We never quit until we deliver!

Perseverance leads to huge recovery for accident victim. JG our client was involved in a car accident on September 22, 2003. The driver of the truck that struck JG denied any contact with her car. JG retained personal injury lawyers, Subin Associates, to represent her for the injuries she sustained in this accident. Subin Associates commenced a lawsuit and served the driver of the truck and notified his insurance company. When the time expired for the defendant truck driver to answer Subin Associates made an application in court to win the case based upon the defendant’s failure to respond called a default. After this default application was made and submitted to the judge, lawyers representing the truck driver’s insurance company wrote a letter to the judge basically stating they did not want to be in default. We objected, as the defendant lawyers did not follow the legal rules relating to answering the complaint or opposing our application. Despite our objections the judge denied our motion and let the truck driver put in a late answer and defend our lawsuit.

As we were prosecuting JG’s lawsuit we also filed an appeal stating that the judge made a legal mistake in allowing defendant to defend the lawsuit. Our appeal was heard by the higher court and agreed with us and reversed the decision of the judge who allowed the truck driver to put in a late answer. This meant that JG would win the case. This was just the beginning.

About two months after the appeals court ruling the insurance carrier for the truck driver disclaimed coverage and stopped paying the truck driver’s lawyer. As there was no attorney opposing us we made another application to the judge for a default and this motion was granted. Then a trial on the amount of damages was held and the judge awarded our client over $1,000,000! Now we had this big judgment but no deep pocket to pay it because the insurance company disclaimed coverage.

Our next step was to start an action against JG’s own insurance company for uninsured motorists coverage this is coverage that protects people from being left with no recovery when they are injured by a vehicle with no or too little liability coverage). When we did this we knew the truck driver’s insurance company would have to show that their disclaimer was legally valid (we didn’t believe the disclaimer was valid).
This second action was an entirely new lawsuit to determine which insurance should apply JG’s $100,000 policy or the truck driver’s $1,000,000 policy. This new lawsuit had the same parties except this time the insurance companies for both drivers were parties to the lawsuit. This second lawsuit resulted in another trial in which the judge determined that the insurance company for the truck driver did not disclaim properly and that they were responsible to pay the $1,000,000 judgment. Despite this decision the insurance company refused to pay and appealed the ruling in this second lawsuit.
During the appeal of lawsuit number two, we started a third lawsuit against the insurance company for the truck driver. This third lawsuit was to allow us to get original judgment against the truck driver converted to be directly against the truck driver’s insurance company so we could collect the full amount from that carrier. We litigated this third lawsuit against a new law firm that specializes in these types of cases that are very rare. The lead lawyer for the insurance company swore we would never collect a penny for our client from the truck driver’s carrier. After much fighting we won this lawsuit too and now had a judgment against the truck driver’s insurance carrier. The insurance company continued to refuse to pay and appealed this decision also.
After three complete lawsuits and two appeals we hired the New York State Sheriff to go collect our client’s money. Unfortunately, this insurance carrier was a European Company and had no assets in New York.
After reading our Appellate papers the attorneys for the insurance carrier contacted us and agreed to pay JG on the judgment.