Washington Injury Law Blog

While walking home from work I stopped at a crosswalk before crossing the street. The way was clear so I started walking across the street when a car suddenly turned right in front of me and ran over my right foot. As a result my foot was broken and now I have permanent nerve damage that makes it so the bottom of my foot under my toes is always numb. This is the story of one of my client’s told during our first meeting, let’s call him Bruno.

Bruno was lucky that the car that ran over his foot had Personal Injury Protection (PIP) insurance, which pays for the medical bills of pedestrians injured in a Washington car accident. In most cases PIP pays for your injuries that you suffer when in a car accident. Only those in your car are covered. But when you hit a pedestrian your PIP insurance also pays for the pedestrians medical bills.

Washington voters recently approved R-67 (aka Fair Insurance Conduct Act), which is a new law aimed at holding insurance companies accountable for their bad faith practices in handling PIP claims. The Fair Insurance Conduct Act took effect December 6, 2007.  Bruno has had first hand experience with the insurance company handling his PIP claim wrongfully.

In Bruno’s case the PIP insurance adjuster is only paying a portion of each bill submitted by some of Bruno’s doctors. Washington law does not allow this kind of off the top discounting on the opinion of an insurance adjuster. When this happens a bad faith claim arises against the insurance company. The Fair Insurance Conduct Act established an advance notice procedure prior to filing a lawsuit to collect the PIP insurance benefits owed. Notice is sent to the insurance company and Office of the Insurance Commissioner for Washington (OIC) 20-days before a lawsuit is to be filed, giving the insurance company one last opportunity to resolve the dispute.

During the battle over R-67 the insurance industry claimed PIP bad faith was not a big problem. It appears as usual the insurance companies were lying to us consumers. There were about 56 notices sent to the OIC from Dec. 6 to Dec. 31, and about 11 more in the first week of January. Prior to the new law taking effect from May 2007 to the end of November 2007 there were about 78 consumer notices of bad faith conduct by insurance companies.

That’s a lot of lawsuits that are about to be filed against insurance companies because they’re treating their own customers wrongfully. If you are dealing with a PIP claim and the insurance company is refusing to pay your medical bills, it’s important that you speak with an attorney experienced in handling Washington injury cases. You paid for the PIP insurance and it should be available when you need it after a car accident.