Case Resources
Insurance, Liens, and the Legal Process
At Brown & Brown, we help you navigate every part of your injury case from explaining the difference between liability and UM/UIM insurance, to protecting your settlement from aggressive medical lien claims, to guiding you through each step of the legal process. We handle the hard parts so you can focus on getting better.
At Brown & Brown, we guide you through every step of your personal injury case. We explain your insurance options, including liability and UM/UIM coverage, so you know what’s available to support your claim. We also handle medical liens and reimbursement demands to protect your settlement. From first call to final check, we manage the legal process so you can focus on healing.
Liability and UM/UIM insurance
When you purchase car insurance, you are required by the State of Georgia to carry liability insurance in the amount of 25,000/person and 50,000/accident. This means if you cause an accident, your insurance company will pay up to $25,000 per person or $50,000 per accident on that claim. Some people carry more than the minimum amounts. Common amounts are 50/ person and 100/accident and 100/person and 300/accident. You also have the option to purchase UM/UIM insurance, which stands for uninsured motorist or underinsured motorist coverage. This means that if someone else causes the accident, but they don’t have liability insurance, or enough liability insurance, your own insurance company will step in to cover the difference up to the policy limits. Not everyone chooses to purchase UM/UIM. We always advise our clients to carry more than the minimum in liability insurance and UM/UIM insurance.
Medical liens and health insurance subrogation
The value of an injury claim is primarily based on the cost of medical bills. So, when your health insurance pays the medical bills, they take the position that they should be reimbursed if your settlement includes payment for those bills. Georgia follows the Made Whole Doctrine, which means that health insurance companies can’t be reimbursed unless you recover the full value of your economic and non-economic damages. However, there are some types of health benefit plans that preempt Georgia law, and they can recover the amounts they paid for your bills from your settlement even if you were not made whole. Make sure that you hire a lawyer who fully understands the law around health insurance subrogation because not following the law can result in (1) you being sued by your health benefit plan or (2) having your health benefit plan deny payment for any future treatment.
Timeline of a typical car accident case
Ideally, you will reach out to us right away and we can begin the process of notifying all the relevant auto insurance companies and health insurance companies. After everyone has been notified, we request “dec pages” from the auto insurance carriers. This tells us how much liability and/or UM coverage is available. Once you finish your medical treatment, we compile it into a “demand letter” that goes out to the liability insurance carrier, which is the beginning of the negotiation phase of the case. Most of the time, we can resolve the case at this stage. However, if the insurance company is not willing to pay what we believe the case is worth, we can file a lawsuit against them. If the liability company and our office agree about the value of the case, we have our clients sign a release and the check is issued. If we recover the policy limits from the liability carrier, we can send a demand letter to the UM/UIM carrier (this is your own insurance policy). Once the liability and UM claims have settled, we notify your health insurance company and begin negotiating the reimbursement amount. Some cases take longer than others, but once the liability, UM, and lien claims have been resolved, we can disburse the settlement money to our clients.