Personal Injury and Family Law - Hull & Zimmerman

Whiplash hurls your head violently backward (hyperextension) and forward (hyperflexion)- injuring your neck. The injury is worse if the neck was turned to the side at the time of the accident. Whiplash is the most common injury resulting from car accidents. Whiplash can cause injury to intervertebral joints, discs, and ligaments, cervical muscles, and nerves. Whiplash is often encountered along with concussions and more serious injury. The effects of whiplash can be short term or life long, and can leave the neck forever vulnerable to injury. The injury can also extend to shoulders and arms.
Whiplash leads to long-term disability in 10% of people injured in car accidents. Approximately 1,000,000 people are exposed to whiplash injury in the U.S. every year. Nearly 25% of these cases result in chronic pain and disability. 1 in 7 whiplash victims will still have significant pain more than 3 years after the accident.
Whiplash can be diagnosed with a simple physical examination or using x-rays. X-rays will also be used to see if there are any fractures of the vertebrae and the extent to which the alignment of the neck has been altered. After a whiplash injury your neck's natural curve may be reversed, which unevenly distributes the weight of your head and may further misalign the veterbrae. This condition can lead to arthritic degeneration and recurring pain.
If you are taken from the accident in an ambulance to a hospital you'll probably be put in a hard neck brace on a back board- as a preventive measure to avoid more serious injury to your neck.
The courses of treatment will vary depending on the extent of your injury and if you have injury to intervertebral joints, discs, and ligaments, cervical muscles, or nerve roots: Physical therapy consisting of heat, cold, traction, cervical collar, trigger point therapy, ultrasound, massage, and neck exercises. Chiropractic treatment of whiplash injuries realigns the neck and helps regain muscle flexibility. Neurological evaluation and medication.

Your help is urgently needed to prevent Congress from stripping away the rights of victims of medical malpractice. United States Senate leaders are promising an assault on the rights of victims of medical malpractice in early May of this year.

Powerful insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industry will stop at nothing to increase their bottom line, even at the expense of your rights. These special interests have devised one of the most vicious attacks on victims in years. If you are subjected to medical negligence, this legislation would drastically limit the fair compensation you could recover even if you are unable to work or support your family.

You must make your voice heard!

To help stop this potentially harmful legislation, please take part in the following:

1) Download the Protecting Victims of Medical Malpractice Petition here: http://www.peopleoverprofits.org/MedMal_PetitionMMPA_CO.pdf

2) Sign the attached petition and have your family and friends sign it too.

3) Return it by April 28, 2006 to:

People Over Profits
1050 31st Street NW
Washington, DC 20007

We’ll make sure your petition is delivered to your Senators. The petition alerts Congress to the damage Medical Malpractice “Reform” will cause victims of medical malpractice.

If you have access to the internet, you can send also message to your Senators by going to http://action.peopleoverprofits.org/action/

Sign the petition and ask your family and friends to sign too. And, call your Senators today!

Fraudulent juror information surveys appearing in ColoradoThe State Court Administrator's Office (SCAO), Colorado Judicial Department, has been notified that fraudulent jury summons questionnaires are showing up in Colorado mail boxes to gain personal identifying information from citizens. SCAO wants all citizens to know that jury commissioners never contact potential jurors to acquire or verify personal identification information."The jury system is a critical element of Colorado's judicial process so we want to make sure that no portion of the process is compromised," says Jerry Marroney, Colorado State Court Administrator. "We are very concerned to hear that someone is apparently using the process to gain access to personal identifying information."At a time when identity theft is occurring at alarming rates, citizens need to be alert to all information requests," adds Marroney. Jury commissioners will never use return mail questionnaires asking for personal information such as social security numbers, addresses or hours of employment. This is not a procedure used to obtain or verify potential juror information. If you are contacted by someone claiming to be a jury commissioner, or any court official, requesting such information please try to get as much information as possible from the caller and contact your local law enforcement officials immediately. If you have caller identification, please record the number from the caller as well.For information about jury service in the Colorado courts system, visit http://www.courts.state.co.us/chs/court/jury/jury.htm.

Often when a party is injured in any type of accident, whether it be a car crash or a fall, the injured person does not think to hire an attorney immediately. There is nothing wrong with this concept. However, insurance carriers will often create the belief that an attorney is not necessary. In so doing, many people provide the insurance company with information to which the insurance company is not entitled and could not normally get.

Perhaps the most common example of this abuse is a request from the insurance company for a medical release. Often, under the guise of needing medical information to appropriately evaluate your case, the opposing insurance company will ask you to sign a medical release so that it may obtain your medical records. Normally, the insurance companies simply send you a blank medical release, which they can then copy and utilize to request information from any doctor.

Once this medical release is in their hands, the insurance company will typically use this to obtain information from all doctors that you have seen for any condition in the last ten years. More importantly, insurance companies share information with each other. As such, all the doctors that you have seen through your health insurance company will automatically be known to the opposing insurance company. Your psychiatric records, if you have them, will immediately be disclosed to the opposing insurance company. In fact, it is not unusual for obstetric/gynecological records to be obtained by the insurance company. It doesn’t matter to the insurance company that this information will have nothing to do with the injuries you sustained in an accident.

Attorneys know that the opposing insurance companies are not entitled to medical releases and can’t even get them even as part of a lawsuit. Rather, the insurance company is only entitled to the medical records that have to do with the injuries that you have suffered during the course of the accident. The only time that an insurance company is going to be entitled to information regarding older medical records is if you have suffered similar injuries in the past. Even then, you are only required to give them the past medical records for the similar injuries, not everything!

