Mississippi Lawyer Blog

In Mississippi, 28% of all drivers do not have insurance. So out of every 7 cars you pass on the road, 2 cars do not have any insurance! This is the highest percentage of uninsured drivers in the United States.

It's important that you double check your insurance policy for "uninsured motorist coverage". This is the part of your auto policy that protects you from an uninsured driver.

Make sure that your uninsured motorist coverage is equal to your liability coverage. Many insurance agents will give you a lower uninsured motorist coverage amount, but since this is the part of the policy that protects you, you want the maximum coverage available.

If you have small children, boys especially, then you have no doubt seen one of the Mr. Bean movies. Rowan Atkinson, the Mr. Bean actor, was involved in a minor car accident recently when his McLaren F1 sports car spun out and hit a tree. (Dang, Mr. Bean is making some serious bucks to be able to afford a McLaurin. One F1 recently sold for $4 million!) Fortunately for Mr. Atkinson, and Bean fans everywhere, he only suffered minor injuries.

We get calls all the time from folks who have minor car accidents with no bodily injury. Their car, however, is totaled. The problem arises with their insurance company. I recently had a family friend tell me that one of their relatives was in a car accident which was clearly the other person's fault. The other driver's insurance company admitted this BUT said the accident was because of "bad weather" and would not pay anything!

Continue reading "What Mississippians can learn from "Mr. Bean's" Car Accident" »

I have been thinking lately about all the tragedies we have been witnessing around American. Mother Nature has been very active and harsh on people. There was the tornado in Clinton and Quitman, MS. There were more tornadoes in Alabama that devastated the Tuscaloosa area and then the horrific tornado in Missouri. There are floods all along the Mississippi River and its upland tributaries, and then catastrophic fires in Arizona and other western states. I should not have to mention Katrina-the mother of all hurricanes that destroyed New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

The non profit organization United Policyholders conducted a study and determined that 60% of all homes in America are underinsured. This conclusion coincided with the report from the insurance industry sources. The home is probably the largest investment a person has these days and having it underinsured can result in a terrible financial tragedy.

I am an attorney who helps people with insurance problems and other kids of legal disputes. I have a love-hate relationship with insurance. I know a person needs insurance for various things in life, but I also see the way many insurance companies treat their policyholders when a claim in filed. If you remember nothing else from this article remember this: Your insurance company is out to make MONEY. Insurance companies did a study years ago when they wanted to make more money and the conclusion was that to make more money they needed to pay out less in claims. You could be one of the people who don't get paid what you deserve if you are not careful.

I strongly recommend everyone join United Policyholders. It is a nonprofit company that has a wealth of information on insurance products. United Policyholders has many useful tips on how to pick a good insurance agent, how to insure your house, and so much more that can help you "level the playing field" when dealing with an insurance company or claims adjuster. There is even a website that will help you determine if you have your house insured for enough and it only costs $7.00. It does take time though to correctly fill out the information.

We are going to talk more in this series about the many different types of insurance and what a reasonable person might need and not need. We are not insurance agents and cannot advise you what to do when insuring you property or self. We can however give you advice on what we have seen and what Federal Agencies and other nonprofit groups have reported on different types of insurance.

When you have some spare time pull up the United Policyholders' website and join. You can obtain so much free information. Joining is making a small contribution so United Policyholders can continue doing work that will benefit everyone who buys insurance products. And once you spend some time on the United Policyholders' website, you will find yourself a more educated insurance buyer.

Other parts of this series will focus on auto insurance, umbrella coverage, credit life, credit disability, and types of credit insurance. We have been actively involved in many types of insurance litigation and can help educate you on things to watch for when buying insurance.

