[SDCBC] Injured triathlete recovers 100K

[Richard Duquette]

Cyclists and Triathletes,

Following is a free bit of legal strategy that may prove helpful to 
you should you be seriously injured and the insurance policy of the 
defendant is not sufficient to make you whole.  I'm very pleased to 
report that we just received an arbitration award for a badly injured 
triathlete who was hit while riding his bike.  He had a permanent 
metal rod implanted in his leg because the bones were shattered.

My client was able to recover from three different insurance policies 
for a total of $100k.  It looked as though he'd only be able to 
recover (15k) from the negligent motorist and his own underlying 
policy of (50k) which with offsets and credits would limit it 
recovery to 50k for this very life changing serious injury. But we 
decided to pursue the resident relative provision on his parent's 
homeowners policy.  This means that even if you live away from your 
relatives house, in many cases you can still recover if you have 
sufficient connection to the home.

So in the end we were able to recover 15k from the negligent 
motorist,another 50k from my client's own auto policy, then 100k from 
his parents resident relative provision in their policy.  After legal 
offsets & credits he received a net of 100k in what was almost 
limited to a 50k case..that deserved more.  I see this situation far 
too often. This is why you need great (under insured) insurance 
coverage in case the other guy who hits you is under insured.(read my 
article on my web site called "Cyclists need strong insurance 
coverage"..aka don't skimp on insurance.)

It took a couple of years to prevail, but like most athletes his 
stamina and patience paid off against bigger odds of fighting three 
insurance companies.

As you all may know these types of cases are taken on a contingency 
basis(no recovery-no fee), and I received help from a few friends 
that all came together to help the victim and I share credit (and 
attorney fees) with them. They took a chance we might not even 
recover a dime on a very tough situation, but the wise judge did the 
right thing and followed the law. I do have to say that we used 
technology in the form of the excel program and illustrative pie 
charts to help quantify the case. My thanks to Ron Grayson for his 
sage help in this area. He is a wizard.

In sum, I loved making the phone call to my client saying we finally 
won, even after overcoming a lot of delay tactics by the insurance 
defense. Justice finally prevailed for my client.

Love to you all.
Ride safe, Ride strong!


Richard L. Duquette
Criminal Defense &
Bicycle Injury Lawyer since 1983
Carlsbad, CA
760-730-0500
www.911law.com  
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