Tien Thanh: Hi, Taylor, and Michael. Thanks for coming today.
Taylor Kosla: Thank you for having us today.
Michael Agruss: Yeah, thanks for having us. Good to see you.
Tien Thanh: Good to see you too. How are you all today?
Taylor Kosla: Good. It’s a little rainy outside.
Tien Thanh: It’s a little rainy.
Michael Agruss: Yeah, doing well.
Tien Thanh: I mentioned a little bit to our audience that the purpose of today’s talk show is going through the cases that your firm been handling in the past, so let’s dive right in. Do you have-
Michael Agruss: Yeah, that sounds good. What Taylor and I wanted to do is we both thought about cases that we’ve worked on in the past because we handle personal injury cases, and part of the personal injury practice deals with car accidents, and so we were thinking of cases we’ve worked on in the past where we think that the viewers of the show or people in general would want to learn more about, whether it’s the facts of the case, or dealing with insurance, or treatment, or hiring attorneys, and so I think these real world examples will be good for people to learn about.
Tien Thanh: Absolutely. Totally agree. All right. What happened in the first case that you want to discuss with your client and a rideshare company?
Taylor Kosla: A few years ago we had a client who was riding her bike in the Loop in downtown Chicago. She was actually in the bike lane, but in the particular area she was at, there is the traffic lane, there is the bike lane, and then there is actually a lane to the right of the bike lane for parking. Our client was on her way to work and was riding her bike in the lane, and a rideshare service car pulls over and a passenger in the rear seat opened her door as our client was riding by on the bike, hit our client, our client fell. Fortunately, the passenger stayed and waited until an ambulance came to pick up our client, and the passenger provided her information and the rideshare company’s information.
Tien Thanh: Okay. So the rideshare was on the right of your client.
Taylor Kosla: The rideshare was actually on the left of our client.
Tien Thanh: On the left.
Taylor Kosla: Yes.
Tien Thanh: That makes sense. All right. [foreign language]. My follow up question on this accident was, what insurance companies was involved in this case?
Michael Agruss: Sure. And this is what’s interesting about rideshare accidents. And when we are talking about rideshare accidents, we are talking like Uber and Lyft. And so in this particular case, our client who was on a bike had insurance and she had auto insurance. There are some exceptions but generally if you are on a bike or walking and you’re injured, you can be protected under your own car insurance. So our client’s auto insurance… The passenger who opened up the door in the Uber did not have insurance so that was an issue.
Tien Thanh: Now, what insurance does she not have, the passenger?
Michael Agruss: Correct. The passenger did not have auto insurance. Something like, I take rideshares, and if I were to be in the back seat and opened up a door and someone were to come after me, we would go after my auto insurance. Our client had auto insurance, which was covered, she was on a bike. The passenger in the car, in the rideshare, did not have insurance. The driver of the car in the rideshare has personal insurance on his car when he’s not working for the rideshare company, and then the rideshare company has insurance while the driver is driving people around. So you’ve got multiple layers of insurance. We had our client’s, we had the driver, and then we have the rideshare company, so we were dealing with three different insurance policies.
Tien Thanh: Right. One thing is interesting here is that, for your client who got injure, as long as she have an auto insurance, then she got cover, even though she’s on the bike, not in her car.
Michael Agruss: Correct. And this is something that her own insurance… I believe her insurance was GEICO. GEICO was asking specifics about where did the accident take place, how did it take place. She was on a bike. Was she in a bike lane? Was she where she was supposed to be? There were a lot of factual questions that all of the insurance companies were interested in finding out, because when you’re dealing with rideshare accidents and multiple layers of insurance, no one wants to pay. I’m not at fault, they are at fault. The person who opened up the door is at fault. And then the driver is like, “I didn’t do anything. The passenger opened up the…” So you got a lot of moving parts. And fortunately, she came to us and we figured out who is at fault and which insurance company is going to pay.
Tien Thanh: Sounds like pretty complicated scenario to be in with multiple parties.
