Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

Los Angeles, California. Our clients’ parents were killed in a car accident at night when they hit a tractor trailer truck with no lights on. Because the tractor trailer truck did not have any lights running and was negligent in warning oncoming cars of its presence, we sued them for the wrongful death of the parents. The trucking company had an insurance policy for $250,000, but the insurance company refused to settle the case for this amount on the advice of their lawyer. We took the case to trial, and the jury awarded our clients $750,000 for the wrongful death of their parents. The insurance company paid this amount and then hired us, the Law Offices of Greenberg & Rudman LLP, to sue their attorney for not protecting them against an insurance bad faith claim. We ultimately collected on the negligent lawyer’s policy and helped the insurance company offset some of the cost of the case.

A truck driver was pulling a double trailer across the country road moving from a farm on one side of the road to a farm on the other side of the road at night without any lights. Our clients’ mother and father were driving down a country road in the dark when they suddenly struck the side of the trailer being pulled by the farm tractor. The trailer did not have it's running lights on at the time which would have warned the father that there was a trailer across the two lane road. Both parents died as a result of crashing into the side of the trailer.

The parents had been on their way to visit one of their sons who was incarcerated in a state prison. They also had three other sons. All four of the sons were adults, but two of the sons had mental deficiencies and had lived at home with their parents. Both of these sons had a mental capacity of children about ten or twelve years old. The loss of their parents was a devastating tragedy for these children. The trucking company had a liability policy of insurance that covered the trucking company for $250,000 in liability. We made a demand to settle the case for the $250,000 policy limits. Our claim was that the parents had supported and cared for the two mentally handicapped grown sons, and would have continued to do so for the rest of their lifetimes. The other son would now have to provide the care, comfort and support of his two mentally handicapped brothers for the rest of their lives. The insurance company refused to pay the policy limits.

We went to trial, and the trial seemed to be going well. However, the insurance company lawyer still refused to recommend to his insurance carrier that they should pay the policy limits. The jury awarded our clients $750,000. The insurance company paid the entire $750,000 judgment, and hired our firm to sue their own lawyer for not having told them to pay the policy. They knew at that point that we had a bad faith lawsuit against the insurance company for not protecting their insured from a substantial exposure over the insured amount. We learned that the lawyer kept telling the insurance company that he was winning the case, when in fact, the jury didn't like him, and were very sympathetic for our clients. We collected the attorney's negligence policy to help the insurance company recoup part of their money paid in excess of their policy.