If your Washington injury case is in the court system, you may hear it is being set for mediation, or that the parties are going to a settlement conference. Those words raise the same worries a courtroom does: Will I have to testify? Will someone decide the case against me? The answer to both is no. Mediation is one of the calmer, more client-friendly steps in a lawsuit, and understanding it...Read More
If you’ve been in a crash in Washington and you’re dealing with your own insurer — say, your PIP coverage — it’s common to hit a point where you disagree with a decision. Maybe a bill was paid at less than the billed amount, a benefit was delayed, or you got a letter you didn’t fully understand. Most of the time, that’s an ordinary coverage disagreement: two sides...Read More
If you’ve been hurt by a driver who didn’t carry enough insurance, you may turn to your own underinsured motorist (UIM) coverage — and somewhere along the way, someone might mention “arbitration.” That word causes confusion, because Washington has two very different processes that both get called arbitration, and people often assume one works like the other. This post...Read More
You hand over your health insurance card at a follow-up visit after a car crash, and something unexpected happens: the office says it would rather not bill your health plan, and instead wants to wait and be paid out of your eventual settlement. It can feel wrong, even a little alarming, when you have coverage sitting right there. So can a provider actually do that? The honest answer is that it...Read More
If you were hurt in a crash with a city bus, struck by a county truck, or injured because of a hazard on a public road or in a government building, your claim works a little differently than an ordinary injury case. When the party responsible may be a government, Washington adds a step at the front of the process that doesn’t exist in a claim against a private driver or business. It...Read More
If you were hurt on the job by someone who doesn’t work for your employer — say another driver rear-ended you while you were making deliveries — you may end up with two claims running at once and a lot of confusion about how they fit together. You have a workers’ compensation claim through Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries (L&I), and you may also have a...Read More
