Attorney Steven Gacovino Explains How A Motorcycle Accident Attorney Significantly Assists Injury Recovery

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

Sounds like you take a role as a motorcycle accident insurance personal injury attorney. It sounds like you take a role much more actively involved in their care because it’s required because of that no-fault issue than you do with a car accident. I can see why that would be obviously necessary.

Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), New York

Often that is the case. Look, sometimes you have somebody that has great insurance, but even sometimes with certain types of insurance policies, and this is another nuance that needs to be thought of and looked into at the beginning of the case. Some of these insurance policies even have a claim on the third party recovery.

Now that would be true if it’s Medicaid, Medicare, in other words, a government backed insurance, but also for certain private insurance policies, there is going to be a lien asserted on the third party case. You have to be prepared for that and you have to be ready to negotiate those liens in the best interest of the client. So hopefully they can keep as much of that recovery as they possibly can.

Ray Hrdlicka – Host – Attorneys.Media

What do you mean by that? Explain the liens that you’re talking about here, the third party issues.

Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), New York

I can give you real life examples. So you don’t have, as we discussed, there is no no fault coverage. So when you’re on a motorcycle and you’ve been injured, so let’s suppose the individual is not at fault. They were struck by an oncoming vehicle as they were going straight through a clean green light and somebody makes a left-hand turn into them.

By the way, we see that scenario so much of the time in motorcycle accidents because for whatever reason, a lot of motorists are less aware of the presence of motorcycles, as opposed to cars or trucks. They’re just not as visible and not as aware. So, we do see that mechanism of injury where somebody has been turned into with a left-hand turn vehicle while the motorcycle is going straight.

Let’s suppose that happens. Most of that fault is going to lie with the car that struck the motorcycle. Let’s suppose that person has $1,000,000 policy and our client has $1,000,000 worth of injuries, but they had a particular insurance policy. That could be, again, Medicare, Medicaid, or a private insurance company.

But certain types of policies will assert a lien on the case. So when I say a lien, they’ve advanced money for the medical. The doctors have been paid. After the doctors have been paid, the insurance company will say, hey, we paid out $100,000 for orthopedic care to Dr. So-and-so or to a particular hospital, we now want that money back from the third party recovery that you’re going to get.

So out of that million dollars that the client might recover, they’re going to say 100,000 of that belongs to us. So they’re going to try to take it back. Now, what we’re going to do is get a copy of the insurance policy. We’re going to see if that insurance policy does in fact entitle them to a third-party lien. And if it doesn’t, we’ll fight with them and we’ll contest it.

If we think that they might have some rights, then we’ll have to negotiate to the best of our ability with that insurance company. So they may claim 100,000. We may negotiate it to some number that’s lower than that.