Ep. 1| From Passion to Profession: My Journey in Personal Injury Law
Video Transcript
Intro:
Welcome to The Crash Course, your go-to podcast with Greg Watson and Stephanie Moran. Discover expert advice on navigating legal claims and winning strategies. Tune in now and stay ahead of the game.
Sam Henninger:
Welcome to The Crash Course with Greg Watson and Stephanie Moran. I'm Sam Henniger, and I'm excited to get into conversation with these two personal injury lawyers. So Greg, let's start with you. I'd love to understand your background and how you got into practicing personal injury law. And then, Stephanie, I'd love to hear your story as well.
Greg Watson:
Steph and I started practicing over 20 years ago. We started off as a general law firm, general practitioners. Kind of fell into personal injury. I wound up figuring out that's the area I like to do, probably primarily because there are clearly clear injured victims as opposed to me being a tool for a business dispute or domestic dispute. I figured out that I liked representing clear victims. And also that's what people were calling me for primarily. And so for the past several, several years, I primarily have just done only personal injury specializing auto accidents.
Stephanie Moran:
So I began to do personal injury law. I graduated from law school and decided that I wanted to pursue a career in civil rights and representing the underdog and the victims. At first, I practiced in areas of employment, discrimination and family law, Greg and I opened up this law firm and we actually practiced in those areas. And then as Greg said, we started to get more exposed to the personal injury world. And I believe we both felt, and I know I felt that in that world, there were also victims, the underdog who had been injured to no fault of their own, and they needed a voice and they needed an advocate to fight for them, to try to make them whole, to help them recover from the injuries and have someone that was there to make sure their rights and their interests were representative and that they noted how to go against the insurance companies or the non-underdog to recover from what they had been through. And so we began to take those cases and enjoyed it. And ever since then, we've never looked back.
Sam Henninger:
Wow, that's great. Now, one thing I want to learn about from each of you more is personal injury protection coverage. And I'd love to have you spend some time explaining what it is and perhaps some misconceptions that people typically have around PIP coverage.
Stephanie Moran:
So personal injury protection is in Maryland. It's a benefit on auto insurance policies that you can purchase. And a lot of people we find when they contact their agent or they contact an insurance company to see what type of coverages they should have, people are really focused on more, okay, how do I get my car repaired? Or if I cause an accident, am I covered for liability wise? And they don't understand what personal injury protection is. So oftentimes, We find that in that process of purchasing insurance, a lot of people don't elect it because they don't really know what it is and they look at it. Hey, this is just another fee that the insurance company is going to charge me to have a benefit, but it's so valuable. Personal injury protection can act as a medical benefit under your auto insurance policy. If you have been injured and you need to go to a doctor, not only could you use health insurance, but you can tap into personal injury protection to help offset your medical bills. Or if you have lost wages, it can also pay you money for the wages you lost. And the beauty of it is, In Maryland, if you get personal injury protection and they pay you lost wages and or reverse you for medical bills, you can still use those same lost wages and those same medical bills in your court action or in your settlement against the insurance company. So it's a legal way to even what we call double dip. So it's a very important tool. And if you have personal injury protection, we find that our clients end up walking away with a little bit more money in their pocket from the settlement or judgment because they had this to offset some of the bills and to reimburse them.
Greg Watson:
Yeah, I'd also add that in Maryland, Maryland's a very progressive state. So in Maryland, the insurance companies have to offer it to you. So you have it unless you have actually affirmatively waived it. And like Stephanie said, a lot of people under the misconception that it's expensive. It's not actually. Policies can actually run as little as $100 per year. So that's almost as little as $8 a month that you'd be paying for this protection. And as Stephanie said, it can have significant impact on your net in-pocket recovery, particularly in a smaller type case. So it can be a significant benefit to your case if you have it.
Stephanie Moran:
So oftentimes for those clients who do elect to get personal injury protection, we find a lot of times our clients are getting the minimum, which is typically $2,500. They don't realize you can actually pay to have $5,000 of coverage, $10,000 of coverage, and so on. And sometimes we come across clients who did just that. It just makes such a difference in their cases. So a lot of times in the moderate cases, we're talking about medical bills that may be in the range of $5,000 to $10,000. But in some of the bigger cases where there's more injuries, someone may have medical loss that's $10,000, $20,000, $50,000. And if you have a larger policy, to be able to get a check written to you or to your medical provider, wipe out that bill for $5,000, $10,000 and to recover late wage loss is really, really a game changer for those who have that type of PIP coverage.
Greg Watson:
And it doesn't raise your rates to use it. In Maryland, it is illegal for an insurer to raise your rates for using the personal protection, which you actually pay for. So you lose nothing and benefit everything by using it.
Sam Henninger:
Now, help me understand what does personal injury protection usually include and maybe get into some nuances about how it's distinct from other types of coverage.
Stephanie Moran:
So one of the nuances in using personal injury protection as opposed to health insurance is this. Maryland is one of the states where they allow something to call sobrigation to occur. And what that means is that if you use your health insurance coverage to pay for a hospital bill or a doctor's bill when you were injured by a third party because you're in an auto accident. Maybe you fell in a grocery store. Maybe you got bit by a dog. And that injury is because someone else is at fault. Someone else is negligent. And you didn't become just sick. and need to go to the doctor because you had the flu or a cold or unfortunately a heart attack or something. And if your health plan pays for your medical treatment because you were injured at the hands of someone else, And when you go to get a recovery in the case by settlement or a lawsuit where you've been awarded a judgment, that health insurance plan can recover from your proceeds a portion of that medical bill. They don't typically get 100%. There is a reduction and it's still what they pay, which is a lower insurance rate, but you have to pay some of that money back. If you use personal injury protection to pay for that medical bill, you don't have to pay anybody back. That is just a benefits is there. If you have a $5,000 bill and you have $5,000 of personal injury protection and they write a check to the medical provider or to reimburse you for the bill, you're not paying anybody back from that. So that's the difference between using health insurance. and personal injury protection. Now, with that said, I do want to explain out there. The reality of it is we usually, in a lot of cases, end up using both health insurance and personal injury protection. We kind of, many of our clients do some combination of that.
