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You're deciding whether to settle your lawsuit and one of the key questions you have is how
much time does the insurance company have in which to send me the settlement check?
Would you like to learn the answer? Come join me as I share with you this great information.
Hi. I'm Gerry Oginski. I'm a New York medical malpractice and personal injury trial lawyer
practicing law in the state of New York. Well as of today, August 31, 2013, the answer is
that a private insurance company has 3 weeks in which to send you your settlement check
provided the attorney has sent them all the appropriate closing papers. Now what does
that mean? One of them will be something known as a 'stipulation of discontinuance' that
has to be filed with the court that lets everybody in the court system know that this case has
been settled. What else? Now we have something called the 'general release' which is a release
of all the claims that you have brought. And there may be something known as a 'hold harmless
agreement' and what's that? A hold harmless agreement is a document where the attorney
and the client simply signs off and says hey, don't hold us responsible for any other claims
being made such as a lien held by Medicare and Medicaid or any private health insurance
company that may try and come after you as a result of you receiving money in this particular
case. So it says hey, if you receive any other money or any other claims from any other places
we (the defense) are no longer responsible for payment of any of these issues. Once the
defense has received all of those documents in the proper fashion -- and when I say proper
fashion it has to be sent to them certified mail, return receipt requested. From the time
they receive that packet of documents, now the defense has 3 weeks in which to send payment.
What happens is this happens if this is a municipal agency? What happens if this is
the city of New York? Then I will tell you that those 3 week provisions do not apply.
Why do I share this great information with you? I share it with you just to give you
an insight and an understanding into what goes on in the litigation process here in
the state of New York in cases involving medical malpractice, in cases involving accidents
-- oh and I have to tell you something. This does not apply to wrongful death matters.
You want to know why? Because in wrongful death matters we, the plaintiffs who represent
the injured victim who represents the family, have to go through an entire process of getting
approval from the court first to not only settle the case but then to agree on how the
money is going to be distributed before we can actually get that settlement check. So
there's an entire separate process that goes on if this is a death matter. But in cases
where you have suffered an injury and are thankfully still alive, the defense will have
3 weeks for a private insurance company in which to get that check payable to both you
and the attorney and send it off to the attorney. I recognize you probably have questions of
your own. Well if your matter happened here in the state of New York and you do have legal
questions, what I encourage you to do is pick up the phone and call me. I can answer your
legal questions. This is something that I do every single day and I welcome your call.
You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at Gerry@Oginski-law.com. Well that's it for
today's quick video. I'm Gerry Oginski, have a great day!