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Back in October I was involved in an auto accident that is indisputably the other guy's fault. Police cited him and not me, and when his insurance adjuster called me the first thing out of her mouth was "We've already accepted responsibility." My car was totaled and I've already gotten my settlement for that and bought a new car, so I don't need help with that, but I was hurt. My shoulder got pretty messed up when I hit my airbag so for the last 3.5 months I've had to go to the doctor, go on pain meds / muscle relaxers, had a CAT scan done and just got done with a month of physical therapy, it's about at the point where it's as good as it's going to get. I also have what may be a permanent scar on my chest from the seatbelt. I haven't consulted a lawyer yet because I've really been hoping that I can settle this whole thing without dragging it out, but I still want to make sure I get treated fairly now that it's time to start really dealing with insurance. I've kept good records on what I've spent, I have all my medical records available and followed all my doctor's advice to the letter. I've kept in touch with the adjuster and we seem to have gotten along fine this whole time. Any general advice anyone can give me about what I need to do at this point? I've gone through a lot of pain and taken a lot of time out my life to deal with all this and I don't want to get rich off what happened to me, but what can I do at this point to make sure I'm compensated fairly? Even just pointing me in the right direction to other websites would help. Thanks! 
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Feb 23, 2010 19:10
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:44 |
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entris posted:When you accepted the settlement money for your car, did you have to sign any paperwork? I am specifically wondering whether you signed away your right to sue for additional compensation when you accepted that money? It sounds like you didn't agree to anything like that, but it's important to know. I did do a quick read through of everything I signed, and I'm sure I didn't sign anything like that.
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Feb 23, 2010 19:40
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You are both right, thanks. I went ahead and contacted the local bar association and got a referral. $20 for a consultation is well worth my peace of mind.
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Feb 23, 2010 20:09
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Incredulous Red posted:They're charging you for a consult? http://www.dallasbar.org/public/lrs-public.asp Looks like it's a standard fee for the Dallas Bar association.
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Feb 23, 2010 21:10
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About seven months ago I posted about my car accident and asked about getting a lawyer (here's a link to my posts). But basically, the accident was the other guy's fault but I had some injuries and my shoulder was in ongoing pain. So I went and got a personal injury lawyer. On our first meeting I brought him every receipt and important document including the 4 weeks worth of pictures I'd taken of my injury and the $1500 or so of expenses I personally spent AFTER my insurance paid for most of my doctor's vists (but not $1000 of the $3000+ for a CT scan of my shoulder, co-pays on doctors visits, new glasses, medicine etc.) He seemed really happy and impressed and said "Don't worry, you'll get a lot." but he wouldn't give me a dollar amount. He also sent me to another physical therapy place. My original physical therapy was pretty normal stretching and excercising and it was okay, my but my shoulder still hurt. This new place did electric shock, massage and chiropractic adjustments and it helped. In the end though, I still can't do things like clean my house for more than an hour without it hurting pretty badly. Every time I talked to my lawyer, he said not to worry, things are going fine, and kept saying we'll get "a lot" of money, and would never give me an estimate of what that might be. On Friday he called and told me "Good news! You're getting a check for $1500!" This wasn't good news AT ALL because I'd spent more than $1500 out of pocket. After hanging up, still shellshocked that he thought that was good news, I called back a few minutes later and tried over and over to get him to explain how I was only getting $1500 back. I saw at one point a settlement offer from them for $6500. He said he'd submitted over $8500 in medical expenses. And he said that he was generous and "gave" me $200 more than what I should have gotten out of his part of the deal. I asked what if we actually sued instead of settled and he said at best, in a year, I'd get maybe $900 more after fees back. Then he also told me that right after we hung up the first time he'd faxed in the acceptance of the settlement offer so it was too late anyway. Does this sound right to you? Did he just totally screw me or should I have never expected to be compensated for my time, energy, and the fact that my shoulder is probably permanently hosed for the rest of my life? (No, it doesn't bother me every single day but again, it limits me doing things in the long term. I can't hold my nephew with that arm more than a couple of minutes, can't clean the house for more than an hour at a time etc.) My dad thinks he's taking money under the table from insurance companies. Do I have a dirty / incompetent lawyer and if so do I have ANY recourse at this point, or were my expectations too high?
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Sep 22, 2010 21:28
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Thanks eviljelly, nm, King of the Cows and ChubbyEmoBabe. I'll look for a malpractice lawyer tomorrow and see if I can get a consultation about having a case. Setting aside the issue of whether or not I gave consent, though, does "breaking even" sound like a fair settlement in a case where someone ends up with a permanent, though not totally disabling, injury?
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Sep 22, 2010 23:22
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Texas
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Sep 22, 2010 23:45
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| # ¿ Apr 25, 2024 14:44 |
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I run a small website that hosts game saves for the Mass Effect series of games (masseffectsaves.com and masseffect2saves.com, soon to be masseffect3saves.com as well.) They are the most popular fansites for the ME games, but even so, it's not big money, after paying expenses I might make enough to take a friend out for lunch once every quarter or so. It's mostly a labor of love. The concept of the site is basically that people upload their saves after filling out a form and giving a brief description of what sets the choices in their save apart from other people's saves, since in the Mass Effect series of games there's dozens of choices in each game which tailors the next game to the choices you made in that savegame. I've had these sites since early 2010, the whois data plus multiple articles written about my site in actual respectable gaming websites (Penny Arcade blogged about it, G4TV, rockpapershotgun etc) will prove that. I found out last night that someone else has ripped off all the save game files and descriptions from my site and made their own about a month ago. masseffectsaves.info isn't populated with my data yet but it's only a matter of time, I'm sure. Masseffect2saves.info appears to have ALL their content stolen from me. A little sampling of proof: http://www.masseffect2saves.com/show_saves.php?g=Male&a=Paragon&r=Liara http://www.masseffect2saves.info/male/morrtin-shepard-30-sentinel-spacer-war-hero/ Note that they even left the DATE ADDED field the same, which has a date 22+ months before they even registered their site and 2 months after I registered mine. So, two questions: 1) What kind of verbage should I have on my site to ensure that it's "copyrighted" from here on out? Do I need to claim that the data people upload to my site now belongs to me? I'd rather not, but I'll do what I need to to protect my work. 2) I've filed a DMCA takedown notice to godaddy.com, their registrar, or at least I did my best to interpret what they asked for on this page to my needs. Their whois data has the site registered to someone in some other country and no email address or any real form of contact to ask them nicely to do it first, and there's no contact info on the site. What else do I need to do to get this site erased from the internet, or at least make sure they don't keep using my data? I mean, it's not like they even have a way for people to submit to them, they just copy/paste whatever I do and put it on their site. Thanks all.
Annakie fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Feb 8, 2012 |
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Feb 8, 2012 14:43
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