Subrogation is a term that's well-known in insurance and legal circles but often not by the policyholders who hire them. If this term has come up when dealing with your insurance agent or a legal proceeding, it would be in your self-interest to know the steps of the process. The more knowledgeable you are about it, the more likely it is that an insurance lawsuit will work out in your favor.
Every insurance policy you hold is a commitment that, if something bad occurs, the insurer of the policy will make restitutions in a timely manner. If you get injured while you're on the clock, for instance, your employer's workers compensation insurance pays out for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.
But since determining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is sometimes a heavily involved affair – and time spent waiting in some cases increases the damage to the victim – insurance firms often opt to pay up front and assign blame afterward. They then need a mechanism to recoup the costs if, ultimately, they weren't actually responsible for the expense.
Can You Give an Example?
You head to the hospital with a sliced-open finger. You hand the receptionist your medical insurance card and she takes down your policy information. You get stitches and your insurer gets a bill for the services. But on the following afternoon, when you arrive at your workplace – where the injury occurred – you are given workers compensation forms to file. Your workers comp policy is actually responsible for the hospital trip, not your medical insurance. It has a vested interest in getting that money back in some way.
How Subrogation Works
This is where subrogation comes in. It is the process that an insurance company uses to claim payment when it pays out a claim that turned out not to be its responsibility. Some companies have in-house property damage lawyers and personal injury attorneys, or a department dedicated to subrogation; others contract with a law firm. Usually, only you can sue for damages done to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurer is considered to have some of your rights in exchange for making good on the damages. It can go after the money originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.
Why Does This Matter to Me?
For a start, if your insurance policy stipulated a deductible, your insurer wasn't the only one who had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you lost some money too – to the tune of $1,000. If your insurer is timid on any subrogation case it might not win, it might choose to get back its expenses by ballooning your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a knowledgeable legal team and goes after those cases aggressively, it is doing you a favor as well as itself. If all ten grand is recovered, you will get your full thousand-dollar deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found one-half to blame), you'll typically get half your deductible back, depending on your state laws.
In addition, if the total expense of an accident is more than your maximum coverage amount, you may have had to pay the difference, which can be extremely spendy. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as personal injury attorney Mableton GA, pursue subrogation and succeeds, it will recover your expenses in addition to its own.
All insurers are not the same. When shopping around, it's worth measuring the records of competing companies to find out whether they pursue legitimate subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims fast; if they keep their policyholders informed as the case goes on; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements quickly so that you can get your deductible back and move on with your life. If, instead, an insurer has a reputation of paying out claims that aren't its responsibility and then protecting its bottom line by raising your premiums, you'll feel the sting later.