Continue reading "INSURANCE NEEDS FOR YOUR HOME, CAR, BOAT, AND OTHEr THINGS. Part 1 " »

As lawyers we tend to forget that many people simply don't know what to do when they are involved in a car accident. Obviously, if you or someone else is hurt you need to call for medical personnel immediately. But what else can you do? Here is a helpful (hopefully) list:

1. Keep an Emergency Kit in Your Glove Compartment. Drivers should carry a cell phone, as well as pen and paper for taking notes, a disposable camera to take photos of the vehicles at the scene, and a card with information about medical allergies or conditions that may require special attention if there are serious injuries. Also, keep a list of contact numbers for law enforcement agencies handy. Drivers can keep this free fill-in-the-blanks accident information form in their glove compartment. The DocuDent™ Auto Accident Kit ($19.95), supported by AAA and insurance companies, offers a comprehensive kit that includes a flashlight, reusable camera and accident documentation instructions. A set of cones, warning triangles or emergency flares should be kept in the trunk.

2. Keep Safety First. Drivers involved in minor accidents with no serious injuries should move cars to the side of the road and out of the way of oncoming traffic. Leaving cars parked in the middle of the road or busy intersection can result in additional accidents and injuries. If a car cannot be moved, drivers and passengers should remain in the cars with seatbelts fastened for everyone's safety until help arrives. Make sure to turn on hazard lights and set out cones, flares or warning triangles if possible.

3. Exchange Information. After the accident, exchange the following information: name, address, phone number, insurance company, policy number, driver license number and license plate number for the driver and the owner of each vehicle. If the driver's name is different from the name of the insured, establish what the relationship is and take down the name and address for each individual. Also make a written description of each car, including year, make, model and color -- and the exact location of the collision and how it happened. Finally, be polite but don't tell the other drivers or the police that the accident was your fault, even if you think it was.

4. Photograph and Document the Accident. Use your camera to document the damage to all the vehicles. Keep in mind that you want your photos to show the overall context of the accident so that you can make your case to a claims adjuster. If there were witnesses, try to get their contact information; they may be able to help you if the other drivers dispute your version of what happened.

5. File An Accident Report. Although law enforcement officers in many locations may not respond to accidents unless there are injuries, drivers should file a state vehicle accident report, which is available at police stations and often on the Department of Motor Vehicles Web site as a downloadable file. A police report often helps insurance companies speed up the claims process.

6. Know What Your Insurance Covers. The whole insurance process will be easier following your accident if you know the details of your coverage. For example, don't wait until after an accident to find out that your policy doesn't automatically cover costs for towing or a replacement rental car. Generally, for only a dollar or two extra each month, you can add coverage for rental car reimbursement, which provides a rental car for little or no money while your car is in the repair shop or if it is stolen. Check your policy for specifics.

The final question in dealing with an accident is usually who will pay for the damages? If the accident was minor, you and the other drivers may decide to handle the damages yourselves without the involvement of an insurance company. But this isn't always the best idea, for several reasons.

While the other driver may agree to pay for the damage to your car on the day of the accident, he may see the repair bills and decide it's too high. At this point, time has passed and your insurance company will have more difficulty piecing together the evidence if you file a claim.

Also, keep in mind that you have no way of knowing whether another driver will change his mind and report the accident to his insurance company. He may even claim injuries that weren't apparent at the scene of the accident. This means that your insurance company may end up paying him a hefty settlement, or worse yet, you could be dragged into a lawsuit. So make sure that your company has your version of what happened and check your policy -- if the damages paid out by your insurance company are below a certain amount, the accident may not be considered chargeable. And you will avoid the penalty of a premium hike.

Auto accidents take a tremendous toll on everyone involved, both financially and emotionally. If you're one of the lucky ones who have thus far avoided a serious accident, hopefully the tips on prevention will help keep it that way. The chances are high, though, that at some point you will be involved in a minor accident. Just keep your head and make safety your primary concern. You'll have plenty of time to deal with the consequences later.

Continue reading "What do you do if you are in a car accident in Mississippi?" »

In 2002, the Mississippi legislature passed a law capping non-economic damages ("pain and suffering") at $1 million. However, the 5th Circuit Court of appeals has asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to determine if this statute is constitutional.

In the case, Learmonth v. Sears and Roebuck Co, Learmonth sued Sears and Roebuck Co. after she had been involved in a collision with one of the company's vans. A U.S. District Court jury found Sears liable for her injuries and awarded Learmonth $4 million in damages, of which the parties agreed $2.2 million were for non-economic damages. The judge reduced the non-economic damages to $1 million.

