Location: Florida
A few weeks ago, I was sitting in Florida traffic after dropping my girlfriend off at work and driving her car and was in a fender bender at about 5 MPH. It was my fault and I stopped and gave my insurance information to the other driver and my DL #. I was very apologetic and nice and he was very nice as well. I expected an insurance claim, but a few weeks later, an injury lawsuit was emailed to my girlfriend. I texted the other driver and asked him if he was actually injured and he said no and that he would drop the lawsuit if I paid to fix his car (even though he already had our insurance information) and is now demanding I pay to fix his car. I went along with it for now and said I would pay and he dropped the injury lawsuit. I’m wondering if I should file a police report for fraud/extortion/frivolous lawsuit or should I get a lawyer? Thank you!
Edit to add: I feel terrible they are going after my girlfriend’s insurance instead of mine since accidents fall on the vehicle, not the driver. Any advice is appreciated!
Comments
You have absolutely nothing to report to the police here. You are not the arbiter of injuries and the other party is allowed to sue you.
You need to quit speaking to the other party and turn this over to your insurance and let them deal with it.
You can give the text conversations to the insurer and they can investigate/notify authorities of the potential injury fraud. If the insurer is responding to his claim, then there’s no reason for anyone else to be paying for his repairs. If you are making voluntary payments or settlement arrangements with this person, you are risking having the insurer representing you/your gf deny the claim for interference.
I work as a claims adjuster at one of the largest 5 in the US, I’d absolutely decline the medical claim and take it to arbitration if the claimant carrier tried to argue it with those text messages.
I would pretty quickly find you liable for the car damages though, but easy to argue the med pay. This is why y’all pay insurance, let us do our thing.