Insurance Is Hoping You Never Learn This About Motorcycle Accidents.

If you've been told a motorcycle wreck is open and shut, it usually means the insurance company has already decided how they want this to end, and it's not in your favor. They're going to point to the police report, maybe the statement you gave while you were still shaking up, or maybe there's a line about speed. And suddenly, you're the at-fault driver who gets offered pennies while your bills are still racking up. And if you accept that story too early, you can lose money that you actually need for surgery and medical bills, rehab, time off work, lost wages, and the long-term problems that don't show up until after you're gone. I'm Chad Romey, and this is Chris Blackburn, and we're personal injury attorneys here in Indiana. And we handle motorcycle cases where everyone swears that it's clear-cut until you pull the right facts and the whole thing flips. It happens a lot more often than you think it would. Now, in this video, we're going to show you why there's basically no such thing as an open-and-shut motorcycle accident case, and the specific things we look for that can turn a you're-at-fault claim into a real case, so that you don't get boxed into a bad settlement before you even know what your claim is worth. In Indiana, we have what's called comparative fault. And so this is a lot of times what we're arguing about with an insurance company following motorcycle cases. In motorcycle cases, many times, comparative fault is a huge issue. So what's comparative fault? In Indiana, we have a modified comparative fault statute, which basically we're assessing faults. And so our theory of liability is always that the other person's more at fault. The defense is always, well, your client shared in a portion of fault. And so, therefore, since they're a portion of fault or all at fault, their recovery or their recovery is going to be diminished. A lot of times I'll explain it to my new clients where the jury goes back and the judge gives them a pie or pizza. And there's a hundred pieces there, their job, before they can even figure out how much money my client's going to get. They have to take the pie and they have to divide it up and they have to assign some of the pie potentially to my client and some of the pie to the defendant. It doesn't always work that way. I think sometimes even in those situations where, let's say you get rear-ended. I had a case where I went to trial, my client did get rear-ended. However, the jury came back and found more assessed faults on my client. Not all the fault, not all of the fault, but a portion. It was 30%. It was that one? Yes, it was 30% of the fault. I use this as an example all the time with my clients. You think it's clear and all of a sudden the jury thinks you were 30% at fault for getting rear-ended. And so what does that do? Well, it reduces the damages by 30%. So what that means is, well, the jury's going to award $10,000, but the jury found your client 30% at fault, then they would only get $7,000. I personally think clear case, well, there's no such thing because in that scenario and all the other cases we have, the jurors are going to get a set of instructions as well as verdict forms. And I think sometimes the jurors just think, oh, because the judge gave us these forms, which has line items for the plaintiff, the plaintiff, our client, must be a portion at fault. Otherwise, we wouldn't have gotten that form. And those percentages are important because you, as the plaintiff pursuing the claim, you win your case as long as you are not more than 50% at fault. But like Chris said, you're just going to take a discount. So for every percentage point of fault you take, that's one less percent of the case value that you get to recover. If you are 51% at fault, you don't collect 49% of your value of the case. You collect zero. Now, I don't think that's fair. The defendant gets credit for your 10% at fault, but you don't get credit for their 10% at fault. But that's the way the law works here in Indiana. And so that's what insurance companies in these motorcycle cases are looking at is, hey, we think we can get more than 50% of the fault pinned on your client because we have a witness saying they were speeding. We have a witness saying they were riding their motorcycle recklessly. And even if they don't have an actual witness, a lot of times their witness is their own insured or the actual defendant. I'm not saying everyone's scrupulous, but it's not uncommon where after a lawsuit is filed and you take the deposition, the police report doesn't mention anything like that. And then the defendant says something like, well, it appeared as if they were speeding. Yeah. What do you mean by that? Well, I just, I don't know. They seem to be going really fast. And when you probe them, they can't really answer other than, well, it just appeared. So are you saying just because they're on a motorcycle, it appeared as if they were going fast? Well, motorcycle, they always drive fast and they always weave in and out of traffic. Yeah. And they drive recklessly. That's what we're, yeah. That's what we're dealing with is sometimes we're dealing with the potential jury bias of a jury pool. A lot of people