In its appeal, Sears asked the 5th Circuit for a new trial, which the appeals court panel denied. Learmonth appealed the decision to reduce the non-economic damages. The 5th Circuit panel referred that issue to the Mississippi court. "This is an important question of state law, determinative of the non-economic damages issue in this case, for which there is no controlling precedent from the Supreme Court of Mississippi," Chief Judge Edith H. Jones wrote for the panel.

Continue reading "Mississippi Supreme Court to decide constitutionality of damage caps (?)" »

Big companies and the insurance industry spend millions talking about civil lawsuits and convincing the public that people who file lawsuits are greedy. They say lawsuits are just about the money. Well, I will tell you something-the lawsuits are about the money. Civil actions (lawsuits) are about the money to help a housewife support her children after her husband is killed by a defective, dangerous product. Lawsuits are about the money to help a young girl finish college after her parents are killed when a 18 wheeler violated the rules of the road and caused their death. Lawsuits help people who suffer harms and losses recover their lives. What is wrong with helping a person recover their live after being injured?

Insurance companies exist to make money and they make billions and billions. Companies like energy, pharmaceutical, and other such businesses exist to make money and they also make billions. They do everything they can to maximize their profit. Banks and finance companies make billions. Why is it okay for all these companies to make billions off their services and products but it is not okay for an injured person to seek money when they are injured? Does this make any good sense? My experience teaches me that every person wants reasonable and fair compensation when they are injured by some company or their product. Yet, people often look at another person's claim as if has no merit.

This attitude of doubting other people and their injuries but believing in your own claim comes from years of propaganda by the insurance industry. Why do you think the insurance company pushes and promotes all the ads. Do you think the insurance industry cares for you? If you have ever had a claim I bet you have probably had a bad experience with the insurance company. I am not a fan of insurance companies. Their attitude toward the homeowners devastated by hurricane Katrine speaks for itself. We have helped people for years who have serious injury claims. When the insurance company does not act fairly with you we can help. Before you talk with the insurance company talk with a lawyer. The lawyer will work for you, the insurance company works for itself.

Insurance companies deny claims as a way to make money. How many people have had a claim with an insurance company and knew they were not being treated fairly? I had one about two years ago when a man hit me from the side. It was definitely his fault. When I contacted the insurance company they denied the claim. They said it was not his fault and told me "good-bye." I immediately filed a lawsuit and within a week or two I had the cases settled and my car fixed. There was absolutely no reason for the insurance company to pay in the beginning, other than they hoped I would go away. The example I gave is one of the minor examples. The people on the Mississippi Gulf Coast have had thousands of negative experiences with the insurance industry.

A bill has been introduced into Congress that would end the anti-trust exemption for insurance companies. Since 1945 the Insurance Industry has been exempt from anti-trust laws. This has given the insurance industry an unfair advantage and discouraged permitted fair competition. It is time we end the advantage given to the insurance industry. The insurance industry is strangling us by the neck with their health care premiums. I hope this bill makes it to the President's desk. If it is signed into law we may see some positive changes in our insurance premiums.

Merrida Coxwell handles serious accident cases and criminal defense. For a free consultation call 601-948-1600.

Each day you can read in the paper about another serious automobile accident, plane crash, or other similar type of injury. Many times these accidents are the result of another person's failure to pay attention or follow the rules of the road or like rules. In most cases if you are injured because of another person's neglect, you will be confronted with the possibility of dealing with an insurance adjuster. You should understand that dealing with an insurance adjuster differs depending on the injury. Take for example an automobile accident where you injure yourself and another car is not involved. In that instance you will be drawing from your own insurance policy and your adjuster has a duty to deal with you fairly and not as an adversary. In other words, the adjuster should not be acting as an adversary to you in the claim. In other cases where you get injured by another driver, where you get injured on some one's property, or suffer a harm due to an other's carelessness, the other person's insurance adjuster is going to be your adversary. This is worth repeating. When you have a claim of any type against another person, the insurance or claim adjuster for the person who caused your injury is your adversary. This means no matter how nice he or she may act with you on the phone or in person, the adjuster is trying to present the claim in the best position for their boss, the insurance company. The adjuster wants to make sure the company pays as litter money as possible and no money if possible! The only way that can happen is if the adjuster investigates the claim and develops the facts against you or your injury.