Simply stated, whenever you are dealing with an insurance company, you must be careful. If the insurance company is not your insurance company, but is another parties, you must be extra careful. If you have doubts about whether or not you should sign documents sent to you by an insurance company, call Hull & Zimmerman. Typically, we will look at the documents and answer your questions for free about how much you should cooperate with the insurance company and what information is appropriate to provide. Most importantly, call some attorney.

As our motto states, “Don’t get hurt twice! Trusting an insurance company can cost you.”

Did you know that most insurance companies use the same computer program to determine much your injury is worth? This program is known as Colossus.

The vast majority of insurance companies now us this program, sold by a company in Australia, to figure out what your case is allegedly worth. Understanding this computer program has been the focus of Plaintiffs’ attorneys efforts for years and has been the subject of a great of amount of litigation. This program is a closely guarded secret by the insurance industry. The insurance industry simply does not want injured parties or their attorneys to understand what factors are considered in adjusting a claim.

Fortunately, some of these secrets have been revealed through the powers of the Court system. Insight into the computer program Colossus is knowledge that any attorney must now have in order to maximize the amount of settlement that you will receive in a case.

More importantly, the Colossus insurance program is counter-intuitive: it doesn’t make sense. If you take two identical people who have both received a broken arm in an auto accident, but one is required by their doctor to have follow up visits every two weeks while the other only sees the doctor twice, the first will receive more money under Colossus. Somehow the computer program believes that if you see a physician more often that the injury must be more serious. As such, responsible injured parties who seek to minimize costs to their insurance company will ultimately receive less money.
Similarly, if a party is required to go to physical therapy thirty times but does it in one month that is worth less money to Colossus than a party who goes to physical therapy thirty times but spreads it out over six months.

Colossus also gives great weight to any impairment rating assigned by a physician. This is not something a doctor will just automatically perform in the course of normal treatment of his patients. The physician must also be sure to use the Fifth Edition American Orthopedic Guidelines in assigning the impairment rating. This can be problematic in that most Colorado doctors are familiar only with the Third Edition, the version utilized by the Colorado Workman’s Compensation system. As such, it is important to find a doctor who is familiar with the Fifth Edition and is willing to provide the rating.

At Hull & Zimmerman, we have gone through great efforts to learn and understand the Colossus program. We understand the importance of documenting each and every aspect of your medical care, obtaining each piece of the medical evidence, no matter how simple. Only in this way can we assure that Colossus adequately accounts for your injury.
As part of interviewing any attorney who represents you in relationship to an injury you have received, you should ask whether or not the attorney is familiar with the Colossus system and the elements considered by Colossus. If they are not, it is time to move on to a more knowledgeable attorney who understands how the insurance company and its “big brother” computer program works.

Welcome to the Hull and Zimmerman blog. It is an interesting experience to have an audience for the concerns that effect our clients. While many topics come to mind, I think the most pressing is to discuss the changes resulting from the demise of the Colorado No-fault Act. As many of you may be aware, the Colorado Legislature allowed the Colorado No-fault Act to sunset in July of 2003. Under the old law, each of us was required to maintain $100,000 of medical insurance which paid for medical bills arising from an automobile accident. Your insurance would pay for medical bills, regardless of which person was at fault. Neither the injured party, nor the insurance company paying the medical bills could seek recovery for the medical expense as part of any lawsuit against the responsible party.
The same law also required that everyone maintain $25,000 of liability insurance (minimum) to pay the injured party for their trauma.
Under the new law, there is no mandatory medical insurance. As a result, most people use their Health Insurance to pay any medical bills caused by another's negligence. So, what is the problem? By contract your health insurance carrier must be repaid. As a result, an all to common scenerio is occurring. The victim of the accident has $20,000 in medical bills which must be paid from the money obtained from the responsible party. The responsible party only has the required minimum of $25,000 in insurance. Only $5000 is left for the victim!!!! Under the old law the entire $25,000 would have been available.
So how do you avoid this situation. First, you need more insurance (kills me to recomend that you give the insurance industry more money). You need more liability insurance in case you cause the accident and the injured party comes after your personal assetts. You also need as much Uninsured/Underinsured insurance that you can purchase. This insurance will step in and pay if the responsible party has no insurance or TOO LITTLE INSURANCE. This type of coverage is also very inexpensive.
Second, you call your legislature and ask them why they allowed a law to be passed that provides so little protection to you, the consumer, and instead allows the insurance companies to benefit. You might also ask why, if this law allows insurance companies to get the cost of medical bills back, did your cost for liability insurance go up, not down.
BEWARE
If you are hurt in a car accident, the responsible party's insurance company may offer to pay you a settlement. They won't tell and wont necessarily give you enough to pay back your insurance company ( which includes medicare and medicaid). They will hope to get a bargain at your ignorance. Unfortunetly, your health insurance carrier wont be as sympathetic. They will expect their money from you and if you dint get enough from the responsible party, you will pay it out of your own pocket!

In this blog, we will be making posts and observations which are based off the intricacies of personal injury and family law. While informative and sometimes inspirational, none of this information should be construed as legal advice.We reserve the right to edit any information posted herein. We encourage you to read and comment on the information posted here. So come back often and look for new posts, coming soon!