Taylor Kosla: Actually since that accident happened, some rideshare companies now they will alert the driver to remind the passenger to look out the window before opening the door, but that wasn’t the case at the time that this accident happened.
Tien Thanh: Right. Okay. [foreign language] Uber and Lyft [foreign language] rideshare [foreign language]. Right. What were the client injuries? What was the treatment, and who paid the medical bills?
Taylor Kosla: The client went from the scene of the accident to the ER. She was taken by an ambulance and she was diagnosed with torn ligaments in her leg, and she needed surgery and months of physical therapy, which she listened to what her doctors and the therapist told her. It was a long course of treatment given the surgery. She was unable to do a few things that she had planned over the following months. I noted that she had trips planned with family, she intended to go to a concert, and her doctors told her, “It’s not a good idea for you to be traveling or walking a lot, standing too much,” so she wasn’t able to do those things.
I also recall her having to get a dog walker because she couldn’t take care of her dog, too much walking. And she had to take some time off work. But she listened to her doctors, she got the treatment that she needed and she eventually recovered pretty well. I think she had some long-term issues with pain that would flare up from time to time, swelling. She did have health insurance so her bills were covered through her health insurance, and then her health insurance company was entitled to a portion of the settlement to reimburse for the funds paid for the medical bills.
Tien Thanh: Okay. So the payments came from her health insurance?
Taylor Kosla: Correct.
Tien Thanh: Portion of it. Okay. [foreign language] physical therapy [foreign language]. Right. How long did it take the case to settlement?
Michael Agruss: This was a case where we knew from the beginning that there were going to be contested facts and that we would need to get into litigation. Oftentimes we will try to settle cases without filing a lawsuit if the facts are straightforward. This was a case where we knew everyone was pointing fingers at each other so we filed suit right away. The next stage of the case was all of the parties. The passenger, and the driver, and the rideshare company all responded to discovery, meaning they answered written questions, turned over documents, and everyone got to see what written information people had. And then what we did is we took depositions, which is simply a sworn statement under oath.
Our client gave a deposition, the driver of the rideshare company gave a deposition, and then we were going to take a corporate representative’s deposition at the rideshare company, but right around the party depositions including the passenger as well, the parties had a better understanding of the facts of the case and which insurance companies were going to contribute to resolve the case, and so we litigated the case, I would probably say for about a year, and then we were able to settle the case with the rideshare company contributing money, as well as our own client’s insurance contributing money because she had what’s called uninsured motorist coverage. And so because the passenger didn’t have insurance, our own client’s insurance chipped in to settle the case. So it took about a year.
Tien Thanh: You mentioned depositions. What’s the exact definition of that?
Michael Agruss: A deposition is a sworn statement under oath. When our client gave her deposition, Taylor and I were there, a court reporter was there, lawyers for all the parties were there. And it’s just like you see in court, where you raise your hand, the court reporter swears you in, you swear to tell the truth, and then it’s simply a question and answer session where the lawyers get to ask a million questions about personal information, who you are, where’d you grow up, where do you work, what happened in the accident, what are your injuries. It’s an opportunity to hear what someone’s going to say ultimately at trial.
Tien Thanh: Right. Okay. [foreign language]. Right. How can people protect themselves against the rideshare industry?
Taylor Kosla: That’s a great question. I think that the biggest takeaway from this case is you need to have insurance. That passenger, I think she didn’t have insurance because she didn’t have a car, so she didn’t think that there was a need to have insurance. However, the rideshare company did not insure her. There was not coverage for her as a passenger at that time. So it’s really important that even if you don’t have a car and you are using rideshare, you should have insurance. In addition to what happened to our client, she was on a bike, and her auto insurance covered her even though she wasn’t actually in a car.
In addition to that, if you actually drive for a rideshare company, you should have supplemental coverage. And you can call your insurance carrier to get this because there are certain times… For example, it depends on who the rideshare company is, but from the time that you accept a ride until you actually go and pick up the passenger, you might not be insured, and your personal auto insurance likely won’t cover you if you are driving for a rideshare company. So just make sure you call your auto insurance, get the best auto insurance that you can. Maximize your limits. The cost to get the most amount of coverage is actually pretty nominal in terms of monthly payments, so make sure you have insurance, and good insurance, regardless of whether you have a car or not.
