Collateral Sources: Should You Care What They Are?

If you have an accident with injuries, before you ever get to your injury trial, it is likely that some of your medical expenses have been covered by other sources, known as collateral sources. These are things like insurance or Medicare, which pay some of your medical bills after an accident.

How Much Does the Jury Compensate You?

So, the question is, if your medical bills are, let’s say for example, $50,000, and insurance has paid $25,000, how much are you owed by the Defendant, assuming the jury finds the Defendant negligent, for those medical expenses?

Do they pay you the full $50,000, regardless of how much any collateral source has paid towards those bills, or do they just owe you the $25,000 that the collateral sources such as insurance, did not pay?

The Old and New Law

It used to be that the jury had to give you the entirety of your medical bills–in this case, the full $50,000–and the jury was prohibited from ever hearing of or finding out that you were paid any amount by insurance. The jury simply had to consider your entire medical bill, without considering how much insurance paid, and how much was still outstanding.

But under the guise of “tort reform” passed by the state in 2023, this rule has changed. Now the jury can hear, and consider, the amount of your medical bills and expenses when considering how much to award you for past medical expenses.

This ends up reducing the total amount of your recovery–if the jury reduces what insurance paid on your behalf for medical bills, the jury award as a whole will be reduced.

Rights of Subrogation

But it isn’t even that simple, because if any collateral source has a subrogation right–that is, they are entitled to be paid back from your verdict the amount they paid towards your medical bills and expenses–then the jury can award you the amount of your medical bills that insurance is going to ask to be paid back.

Same Case Different Verdicts

And the problem is that every source that pays medical bills on your behalf–say, private health insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, or car insurance–has different rules and laws on how much they can ask to be paid back. That practically means that two injury victims with the exact same medical expenses, may be awarded different amounts, depending on what source they used.

If Victim #1 used sources that all can legally ask to be paid back, the jury would award that victim 100% of his or her medical expenses. But if Victim #2 used sources that have no right to ask for repayment, Victim #2’s verdict will be reduced by the amount those sources have paid.

This means that after your trial is over there still may be a lot of hearings, to determine how much of the verdict will be reduced by the collateral source payments.

Your injury trial isn’t over until every issue has been resolved. We can help. Schedule a consultation with our Tampa personal injury lawyers at Barbas, Nunez, Sanders, Butler & Hovsepian today to discuss your injury case.

Source:

flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/0768.76