the claimant ultimately collects nothing.

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Along with information on our practice areas, we will be adding blog entries on interesting legal topics we are encountering, information that may be useful to other lawyers  encountering similar situations, or clients or potential clients that are curious about how this legal stuff works. We will include interesting cases from our appellate courts or newly enacted statutes. Stay  tuned for more information.