Tien Thanh: All right. [foreign language]. Right. Let’s move on to the second case that you are working with. What happened in the second case, you want to discuss with the client?
Michael Agruss: Sure. The second case we want to talk about today, it’s a really important issue as well because our client, this happened in 2017, she was stopped at a red light doing absolutely nothing wrong, and she was rear-ended. And we see in our practice with personal injury car accident cases that rear-end accidents are so common these days because people are driving like this, on their phone and looking up. No one’s paying attention. And so it really happens more often now. People are distracted. They are on their cell phones.
So our client doing nothing wrong, I mean, she’s waiting at a stoplight, gets rear-ended. And what’s interesting about this case is sort of like part of the first case we talked about, the person who hit our client has no insurance. This is a situation where our client, once again, doing nothing wrong at a stoplight, gets rear-ended likely by a distracted driver and then the issue is, what do you do now.
Tien Thanh: Okay. All right. [foreign language]. Right. What insurance companies were involved in this case?
Taylor Kosla: Like Mike said, the at fault driver didn’t have insurance, but fortunately our client did have uninsured motorist coverage, and that protects a driver when they are involved in an accident with someone without insurance. However, despite making a claim with her own insurance company, they were being really difficult and wouldn’t resolve the claim for quite some time, but I’ll get into that in a little bit.
Tien Thanh: Sure. Right. [foreign language]. Right. Let’s move on. What were the client’s injuries and the treatments? Who paid the medical bills in this case?
Michael Agruss: This is an interesting one, where our client had soft tissue injuries, meaning she didn’t have any broken bones, there weren’t any stitches. There wasn’t anything where you could look on an X-ray and say, “Here’s what’s wrong.” It was pains and strains and aches, which often plague people for a really long time because the treatment is a little bit more difficult. Symptoms are hard to fix because it’s not like, oh, this is a broken bone, we’ll do surgery, we’ll do a cast, and you should be fine. In this situation, our client had about a year of treatment. She did injections, like they are called nerve block injections, where they give you shots to block the pain. She went to a pain management doctor. She also did physical therapy. And I believe this client did not have health insurance, right?
Taylor Kosla: No, she didn’t.
Michael Agruss: Right. So this is an interesting situation where you are a driver and you are doing nothing wrong, and you’re hit by someone who has no auto insurance, and then our client has no health insurance. So then it’s like, well, you’re injured and you need treatment, so what do you do? And we help clients with this all the time. And what we helped and coordinated with her is we reached out to her pain management doctor. In the legal field it’s called putting a lien on the file. But basically what her doctor said was, “Okay, I will treat your client and I’m going to send you all of the bills, and when it comes time to settling the case, you need to pay me out of the settlement.”
And so for our client, it was a benefit to her because she had no health insurance and she’s injured and she needed to get treatment. So she went through a year’s long worth of treatment. The doctor liened the file or told us, “Hey, when you settle, reimburse me for my bills,” which is what we did. So we were able to get her medical treatment even though she didn’t have health insurance. And she didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket during that process, during the treatment.
Tien Thanh: Right. So who paid for the bills then?
Michael Agruss: At the end?
Tien Thanh: Yeah.
Michael Agruss: What ended up happening, at the end when her case resolved, she got a settlement check, and part of that settlement check had to pay for her doctor bills.
Tien Thanh: Okay.
Michael Agruss: Although the medical bills got paid, they were paid at the end from the settlement, so nothing came out of her pocket.
Tien Thanh: Right. Okay. Now, speaking of the settlement in this case, can you talk through that process with her?