So the question is: "What do you do if you suffer a serious injury due to another person's carelessness or failure to follow rules of the road?" First, I am going to assume that anytime you are injured you will take immediate steps to seek medical attention. This means taking the time to go to a doctor. You must following up with the doctor and follow the doctor's recommended treatment. Let me stop here and mention something to you. Our lawyers have been in case after case where people get seriously hurt and when they go to the doctor, and the doctor walks into the room and asks "how are you today," the person says "I'm fine." Obviously the injured person does not mean he or she is fine as it relates their injuries; they mean "fine" as a form of greeting. We all use this expression. The doctor will often go back and write in the report, "...saw patient today and he is 'fine'." In the past we have been interviewing a client who is seriously hurt, looking at their permanent injuries and then read in medical records that they reported to the doctor that they were "fine." When we asked the client about the statement, they never intended to say to the doctor that they felt fine from all their injuries. Let me say this very clearly: You should never exaggerate your injuries. Juries are smart people. If you fake an injury, the jury will see it and you will be punished by them. You will not take a case if we think a person has exaggerated their injuries. But on the other hand you should not make light of your injuries. The doctor has to know how you feel and what hurts, when it hurts, and how often it hurts. All of this is necessary for the proper diagnosis and treatment. Doctors make written records of your complaints to them of pain. They also make reports of what you say to them. The only way anyone is going to know if you reported a complaint of pain or a serious physical limitation is if you report it accurately to the doctor. If your doctor is not interested in these pain complaints, or he fails to properly document them, then you should probably find a new doctor.

Okay, let's return to the serious injury and the claims adjuster. When you are hurt in an accident and it is due to another person, you need to know how to protect yourself from the other person's claim adjuster. Our recommendations are that you not talk to the claim adjuster until after you have sought legal advice on the accident and your rights. Many times accidents are not clear cut or the facts can have two different conclusions. If you talk to an adjuster before you get legal advice, then you may say something that hurts your case before you know all the facts. Keep in mind that claims adjusters usually have lots of experience and they are in that position because they are good at their jobs. They also know a little about the law and what facts they need to look for to help their boss, the insurance company. You need someone trained in fact investigation and trained in the law to be on your side. Otherwise, if you try to go against the adjuster it would be like walking into a boxing ring for 15 rounds with a professional heavy weight boxer.

The next thing you need to know is you should not give the medical adjuster a "blanket medical release" so he can obtain your medical records. The medical records that an adjuster obtains should always be relevant to the injuries you sustain. I have seen cases where injured people gave medical releases to the opposing adjuster that had no limit. The adjuster was then free to collect all of the injured person's medical history, even though the records were not related to the injury. In our opinion you should never give an adjuster a medical release. In every serious injury case the medical bills should be provided through the legal process and not through the adjuster. There is one final thing you should know when dealing with insurance adjusters. Insurance adjusters are not the same as insurance sales agents. The sales agents, the polite men and women who sell insurance policies, do not investigate and adjust claims. The insurance adjuster is an agent of the company. When you are seriously injured the adjuster is going to be working hard to protect his boss, which is the insurance corporation. The adjuster is going to be taking pictures of the scene, interviewing witnesses, and collecting evidence. When you don't have an experienced lawyer helping you, then you are going up against a person whose sole desire is to save the insurance company money, even if it costs you money. What I have said to you does not mean that insurance adjusters are bad or evil people. They are people who work for an insurance company and their loyalty is to the insurance company. If you think about it, why go up against a trained insurance adjuster without a skilled, experienced lawyer helping you.

If you know of someone who has been seriously injured or killed in an accident call the offices of Coxwell & Associates. We represent clients in the Jackson area, and we travel all over the state of Mississippi. We handle auto accidents, 18 wheeler accident or big rig accidents, boating and motorcycle accidents, brain injury and spinal injury cases, accidents on property that cause serious injuries, accidents caused by drunken drivers, and other types of accidents.

