Texas Supreme Court protects drunk drivers

Texas Supreme Court protects drunk drivers. Shocked you should be. Here is how they do it. You work hard, pay your taxes, insurance premiums including uninsured/underinsured coverage. You are driving along and suddenly a drunk driver going the wrong way on a one way road hits you head on, or hits you from behind while you are stopped at a red light, or runs you down in a parking lot. The drunk is arrested and taken to jail, you go to the hospital and thousands of dollars later (not to mention the pain) you find out the drunk either does not have insurance or not enough. What do you do, you do what everyone would do you make a claim on that insurance you have paid for all those years. I mean that is why you have paid the insurance company thousands of dollars for just this type of thing. What does the insurance company do? Pay the claim which they know they owe, of course not. Thanks to our Texas Supreme Court they deny the claim because the person injured by the drunk has not had a Court determine that the drunk was a fault and what the damages are. Understand that your insurance is essentially now the drunks since they had none or not enough, and even though the drunk is arrested (and maybe even already convicted) and you have proven thousands and thousands of dollars in medical bills, they get a free pass to delay your claim for potentially years thanks to our Drunk and Insurance protecting Supreme Court. Isn't it time that the citizens of Texas who do work hard, pay their bills, drive responsibly and pay for insurance coverage come first? I am sick and tired of having to tell families who have had their lives destroyed by these drunk drivers that now their own insurance company with the blessing of our Supreme Court can force them through ligitation just to get what should be paid without even having to hire a lawyer. What's your thought?

Paid v. Incurred

Why should the people who cause injury get the benefit of all the money you or your company has paid for your health insurance? That is what happens under the current law in Texas which allows defendants (i.e. drunk drivers) to get the benefit of having to pay only the amount of your reduced bills that your group coverage has contracted. The legislature realized the unfairness of this last session and changed the law, but Governor Perry vetoed the bill at the last possible minute so they could not take it up again. The same bill is before the legislature this session and hopefully the Governor will do the right thing and not protect the drunks and their insurance companies.

Chase Bank v. FB Austin ProGrad

What do you call a Bank that gets BILLIONS of dollars from the government, but refuses to refund $10,000.00 to a group of high school seniors when the Bank allowed unauthorized wire transfers of their Account? Chase Bank. It has been over 2 weeks since the bank allowed two separate transfers which totaled almost $10,000.00. Who supposedly authorized the transfers, where were they sent, when will the money be returned and what is the status of the "investigation" would all seem like relevant questions which Chase would be willing to share with their account holder whose money was taken, but they instead have refused to answer any questions, refused to refund the money and refuse to provide a time frame as to when their "investigation" may be completed. The Austin H.S. seniors have worked hard to raise the money for the ProGrad party and the Banks action (or lack thereof) is causing a delay in ordering items and scheduling. Several newspapers attempted to get answers today and received the same double talk that ProGrad has heard. Hopefully Chase will do what is right and refund the money to the students. It's not like they are completely incompetent and need to get billions from the government because they can't run their business or figure out how they lost $10,000.00 of their account holders.

AIG- An Incompetent Group

AIG is pleased to announce we have changed our name to 21st Century Insurance. That is the message which was heard when they were called to discuss a case in which a family was run over by a drunk. While I am sure they are pleased to announce the change in name. It would be better if they announced a change in attitude and policy. Their policy holders pay the premiums and hope to never have to make a claim, but when they do make a claim on their own policy due to a wreck in which the other driver has no insurance or inadequate insurance what happens? You would assume that AIG would take some of the thousands of dollars in premiums paid by the policy holder and resolve the claim, or perhaps they would use some of the tens of billions (that is hard to write) they have received from their policy holders and the rest of the citizens of the United States. That is what a reasonable company would do. They collected premiums for years for just this situation. AIG chooses a different option they make a "offer" to settle the case for less than half the policy limits. They realize that they can keep all the money and make their policy holders hire an attorney to file suit and after spending significant time and money to get to trial and receive a verdict; they will only have to pay what they should have paid in the first place. (See UM blog 2/4/09) So they keep the money paid to them in premiums and they have all the billions which we have provide them in the stimulus package and force their policy holders to file suit to receive the very benefits they have paid for. What are they doing with their policy holders money and the billions of dollars they have received? While it is especially galling that AIG who has received billions of dollars in addition to the premium payments, they are not alone. Virtually every auto insurance company in Texas has the same attitude because they are allowed to by our Supreme Court and Legislature. If you want it to change let your representatives know. As always, I welcome your comments.