Taylor Kosla: Definitely. She had to complete treatment because when… After she retained us she was getting conservative treatment. She was getting mostly physical therapy. However, after several months of that it was clear that physical therapy wasn’t going to make her feel better anymore. She was at her maximum medical improvement for physical therapy and that’s when she started seeing a pain management doctor. They actually started giving her steroid injections every several weeks, and each steroid injection, I think, was about $1,500. They are very expensive. She went through, like Mike said, almost a year of treatment. And I think her medical bills were about $140,000 but her auto insurance policy limits were only $50,000. Her best case scenario, they pay the policy limits, but she had almost $150,000 in medical bills.
So she completed treatment, we sent a demand to her insurance company, and they didn’t want to pay it. They said, “We want to take your client’s statement.” And she was a great client. In addition to her significant medical bills, she also had pretty significant lost wages. She ran her own daycare, she had back problems, she couldn’t take care of little kids and she had to hire an assistant to help her. So you have a lot of medical bills, lost wages, and they won’t pay the $50,000 limits. She sat down for a statement. She did a great job in the statement. They just went over what happened in the accident, her injuries, the treatment she got, and within days of her sitting down for the statement, they paid the policy.
Tien Thanh: Okay. But that’s only $50,000, right? [crosstalk]-
Taylor Kosla: Correct.
Tien Thanh: … almost a $100,000.
Taylor Kosla: Yeah. You should for your insurance company get the most limits that you can afford.
Tien Thanh: Okay. May I ask, who paid for the rest?
Taylor Kosla: For the medical bills, there is a statute in Illinois that says, regardless of how much your medical bills are, if there is a settlement, they can only get 40%. We were able to work with the medical providers and get those liens reduced significantly so they didn’t get anywhere near the amount that was actually billed.
Tien Thanh: Okay. Cool. Just one follow up question like, were there any consequences on the person who injure the client, person that didn’t have auto insurance?
Taylor Kosla: I believe they received a ticket for the accident. However, this wasn’t a person with assets or money that it’d be worth pursuing individually because at the end of the day if they don’t have money, it’s not worth the pursuit. And this is why our client had uninsured motorist coverage for a situation like this.
Tien Thanh: Okay. Got it. [foreign language] physical therapy [foreign language]. Right. Seems like a pretty serious occasional injury, like whole year she went through quite a lot, cost a lot of money. How can someone prevent this from happening?
Michael Agruss: We’ve talked about this extensively on the show and we tell people all the time, have good insurance and maximize your insurance policy. A lot of people think, I’ve got car insurance and it’s going to cover me in case I cause an accident, and in reality, and in this situation, it also covers you if someone hits you and that person doesn’t have insurance. So it’s called uninsured motorist coverage. Call your car insurance company and tell them, “I want to maximize your liability insurance,” which means if you are at fault, and then also your uninsured and under-insured motorist coverage. And they all sort of go in the same line. And typically in Illinois they all need to be the same amount. And it’s just a very simple phone call to your insurance company saying, “I want to maximize my coverage.”
And as Taylor mentioned, it’s not a significant expense. We are talking 10 bucks a month sometimes. And it’s not to protect the other driver, it’s to protect yourself. And people, no matter how many times we talk about this, it’s literally, your own insurance protects you in case that other person has a hit and run accident. Like they hit you and they leave the scene or they don’t have insurance or whatever the case is, you want to make sure you have as much coverage as possible. And in Illinois, typically policies, when you max out your policy, you should be able to get $200,000, $300,000, $400,000, $500,000 worth of coverage depending on who your carrier is.
So this woman who we are talking about now, Taylor’s client, the case that we worked on, had she had more uninsured motorist insurance, she would have gotten a bigger settlement. It’s that simple. If she had $250,000 in coverage, they probably would have settled the case for 250 grand. But she didn’t, and she only had $50,000 in coverage. The solution is so simple. Just call your insurance and say, “I want to maximize my policy. What will it cost?”
Tien Thanh: Okay. [foreign language] Michael [foreign language]. All right. Let’s move on to a third case that you worked with. Can you walk us through the things that you discussed with your clients? What happened?