have feelings about people who ride motorcycles and they're not always positive feelings. And so, gosh, I've seen that guy weave in and out of traffic. So your guy must have been doing the same thing. That's not how it works. Most times you get motorcycle accidents happen a lot of times just because the motorcycle rider is not seen. Somebody pulls out in front of our client, not because they were trying to hurt them. They just didn't see him. And so, well, gosh, if I didn't see them, it means they weren't there. And if they were there by the time I pulled out, it means they must have been going fast. When, in fact, they just never saw the person one way or the other. And so you do have to deal with that potential bias. Well, just because they say, I didn't see them, when I looked, hypothetically, I looked once, didn't see him, looked again, and then I went, didn't see him at all. In Indiana, every motorist has a duty to keep a clear and proper lookout. You're driving, you're scanning, you're looking for motorists, you're looking for pedestrians, you're looking for those individuals. Just because they didn't see doesn't mean that the duty wasn't owed. So the challenge then, when you're faced with a situation where the insurance company is saying, this is clear, meaning it's your fault, or it was your loved one's fault, it's going to come down to the evidence. I took in a case, a buddy of mine had sent his family over to us because there was a very, very serious accident where somebody had died. And all the evidence pointed to the guy on the motorcycle speeding. And when I went to talk to the family, they just said, look, he did not drive like that. He was not one of those guys who was hot riding it. He drove for pleasure. He drove just because he really, really liked it. But he wasn't a guy who was for it. But there were witnesses, there were eyewitnesses at the scene who said, this guy was really hauling. He was really, really going fast. And the more we dug into this case, and this is why getting evidence quickly is important and finding all the different sources of evidence is really important. Well, there were other eyewitnesses who didn't make the police report who said he wasn't speeding. He started out from the stoplight where we all were much faster than us, but not because he was speeding, just because he's on a motorcycle and he started faster than us. But the accident happened a thousand feet later. And by then he was going right around the speed limit. Somebody pulled out in front of him and he died. And again, that was one of those where it was clear cut. The only evidence there was, is that he was speeding. We brought out experts to measure how fast he was probably going. It eventually came out that the other driver was intoxicated. She was on something she shouldn't have been. And then I talked to the people who said our guy was speeding. And they were the least credible people I'd ever met. They were the types of witnesses that really want to be witnesses. They want to be important, want to be involved. They were just making stuff up. They weren't anywhere near the accident when it happened. They were just making up. And so we went from a very, very low offer to begin with to get a case settled, to more than a million dollars, more than the original offer, when we eventually settled the case because the evidence panned out in our guy's favor. And it was only because we didn't just give up because it looked like it was a losing case. Yeah, so really we're talking about challenging the evidence. And so initially off the bat, you're going to hear these insurance companies make these arguments or make the claim that your guy was speeding or driving too fast. Or they won't always come out and say motorcycle prejudice, but they're relying on it. It's almost like a slip and fall case in Indiana. So we have a lot of those that snows here. The insurance companies will make the argument that, well, this was the snow event of the century, and your client should have stayed home. We'll hear those arguments, but what they're maybe not understanding is, well, they were still required to get to work. It really wasn't a snow emergency. There were plenty of other people out there operating and doing what they needed to do in the snowstorm. But they're making that argument that, and they're trying to get, they're trying to find that one juror who might resonate and be like, yeah, you know what? That guy should have stayed home because the simple fact because he left his house in the snow event, he's at fault. It's no different with a motorcycle. Hey, all motorcycle riders are dangerous people. They're aggressive people. Just the mere fact you were on the road on a motorcycle, they're kind of banking on that. But ultimately, sometimes what they're doing, these insurance companies, is they're just positioning their negotiation status. If the case is worth $100,000, they want to try to pay $60,000 for it. And so they're arguing at the beginning that they're going to have to pay nothing, knowing that they're really just looking for a discount at the end. But many times you need the lawyer to at least get to the discounted value up from zero. And so our job is to position the case as strongly as we