I am going to write about insurance companies and health care. This is a topic in the news daily. First, think for a minute about all the types of insurance available. Auto insurance, health, disability, house, wind, water, umbrella, uninsured or under insured, business interruption policies, renter's policies, credit life, credit health, credit disability, and the list could go on and on and on. If you have extra time Google any question you have about insurance companies. In the past I was interested in how rich and powerful insurance companies had become. I Googled their wealth, the money they spend lobbying our Federal and State Governments, who owns the companies (most are now owned if I recall correctly by foreign investors), and what financial interests they have in our economy and other businesses. The answers were a little frightening. The big insurance companies are mostly foreign owned, they control enormous amounts of wealth, spend millions influencing governments, and they are invested in most major industries. If you doubt this Google these issues yourself. If you are not interested in these things, I would like you think for a minute about health care. Why do we place our health, which is the single most important thing in our life, in the hands of multi-national corporations and foreign interests so a profit can be made on us? Think about this for a minute. We are allowing a business to profit, and profit richly, on our health. And they do this by controlling our doctors and what we can do for our own health. In my mind there is something intrinsically wrong with allowing a corporation to control and profit based on our health.

I can hear the people screaming now " Oh my, Coxwell want big government to take over health care." Big government, big government, big government. Now, I said it. Let's get over the scare tactics and think about this with some d__n sense. We all need to be healthy to be a strong country. We are one of the richest nations in the world. Everyone should have some form of health care. We have the ability to provide health care for everyone. If you are one of those people who believe you should never be helped by government, then stop reading this article and go back to your self created fantasy world. Also, if you hate government, then don't use the National Interstate System. Don't drink the water or use the water for your faucet. Don't eat the food in the grocery store, because the government does what it can to see that the food is safe. There are so many things that government has done in this country to protect people that I would never trust to the huge corporations to do safely on their own without supervision. Just look at all the unsafe drugs over the past ten years that flooded the market due to the FDA being stripped of its regulatory power and dismantled during the Bush years. Oh, and before we leave this topic don't forget the National Immunization Programs that were organized by government to help eradicate diseases. Everyone benefited for this form of big government.

I am exhausted with all the anti-government rhetoric that became so popular in the early 1980's and continues today. Let me ask you this if you are an person who also complains about government. " Would you trust the multi-national corporations and corporations who control health care industries to protect you and care for your well-being." Can you seriously and honestly open your mind to the possibility that the corporations who make a profit don't care about you as an individual and if left without government supervision they would run over you like you were a bug.

There are issues that concern me about government health care but there are issues that concern me more about health care controlled by corporations who want to profit by controlling our health care. My father has Medicare. He is 81 years old and goes to the doctor frequently. I find that the program works good. Does it pay the doctors fairly or adequately? I really do not know. I am not an expert on health care. My sister is married to a doctor and she tells me some of the reimbursements are very little. When she explains them to me what she says makes sense. So, in my mind the answer seems to be pay the doctors better for the work they do and cut out the waste. I read an article this weekend about health care. It seems that the big costs go toward overhead, expenses, and profit of the insurance companies. It just seems like a no-brainer. Create a system that pays doctors for their long hours and hard work, but takes the control out of the hands of insurance companies. When I hear the insurance industry complaining about how little they make off health care, it makes me wonder if it is that bad why do they stay in the business?

I have staked out my position. I have some reservations about how the government health care will work. But I have no doubt about this issue: I do not want my access to health care controlled by the insurance industry and some person in a corporation sitting in an air conditioned room thinking of ways to save the company money by keeping me or my family from getting the care they need. The government needs a program trimmed of fraud and waste. It needs a program that is affordable and competes with the insurance companies. I have spent some time reading about the health care in other countries and what I have noticed is that people who have government sponsored health care are not clamoring or begging to have insurance companies control their health care. And with that I rest my case.

Merrida Coxwell is the managing partner of Coxwell & Associates, a law firm in Jackson, Hinds County, Mississippi. Coxwell & Associated focuses on serious personal injuries, criminal defense and consumer fraud. For more information review the attorney profiles and practice areas.