Michael Agruss: Sure. This next case that I want to talk about happened in July of 2016, and it was down in Southern Illinois. The first couple of cases we’ve talked about today happened in the Chicago land area. It’s an awful accident and the facts are very unusual. Our clients are husband and wife and the husband’s father. Three of them are out on a Sunday afternoon on a motorcycle ride, and they are in rural Illinois on a two-lane highway, just one lane going in each direction. And as they were approaching a hill going up, there was a tow truck coming over the hill. And as we talked about with distracted driving, we believe that the tow truck driver was on his phone, and as he was on his phone, he started swerving over into our client’s lane. And where this happened, it’s rural America, it’s the rural road but there were guard rails on each side of the road.
And so as he comes over the hill and crosses over the center line, our three clients who are on their motorcycles and there was a guard rail to their right, and there was nowhere to go. And they realized that the tow truck driver didn’t see them so all three of them had to lay down their motorcycles because they were going to get run over. They laid down their bikes. The husband and wife suffered broken bones, road rash, and the husband’s father was killed in the accident. And what’s awful about it is the tow truck company stopped at the last minute, realized what was going on, swerved back over into his lane, slammed on his brakes, saw what happened, and then left the scene of the accident.
Tien Thanh: Right. [foreign language].
Michael Agruss: My name is Mike Agruss. I am the founding attorney of 844 See Mike. 844 See Mike started in March of 2012. What I like about personal injury cases is each case is different, so it makes it challenging, it’s something new, it’s something exciting because you are investigating a whole new set of facts in each case that you work on.
What I like most about consumer rights cases is most people don’t know about the law. We didn’t learn about it much in law school, and if we are not learning about it in law school, most people don’t know what their rights are. I enjoy explaining the law to people. It’s always refreshing to hear clients say, “I didn’t know I had those rights.” And most importantly, consumer rights cases that we handle, which are primarily financial issues, have what’s called a fee-shift provision, so my fees are shifted to the other side. In other words, my clients don’t pay my fees and costs, the company we are going after does. So it’s refreshing to explain someone their rights, you have options, and not only can we fix their problem, the other side has to pay our fees and costs. And the consumer rights practice is national. So I like the idea of being able to help everyone in the country.
What I like most about plaintiff’s work is representing individuals. I tell people all the time, you are either a plaintiff’s lawyer or you’re not. From the moment I could walk, I knew I wanted to go to law school and I always knew I wanted to do plaintiff’s work. There was a period of time for about a year and a half where I did insurance defense work, and it was enlightening and I learned a lot, and it makes me a better lawyer on the plaintiff’s side because I know how the other side is thinking, but I am 100% a plaintiff’s lawyer. I like having individual clients. I like having someone to talk to. It’s refreshing to get that review from a client. It’s refreshing to be told you did a good job. It makes me think that the reason I went to law school was to help out individuals.
My favorite animal is a dog. We have one at home. But I’m a big animal lover. My son is six years old, and I just got him a fish tank for his birthday, and it’s probably as much of a gift for him as it is for me. I like all sorts of animals but I’d say my favorite animal is a dog. The app I use the most is Waze. I feel like I am thinking, answering questions, analyzing things all day long, going through a million emails, phone calls, and the last thing I want to do when I get in my car is figure out where I’m going. I love being able to plug in an address and Waze tells me where to go.
My favorite food is pizza and sushi. I am a big lover of deep-dish pizza. So the original Unos and Dues in Chicago, I have been going to since I was in high school. And I’m also a big seafood fan. I love sushi. When I lived out in California for a couple of years, they had incredible sushi out there. I love it. I miss it.
My perfect vacation has always been relaxing on a beach. I have got two toddlers at home, and so that’s even more important these days, so 100% relaxing on a beach. Weekends are for catching up on sleep, hanging out with my family, exercising, and most importantly, getting afternoon naps. I love napping, and on the weekends I certainly nap every day.