can. And I mean, sometimes the accident is the motorcyclist's fault. And sometimes that's just the case, and we're not going to be able to change what the evidence is, but we don't want to ignore what the potential evidence is out there. Yeah, I just talked to a potential client this week. It's very sad, a sad set of facts. My heart goes out to him. Not a motorcycle case. I mean, similar, he's on an electric bike riding on the, I believe on the sidewalk, and then darts into the intersection. So the way that police report read, some of the witness statements there, this is a Kentucky case. Kentucky's a little bit different. Statute's right around the corner. I think there's a case there, but unfortunately, it's not something that we would be able to handle. But it appears as if jurors would be able to look at that and say, that potential, that client, he darted out into the intersection, and that's probably a set of facts. So look for insurance company tactics as you're dealing with your motorcycle case. Look for some quick settlement offers, usually not good settlement offers, so be careful about that. They're looking to close the claim cheaply before you know the full extent of your injuries. And so sometimes the full extent of your injuries isn't known at the ER. Lots of injuries do not show up with the click of an X-ray button or the click of a camera button. You get banged around, your body moves in a way it's not designed to move, and your neck might hurt, and it just might not go away. And so you need to be careful of settling your claim too quickly. I think those quick settlements are more common in a soft-tissue case where there's not a lot of big objective injuries, broken bones, things of that nature. We'll hear all the time from potential clients or clients where they, oh, the insurance company offered me X amount of dollars, and maybe they'll pay for my bills for the next two weeks. More common there. I think it's less common after a significant motorcycle accident with big injuries where the insurance company is making those types of offers. However, I do think that if they're insured, has a larger policy limit, so something of 500 or a million or bigger reserves, it wouldn't surprise me if they're trying to settle those cases a little bit earlier rather than litigating the case, making it what seems like a good offer up front to try to prevent the exposure to the rest of the insurance. Yeah, I can see that. So there are a few different things about Indiana law that you need to be careful about or you need to be aware of. And we recently did a video on wearing a helmet while you're riding. Obviously, it's a good idea to wear a helmet, but how that plays into your claim is something you need to talk to a lawyer about if you were not wearing a helmet. There's a lot of disputes maybe over the value of the damages to your bike. There's property damage value, so you might have modifications on it. They might be trying to put different parts on it. So talk to a lawyer about those types of things. I hear frequently, mostly with, it seems like, the Harley guys and probably even different brands. But it seems like with the Harley guys, they're adding chrome or they're adding different exhausts or they're adding these things to their bike and they'll say to me, well, I bought the bike for X amount of dollars, but then I put another $2,000 or $3,000 or $5,000 into it and they're only offering me X amount of dollars. Some unique facts there with respect to the property damage. Yeah, so look for your receipts of all the modifications you made. There's always deadlines. In every case in Indiana, there's deadlines, and those apply to motorcycle cases as well. So you have two years from the date of the incident to either settle your case or to sue somebody. If the other party is a governmental entity like a police officer or driving a library delivery van, somebody who's employed by the government, there's an even shorter deadline of six months where you have to put them on notice of your claim. So you want to talk to a lawyer about that. So these quirks, not quirks, but these Indiana laws can sometimes turn something that seems to be simple into something that's not simple if you're just not aware of it. Even in clear cases, we're kind of a takeaway from this video. We're looking at fault percentages, imperative fault. We're looking at potential juror bias. We're looking at gathering the evidence early. There's pressure early on many times to try to settle these cases from insurance companies, injury complexity. So sometimes an injury might be one thing on day one, but as it progresses, it turns into something else. And then obviously we've got legal deadlines and these other legal rules. If you found this to be helpful, this video, you absolutely need to watch our next video. In more serious situations, we're looking at understanding wrongful death lawsuits in Indiana. It's going to be a comprehensive guide. So in that video, we're going to walk you through what happens when a motorcycle accident leads to the unthinkable and what rights families have under Indiana law. You don't want to miss that one if you're protecting your family or your loved one's family in a lawsuit. We'll see you over there.