Florida personal injury can be very complex – especially when it involves insurance companies and others who may want a portion of what you recover. We asked Eric Block, a Florida personal injury attorney whose practice concentrates on personal injury claims and trial work related to those claims, to explain how other parties obtain a portion of a plaintiff’s recovery. Here what he told us in a recent interview:

Letters of protection: defined

Very often a person in a car accident will only have $10,000 in PIP (Personal Injury Protection) coverage in Florida. However, in many cases, their injuries require much more treatment than the $10,000 will cover. So, how do the doctors get paid?

Florida recognizes something called LOPs, which stands for ‘Letters of Protection’. What that means is that a doctor who is seeing a patient who can’t pay for his services will sign the LOP saying that the doctor will be paid out of the proceeds of the case so that the person can get treatment. Otherwise, he might be unable to obtain required medical care.

Once that LOP is signed, that doctor – or health insurance carrier – has a lien on the file. Let’s say there’s $100,000 in medical bills and the health insurance carrier has paid $80,000 of those bills. The health insurance carrier, by operation of law, has a lien on that case for the $80,000.

In other words, the health insurance carrier has the right to be paid back from the negligent party for the amount of money that it has paid to get medical care for the plaintiff. So, you have to be very careful of liens, who has them and how much they are worth.

Why insurance companies undersell cases

In addition to others wanting a ‘piece of the pie’, Block told us that, in his experience, the majority of insurance companies in Florida vastly undersell cases. He explained, “They do this for several reasons. One is because juries are very conservative and very suspicious of people bringing personal injury cases. Another is that insurance companies know that most personal injury lawyers won’t try the case.”

“So, if they know that they’re not going to try the case and they’re not going to spend the money to put the insurance company at risk of losing a big verdict, then why should they spend a lot of money to settle the case? We’ve won literally millions of dollars in jury verdicts where the best offer from the insurance company was only a few thousand dollars before walking into the courtroom.”

If you’ve been injured due to the negligence of another, contact a Florida injury attorney to discuss your situation. The consultation is free, without obligation and strictly confidential. onfidential.