If I was not a lawyer, I don’t know what I would be. I knew I wanted to be a lawyer since I could walk. Having started my own firm, I also like the aspect of running a small business, so I would be a small business owner. My favorite book… Surprisingly, I don’t read much. I would say in high school my favorite book was Catcher in the Rye. The most recent book I’ve read that I love, and I just started doing audio books, is Ryan Serhant’s book, Sell It Like Serhant. He is on Million Dollar Listing New York. I love all of the real estate shows on TV. I read his book, and whether you are an attorney, a real estate agent, no matter what you do, if you are a small business owner, the book’s applicable. I loved it. So currently my favorite book would be Sell It Like Serhant.
My favorite movie when I was young was Breakfast Club. I watched it every weekend. I’ve probably watched it hundreds of times. There was a point where I knew the first half by heart. Recently I would say my favorite movie would be… I’ve got a couple of them. I really enjoy The Hangover. Anytime it’s on TV I always watch it. I also like current war movies. 13 Hours was a great movie and Lone Survivor was a great movie.
Working at 844 See Mike is fast paced. We are high volume. It is a healthy amount of stress. Every day is new. It’s different. I’m constantly getting phone calls and emails, talking to clients. Working at 844 See Mike is collaborative. It is very open door. We all talk together throughout the day, whether we are discussing a potential case, whether we are discussing a current case, whether we are settling a case. Whatever it may be, we are all actively involved, communicating with each other. And it is a good place to work. It’s unlike any other law firm I have ever worked at, and that’s on purpose.
Taylor Kosla: My name is Taylor Kosla. I’m a partner at 844 See Mike. I started in August, 2017, and after three years of practicing, I was named partner in February, 2021. Personal injury clients come to our office in a time of need, and sometimes desperation. Something devastating happened to them. We can provide clients with peace of mind by ensuring them that we are here to help, we are in this together, and we will take care of them. We are a fast-acting law firm. We are responsive to our clients and maintain open lines of communication. Our sense of urgency is part of what makes us different from other law firms. We put people first and we make sure we get our clients the compensation they deserve.
Our consumer rights practice is a national practice, so we can help people from the East Coast to the West Coast. There are laws in place to protect consumers and not everyone knows these rights exist. And certainly not everyone knows or even believes that our clients never pay us a penny. Several consumer rights statutes contain a fee-shift provision, which means that if we prevail, the defendant must pay our attorney’s fees and costs. Our consumer clients appreciate the work that we do and that makes my job rewarding.
What I like most about plaintiff’s work is getting to know our clients. Understanding the facts of what happened and how the occurrence affected our client. As an attorney, we are given a set of facts and it is our job to create a timeline and story of events. We must put ourselves in the shoes of our client, whether that be at the scene of the accident, or months after at home learning how to adapt to a disability. Having had a family member sustain a life altering injury, I can relate with my clients and their family members, and this fuels my passion for what we do, putting people first.
My favorite animal is a dog. The app I use most is Apple News. It’s hard to say what my favorite food is because it depends on what I have a taste for, but generally, I like steak and seafood.
Tien Thanh: [foreign language]. Right. Let’s get back to a third case that we mentioned before break. What insurance companies were involved in this case?
Taylor Kosla: The truck didn’t hit them but caused the collision. There is a commercial policy, and in general, commercial policies are pretty generous. They tend to be at least a million dollars. And then on top of that, they might have an umbrella policy, but in this case there was not an umbrella policy. I believe the father had insurance as well, Mike?
Michael Agruss: Correct. The husband and wife both had their own insurance through their motorcycles and the father also had his own insurance through his motorcycle. So you were dealing, like what Taylor said, with the commercial policy with the tow truck company, and then everyone’s individual insurance policies as well.
Tien Thanh: All right. What is umbrella coverage, if you can provide that definition?
Taylor Kosla: Umbrellas can be for individuals as well as companies. They are not exclusive to just commercial policies but you have your regular limit. For example, you are an individual with an auto policy of $500,000, maybe you are in an accident, you’re at fault and there’s a fatality. You might have an umbrella policy that not only covers your auto insurance, it might cover home, maybe you have several properties, and it’s kind of just an overarching policy. So if you hit one of those limits, there might be excess coverage that you can claim through the umbrella policy.
