Injured in a car driven by your best friend!

insurance,Our Blog | July 16, 2016

You’re a passenger in a car, accompanying your friend to the mall, to a ball game or to lunch. A shriek of brakes, a crash of metal and glass, and you’re the one getting transfused in the ER. Your friend looks on anxiously.

Here’s the question:

You’ve just been injured. The medical bills are going to go out the roof. You love your friend dearly, but what kind of friend files a claim against the friend’s insurance policy? The friend’s rates will go up. The friend will feel betrayed by you. Or you’ll just be too confused to file the claim.

What do you do?

Friends don’t sue friends – or do they?

What you do is, you file the claim. Here is our thinking:

  • You care about your friend, but your friend cares about you, too. She doesn’t want you to suffer both physical and financial injury because of an injury in her car. She is having the same thoughts about you (you want to be a good friend) that you are having about her.
  • Her insurance rates may not go up, or they won’t go up stratospherically. In any event, leave that problem for her to solve, while you heal up.
  • Let’s say she does react negatively — “How can you do this to me?” Think about it – is that the way a friend reacts, after you’ve been seriously injured? Think of this event as a test of the relationship. You will probably be pleasantly surprised.
  • Finally, isn’t this what insurance is for, to resolve these thorny problems – some of them interpersonal or emotional — without turning into a big drama.

Cases like this are quite common

At Rosenthal Law, in Roseville and Sacramento, we see several cases like this every year. But we wonder how many people, dealing with the expense and distress of a serious injury, never pick up the phone and ask for help.

We don’t like to think about that person, too afraid to seek lawful compensation.

We’re here for you, to walk you through this problem. And we can tell you, from our experience, going back many years, things usually work out just fine.

Check us out. We’re at (916) 774-7200, and we’ll walk you through this.