Sam Henninger:
I'm interested in knowing if there's any recent or notable cases that you've worked on where having personal injury protection has made a difference.
Stephanie Moran:
We represented a husband and wife in a auto accident case, and they had a very, very high level of personal injury protection with an insurance company where they were allowed to actually double stack it. So in this situation, one of the policies had, it was either five or 10,000, and the other policy had a benefit, and the insurance company allowed it to be stacked all together. people in the accident was injured more than the other. And they need a little bit more personal injury protection to cover some bills. They were allowed to not only use part of the policy that was in their name, but in the spouse's name, it was allowed to be double stacked. And that was just very, it made a difference. Not only did they get the settlement recovery, but they were actually able to double debt and get some reimbursement into their own pocket for some of the bills that have been paid. So that was significant in that case.
Greg Watson:
I'll say this just generally speaking. There's a lot of regret with people who don't get personal injury protection. If in Maryland, you can't waive personal injury on your passengers. So we have a lot of situations where one party has personal protection and the other party doesn't. And there's a lot of regret at the end of the case with the party who doesn't have personal protection.
Sam Henninger:
So what would you suggest? What steps can individuals take to make sure that they have adequate personal injury protection coverage?
Greg Watson:
If you have any questions, then you can, I would suggest that you call their insurer and ask for their declarations page or deck page for short, ask that it be emailed to you. And then from that, that's a snapshot, all the insurance coverages that you have, and you'll be able to see if you have personal protection. And if you don't have it, I suggest that you get it and you can add it anytime during the year. You don't have to wait till your term is up. You can call and add it if you don't have it.
Sam Henninger:
Are there any limitations to PIP coverage that people should be aware of?
Stephanie Moran:
I don't think of personal injury protection having drawbacks. I think that it's a benefit that I wish all of our clients had. I know that you asked before about some misconceptions and myths. We've run into some situations where we've had clients who have been in accidents while in an employer's vehicle. They've been on duty for work and they went somewhere and got hit by someone else, not by anyone working for their employer, but by a third party. and they wanted to use their employer's personal injury protection on the policy. And we've had some clients that have been afraid to do so because perhaps the employer didn't understand that their rate shouldn't go up and that they shouldn't be penalized and that there's been some fear that if the client tapped into the employer's personal injury protection policy, it was going to affect and impact their job negatively. And that has been something we've run into once or twice where the client has felt that way. And we've shared the law with them and tried to explain that and or to the employer, if we've had, have had opportunities to why, you know, it's a good thing to have. So the drawback is to me that people don't understand it.
Greg Watson:
Sometimes people feel very uncomfortable or maybe feel uncomfortable in their jobs because of the employer not understanding that rates cannot go up in Maryland by use of personal protection. It's if you have it as a coverage that you pay for and your rates will not go up to use it. Gotcha.
Sam Henninger:
Now, you had mentioned earlier how in certain situations there can be instances where you can use different types of insurance to cover different parts of things. I'm curious if you could dig in a little bit more. How or what does personal injury protection interact with other types of insurance and insurance coverage?
Stephanie Moran:
I don't know that I would say personal injury protection interacts in Maryland. Let me be clear. Some other states have some different laws regarding personal injury protection, like DC, which we're not covering in this podcast today. But in Maryland, the intersection is not like one would think. Like I said, you can have health insurance through a health plan and have medical coverage paid for your doctors and your providers. If your health insurance plan provides such cover and you can also use PIP. So it's two distinctly different things. And using personal injury protection, which covers typically medical bills and lost wages, has nothing to do with covering the property damage on your vehicle. And it has nothing to do with you getting a bodily injury settlement because you had back pain or you had headaches or you had a broken bone. It's different than those type of coverages.
Greg Watson:
And I think we didn't make clear, personal protection can be used for medical bills, but also for lost wages or a mixture of the two. So you can apply its immediate relief if you have it, and you can choose how to apply it.
Sam Henninger:
That's great. Is there any bit of advice that you'd give listeners as they're considering what they should do about their personal injury protection, whether to pursue it or upgrade? What might you suggest?
Stephanie Moran:
In Maryland, I think every person who has an auto policy should contact their insurance company and get the pricing and get personal injury protection. I think it is a benefit. that you should have. I think that if you can afford to have a policy that's greater than $2,500, it's worth doing so. Like Greg said, it's not very expensive. It's $100 or so in most instances a year. Again, we're not quoting rates. Every insurance company is different, so they need to check with their insurance provider. But it's very worth having. To me, it should be mandatory in Maryland that people have it because it's such a value to helping an injured person.
Sam Henninger:
Well, Stephanie, Greg, thank you so much. I learned a lot and it sounds like people in Maryland have a lot to consider, especially when it comes to some personal injury protection. This has been The Crash Course with Stephanie Moran and Greg Watson. I'm Sam Henninger. Remember to like, follow, subscribe and share with your friends because we're going to have a lot more productive, educational conversations just like this.
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