Tien Thanh: Okay.
Michael Agruss: And people can get those too. It’s important where you… You don’t have to have a car. You don’t have to have a home. You don’t have to have a bike. You can just call an insurance company and get liability coverage. You can also call an insurance company to get umbrella coverage. It’s just an extra layer of protection. And once again, you should have it. People should have it. It’s not a lot of money. And not only does it protect you in situations where you are at fault in an accident, but you can also use it to protect you in situations if someone doesn’t have enough insurance who caused you injuries.
Taylor Kosla: And an umbrella would also come into play because if your policy limits aren’t maybe enough to cover the damages but you do have assets, you have properties, you have vehicles that are worth money, they still might come after you personally if the insurance policy is not enough, so that umbrella is just an extra layer of protection.
Tien Thanh: Got it. [foreign language]. Right. My final question is, when were you hired and why so important to speak with a lawyer right away?
Michael Agruss: This is a case where we were already representing the wife involved in the motorcycle accident in a separate case. And so this happened on a Sunday afternoon, and she had emailed us in the wee hours of Monday morning and we spoke with her first thing Monday morning. And here’s why it’s so important to hire an attorney right away. This is a perfect example of the moment she contacted us we started investigating what happened.
And what’s so interesting about this case is, it’s a two-lane rural road, Southern Illinois, and this tow truck company crosses the center line, and before there’s a head-on collision our clients laid down their bikes, which means, just that, they turned them over and intentionally laid them down so they didn’t get run over. The tow truck realizes at the last minute, slams on the brake, swerves over to avoid running them over, looks to see what happens, and then leaves the scene of the accident.
And so when we were retained in this case, they didn’t know who the defendant was. And so what we were able to do is immediately start conducting an investigation. We helped our clients, the husband and wife who survived, we helped them give statements to the police. We were able to look at the scene of the accident, try to figure out where a tow truck company may have been coming from. We actually drove down to the scene. I think we were down there within a couple of days just to sort of get the lay of the land. And what’s so interesting about this case is we helped the police do the investigation so they could interview our clients. And then because it was someone leaving the scene of an accident, the state’s attorney was involved, so we worked with the state’s attorney to do the investigation.
One of the things we do when we are hired in a car accident case is, there is something called the Freedom of Information Act, and that allows us to request information from 911, from the police, and from other state agencies about the accident. And so what’s interesting about this case, even though it’s awful what happened, in Illinois, when you repo a car, the tow truck company had repossessed a car, when you repo a car, you have to call it in to the police so they don’t think your car is stolen. So this defendant driver, about 30 minutes before the accident, called in the car that he was towing and said, “Hey, I just repoed a car.” 30 minutes later, 911 gets called in the general area of a motorcycle accident with a tow truck company that left the scene. So we had all of the recordings of the initial call he made saying, “I’m repoing a car,” and then 911 called him afterwards and said, “Hey, you just called in. You were in this area. What route were you going?” And the guy lied about the route he was going.
And they were able to ultimately track him down based on the car that he towed. They figured out the tow truck company. It’s total luck, but through our help with the police and the state’s attorney, and everyone knowing that we represented them, the tow truck company found out immediately. And what’s real important when you are dealing with cases, any type of legal case, it’s called preservation of evidence, where you tell the other side, hey, there’s going to be a lawsuit here. Don’t delete anything. Don’t delete emails. Don’t delete phone calls. All of that. Long story short, the tow truck company found out that there was this accident and that they were involved. It’s just a stroke of luck that a couple of weeks before that, all of their tow trucks were equipped with GPS, so we were able… Literally, this is like a show you’d see on Dateline, right?
Tien Thanh: Yeah.
Michael Agruss: So we found out the GPS company, we sent a subpoena to them, the state’s attorney did an investigation, and as it turns out, the GPS was able to track that he was on this road, not the road he said he was on 911. And you can see the speed of the truck going 75 miles an hour, to a complete stop, and then picking up again.
