Casualty in a War of the Fender-Benders

I was on my way home from work one evening last year when I had an auto accident that introduced me to the strange world of litigation.

As did Cortez, I found a world occupied by a race of beautiful people who possessed great learning and cultivated manners and were adorned with gold and gems. Unlike Cortez, I found they were not peace-loving.

The accident occurred when the driver of the other car tried to turn into a parking lot in front of me on a crowded San Fernando Valley street. Neither of us saw the other until it was too late.

We pulled our cars to the side of the road and exchanged vital information. I asked if he and his wife and child were OK and he asked if I was. We all said yes.

“Thank God,” I thought. “Nobody was hurt.”

A few days later, I learned the other driver was uninsured. Poor guy, I thought. By the cut of his clothes and his Tarzana address, I judged he was probably a junior exec beginning his climb up the corporate ladder and could ill afford what this accident was going to cost him in car repairs.

Then I found out he was suing me. He claimed that he, his wife, and son had suffered severe injuries.

“He can’t do this,” I said to my insurance representative, who was much less friendly than she had been a few days earlier, when she thought I had the good sense to have an accident with an insured driver.

“Yes he can,” she said.

A few days later, she called and said she had visited the scene of the accident and concluded I was in the right. “I’ve already told the other attorney.”

“We’re coming after your client,” is what she said she told him.

I gloated along with her until she hung up. Then I started to worry. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get him. I just didn’t want him to get me. I called an attorney friend for solace. He laughed at me.

“Getting people is what we do,” he said.

I envisioned this vast army of attorneys awaiting orders to “get ‘em.” I still didn’t like it, but at least now this army would be marching under my colors.

But the man who was suing me had his own personal killing machine, and I soon found myself under assault from incoming interrogatories. Interrogatories are written questions asked by attorneys to help them prepare their cases. They probe for weak points in the opposition. The interrogatories asked not only where I lived and worked, but where I went to college and whether I graduated.

As I answered the questions, I wondered if the other attorney might uncover the fact that I was placed on academic probation for leading a successful panty raid on Whittier College’s most heavily fortified girls dorm.

Finally, the day arrived for my arbitration hearing, a proceeding in which both sides present their cases informally to a third party, who recommends a settlement. The idea is to prevent expensive and time-consuming litigation and long delays.

The hearing was to take place 17 months after the accident, so I wasn’t sure how well the goal was being met.

I met the attorney assigned to me by the insurance company at a McDonald’s an hour before the hearing. I didn’t know if this was a good or bad sign. Perhaps he was brilliant, but just happened to like breakfast burritos.

He turned out to be young, low-key and intelligent enough to be bored by my case. He shook my hand, asked my name, asked it again, then finally gave up on the project and opened the file. Thumbing through it, he yawned and said it all looked pretty standard.

“Not to you I guess,” he chuckled, then read on.

“Hmmm, the meds are a little high.”

The meds, it turned out, are the medical damages. I discovered for the first time that the plaintiff was asking for almost $20,000. My attorney looked up the name of the treating physician.

“Oh yeah, we’ve seen his name before,” he smiled in recognition.

Was it possible, I asked, that my insurance company might drop me and refuse to pay if the arbitrator ruled against me? My attorney munched a fry and considered this. He doubted it. But if they did. . . . He brightened for the first time, “You could sue them.”

The arbitrator’s office was in one of the expensive towers on Ventura Boulevard that are still occupied. The other driver was there with his wife and child.

The man gave me his best pre-fight stare. When I turned away, he came over and stood next to me, flipping the pages of his magazine with violent little slaps. Maybe he learned this at an assertiveness training course.

Finally, we were called inside and each of us told our story to the arbitrator, another attorney.

“You did well,” said my attorney, yawning and looking at his watch as we waited for the elevator after the hearing. The ruling would come later. He said he was hopeful, though he just looked tired.

He called me a few days later with the decision. The arbitrator had ruled the other driver was 70% at fault and I was 30% at fault. His reasoning was that the other man was wrong to turn in front of me and I was wrong not to realize people sometimes turned in front of other people.

Therefore, when the cost of repairing his car was added, the plaintiff would get about $8,000.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “He was twice as much at fault. He should pay me twice that much, then I’ll pay him his eight.

“Sorry, it doesn’t work that way,” my attorney said.

The plaintiff’s demand, reduced by 70%, was much more than my demand--the amount my insurance company was asking for car repairs--reduced by 30%. At first I was angry. Then I thought about it. The plaintiff would get only a portion of the settlement, the scrap left behind by his attorney, which might cover the cost of repairing his car. After all, I didn’t want him to go bankrupt over the accident.

At the same time, the other guy was uninsured and in the wrong, yet he gets the cash and my insurance rates go up.

Was this justice?

I called my attorney friend, who was not sympathetic. “Hey, you’ve still got your house. You’re way ahead.”