Why Would the Defendant Want to Help Us?

Someone is injured by another person. The injury was caused by negligence or something worse. So why trust the person who caused harm?

Trust can either be earned or it can be inferred when it aligns with self-interest.

Self-interest can create situations where a particular outcome is mutually beneficial even to adversaries. (It’s a situational riff on the saying: The enemy of my enemy is my friend.)

Here are some examples in personal injury.

Insurance

It’s important to us to find as much insurance coverage as possible. It’s also important to defendants to find as much insurance coverage as possible (because legally they are exposed to a judgment for 100 percent of the damage they cause even if the judgment dramatically exceeds their insurance coverage.)

Defendants are motivated to make sure there is insurance coverage for the event. And they’re also motivated—like in situations where they purchased not only Auto coverage but also an umbrella—to make sure that both carriers are trying to extricate them from potentially personal liability.

It would be irrational for a defendant not to ferret out every potential policy that provided coverage for a claim. That’s why we’re able to rely on information provided by defendants.

[Potentially a different situation—and different vectors of self-interest—when dealing with insurance companies or the attorneys they hire. I don’t think I’ve seen a situation where an insurance company has misrepresented the amount of coverage carried by its insured (like said there was $50,000 in coverage when there was really $100,000). That situation is basically ruled out when the insurance company provides a copy of the declarations page. But there are definitely situations where insurance companies and the defense attorneys they hire will obscure the existence of an umbrella policy. It doesn’t happen all the time. But that’s a potential area for mischief.]

Intoxication

It seems counter-intuitive for the drunk driver to give up information about where or how much they were drinking.

But here’s the thing: Judgments against drunk drivers are not dischargeable in bankruptcy. The drunk driver is really motivated to recruit someone else to help pay their debts. And that someone else is frequently the bar, restaurant or tavern that over-served them before the wreck.

So the drunk driver is motivated not just to identify where they were drinking but also to admit it if they were apparently intoxicated while being served.

(The wet-blanket on all of this can be pending criminal charges. If they’re unresolved there’s going to be some reticence about admitting intoxication or giving up any foundational evidence.)

Injuries Caused by Other Collision

We’ve done a couple of newsletters about successive collisions. It seems like if you’re in one wreck your odds of being in another go way up.

Sometimes Drivers 1 and 2 are joined at the hip. But fracture lines do show up and can be exploited. Its not uncommon for deals to be struck where Driver 1 helps the plaintiff show that the big injuries were caused by Driver 2.

These kinds of strategic alliance can be really important in cases where one driver has a lot of coverage and the other doesn’t.

#trust

#interest

#align

#adversary

#mutually beneficial