Tien Thanh: Wow.
Michael Agruss: It’s real interesting. They found this guy and they found the insurance company. He was arrested. There were criminal charges brought, multiple felonies. It’s an awful story, but the point is, our clients hired us immediately so we could facilitate with the investigation. And that’s why it’s just so important to contact an attorney. Even if you don’t want to hire them right away, just at least contact them and explain the story and see what they can do to help.
Tien Thanh: Wow. Okay. [foreign language]. Right. What were your clients’ injuries and who paid the medical bills?
Taylor Kosla: The husband and wife had broken bones and road rash. Like Mike said earlier, the father did pass away as a result of the collision. They did have Med Pay. Med Pay is almost like a health insurance policy through your auto, so there is X amount of dollars they can use towards medical bills. Usually it’s between like $5,000 and $10,000. The more, the better. Again, you want to maximize those limits, but it’s kind of, no questions are really asked. These are the medical bills and they are paid directly from the auto insurance company. Once that was exhausted, their health insurance company paid for the rest of their medical bills.
Tien Thanh: All right. Med Pay, what is that?
Taylor Kosla: Med Pay, it’s just supplemental coverage under your auto insurance that pays for medical bills incurred as a result of an accident.
Tien Thanh: All right.
Michael Agruss: And what’s nice about Med Pay is it’s not required in Illinois. People who do have it usually have $5,000 worth of coverage, but it’s nice to have, and you can increase it, I think, all the way up to 50 grand. What’s nice about it is it acts just like cash. You may have health insurance, you may have the best coverage in the world, but you’re still going to have copays, you are still, when you’re filling prescriptions, maybe have to pay a percentage or whatever it is. So it’s just an extra layer of protection for any type of out-of-pocket expenses, copays, deductibles. You can use it for anything. And the beauty of it is there’s really no questions asked. If you have an ER bill that’s $10,000 and your insurance pays $8,000, and you’ve got to pay $2,000, you can take that $2,000 bill, send it to Med Pay, and they’ll literally just cut you a check.
Tien Thanh: Okay. [foreign language]. What can our viewers learn from this case and in general?
Michael Agruss: As we end the show here I’m going to talk about this case and what we can learn and what the viewers can learn about hiring an attorney right away, and then I’ll let Taylor chime in about why it’s important to have insurance and follow your doctor’s advice for treatment. What we can learn from this case and in general and the reason it’s so important to hire an attorney right away is to get the investigation going. You want to preserve evidence. You want to get the investigation going. Most of the time, the day we are retained, letters go out for all the insurance companies that we represent this person, all communications come through us. And then we can start our investigation, whether that is going to the scene of the accident, sending someone out to take pictures, pictures of the car, pictures of the scene. And in this motorcycle accident case, where our clients were pretty convinced they would never find the driver, we were able to coordinate interviews and help with the investigation with the police and monitor the police. Their investigation also worked side-by-side with the state’s attorney’s office providing information. We made sure our clients showed up at court, gave interviews, and ultimately helped find this driver.
There is a lot of moving parts, even though people think, “Oh, it’s just a car accident. I’ll call the insurance company, they’ll play fair and I’ll pay, or they’ll pay me something reasonable,” whether it’s a small case or a big case, there’s always moving parts. And what people don’t know is, the insurance companies really don’t have their best interests in mind. And so by calling us and letting us worry about all of that so we can investigate and start helping people right away, it really just maximizes the case value and your settlement and then people can focus on getting better and not have to worry about all these details and the investigation and insurance companies.
Taylor Kosla: And of course you don’t have to pay us anything upfront or at any point out of pocket. We work on a contingency fee so we just take a portion of the recovery.
Tien Thanh: All right. [foreign language]. All right. Thanks Mike and Taylor for joining our show today.
Michael Agruss: Sure. Thanks-
Taylor Kosla: Thank you for having-
Michael Agruss: Thanks for having us.
Tien Thanh: All right.
