So sorry to hear about your difficulties with the typical insurance company hijinks. The bottom line is that the attorneys in my firm are only admitted to practice law in New York and Pennsylvania so please let me know where you are located and I can try to offer you my best suggestion for how you should handle this.

Thanks, Jim
_________________________________________
James B. Reed, Esq.
NY & PA Injury & Malpractice Attorney
Ziff Law Firm, LLP
303 William St., Elmira, NY 14901
Tel. (607) 733-8866 Fax. (607) 732-6062
Toll Free 1-800-943-3529
mailto:jreed@zifflaw.com http://www.zifflaw.com

Read my N.Y. Injury Blog at http://www.NYInjuryLawBlog.com

I returned home from work to find we had received an oil delivery and the odor of oil throughout the house. I went to the basement to find our tank had leaked oil. I called our oil company and my insurance agent. My agent in turn called and reported the damage to Travelers Insurance Company.
At first the adjuster told us we were covered and they spoke to the clean up company everything was set in motion to handle the clean up. Until the adjuster returned to his office and his supervisor decided to fight the claim. We had several people out to see the damage, people hired by Travelers, all said it was a good claim and it should be paid. They sent out an engineer to take a metal sample and sent in to some place in Delaware. The result was Travelers said they do not have to pay for any type of corrosion. The engineer told us they should be paying because the tank was only 25 years old and in like new condition. We would have no way of knowing there was a problem with tank. He also told Travelers and us if Travelers was correct people would have to change the oil tanks every five years, which is impossible. What if you have Travelers and a water pipe should burst, the pipe could be in a floor, behind a wall do they still get away from paying. I am looking fro an Attorney who would like to handle this case. All the money they have spent trying to deny the claim, they could have paid for some of the claim. We are talking about a $20,000 claim. I even tried to explain to them in the beginning my husband has pulmonary fibrosis and they responded it was really not their problem, but I should send him to a hotel or some place else to live for awhile. How can I afford to do that? And why do I have insurance? Can someone help me?

Grace Matelyan
todaymom99@yahoo.com

Thanks for your input. For a list of other insurance companies to avoid, see my recent article on the 10 worst insurance companies in America.

Thanks for reading,

Adam M. Gee, Esq.

As you mention, they should make a complaint to the NYS Insurance Department, and I advised them of this right. Not that it will do any good, though. In my experience, the Insurance Department is populated by individuals sympathetic to the insurance companies, who only look to excuse the sneaky and unethical actions of the companies they are supposed to oversee.

With regards to the extent of this individual’s injuries, I said he APPEARS to have sustained only minor injuries. With your experience in the field, you know as well as I that what may start out looking like a case that will never satisfy the serious injury threshold can sometimes turn out to be quite significant. Soft tissue injuries take time to develop and gradually get worse. Our firm has handled many SIGNIFICANT cases that started out exactly this way!

You continue to raise excellent points. Thanks for contributing to the discussion!

Adam M. Gee
Personal Injury and Malpractice Attorney
Ziff, Weiermiller, Hayden & Mustico, LLP
303 William Street
Elmira, NY 14901
Phone: (607)733-8866
Fax: (607)732-6062
Email: agee@zifflaw.com
http://www.zifflaw.com

Thanks for reading,

Adam M. Gee, Esq.
Personal Injury and Malpractice Attorney
Ziff, Weiermiller, Hayden & Mustico, LLP
303 William Street
Elmira, NY 14901
Phone: (607)733-8866
Fax: (607)732-6062
Email: agee@zifflaw.com
http://www.zifflaw.com

We retained Bruce Roberts of Roberts & Roberts. They came highly recommended. Bruce had some tests run on her and then she was put into physical therapy. She has not improved. We feel, that Bruce feels, that because Kristi has had Fibro Myalgia that she will not receive much of a settlement, even though the doctors are saying that some of injuries were caused by the wreck and the wreck accelerated others. We feel that he believes her part would only be about two or three thousand dollars. This concerns us. We feel that Bruce is hesitant about Tyler, Texas jurors. We feel that he may be giving up before we even start fighting for my wife’s well being. We know that we are looking at treatment for her for the rest of her life. We feel that the wreck took many valuable years away from us.

Before the wreck, my wife cleaned our home. She used the vacuum cleaner, washed clothes and ironed some of them, washed out bath tubs, cooked, shopped, etc. Now if she needs a gallon of milk out of the refrigerator she has to ask me to come and get it. I mop the floors, cook most of the time, shop, and do most of the things she used do. She even needs a cane on her bad days.

Oh, and please do not get us wrong. We believe that Bruce is one heck of a nice fellow and a very sincere one. We just want to make sure that we are exercising all of our options.

We do not know if this letter will do any good, but we certainly wanted to try and get another opinion about our case. We have heard that your firm was probably the best in the country on these matters.

The case is now settled and we received a whopping $4300! The company was Allstate.