What If the Person Who Hit Me Was Drinking at a Bar? Often when people are involved in car crashes, everything in the immediate aftermath turns into a blur. Getting to a place of safety and securing medical help for those who need it is the primary concern. But in the chaos of a crash scene,...

To be technical, the word "litigation" is based on the intransitive verb "to litigate". According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, to litigate means "to carry on a legal contest by judicial process", or "to decide and settle in a court of law". But that doesn't tell you much about the l...

On January 9, 2019, against the backdrop of the Columbia River in the Warehouse '23 event space, a group of interested local attorneys turned out to hear Scott Staples of Schauermann Thayer Jacobs Staples & Edwards PS and local attorney Bruce Colven explore how to handle a mandatory civil arbit...

If My Car Crash Happened On a Bridge, Is it a Washington or an Oregon Case? When collisions occur on the span of the bridges over the Columbia River between Washington and Oregon the rule is that the two states share jurisdiction.  Oregon has a statute, ORS 507.020, entitled “Waters deemed Or...

A Brief History of Schauermann Thayer Would you believe our office used to be a gas station? It's true. Years before Craig Schauermann and Bill Thayer purchased the building in 1986 however, it had already been converted into office space. That was a lifetime ago—at least for the younger att...

My PIP Insurer Has Stopped Paying My Medical Bills—Now What? As we've detailed here, Personal Injury Protection (PIP) benefits are essentially health and wage loss insurance attached to your auto policy. In Washington, your auto insurer has to provide you PIP coverage unless you specifically sig...

If One's Immigration Status is Generally Not Admissible in Washington, Must a Party Answer Questions About His or Her Undocumented Status at Deposition? Short answer: Typically, not.  Given the fact that one's immigration status is generally not admissible in Washington courts, it follows t...

Do I have to pay back Health Insurance benefits from my verdict or settlement? Generally, reimbursing health insurance is required to some extent and under some circumstances, whether by the contract, state laws and regulations, or federal laws and regulations. Whether a person can lawfully av...

We've outlined the typical personal injury claim process before in a blog post you can find here. If there was a timeline done of the typical personal injury claim, the latter portion of the timeline would be the litigation phase (everything that happens after filing a lawsuit) and the final...

Insurance companies have the right under almost all automobile insurance policies to verify you’re your medical treatment is “reasonably and necessarily incurred as a result of” the collision. One way the insurance company can almost always this is by asking you to see a doctor of their choosing. This is called an “Independent Medical Exam” or an “IME”.

One of the most common reasons given by potential clients for coming to see me is that the insurance company for the person or company that hurt them offered a ridiculously, insultingly low amount to settle their claim. “I'm not looking to get rich or retire on this…but what they offered didn't...

Update: Is One's Undocumented Immigration Status Admissible at Trial in Washington Courts? Short answer: Generally, no.                    Almost four years ago now, on January 14, 2015, I published a blog entitled Immigrants, Illegal Status, and Personal Injury Law (also published in Spanish...

Do I have to pay back PIP benefits out of my settlement or verdict? Sometimes, when a case is at its end — whether that is a settlement or a jury verdict – clients think that means the case is over. To many clients, it is a sad realization that a huge part of a personal injury case is parsing ...

To see an overview of the typical personal injury claim process, click here. The following are situations in which it can be necessary to file a lawsuit. This list is not exhaustive and this list is not legal advice. To the extent you believe it is necessary for you to file a lawsuit, please...

In the law, there is a tendency to use big words. Even if the words themselves are small, legal professionals often use words that are difficult to understand. Such is the case with “burden of proof.” It means, simply, “who has to prove what and by what standard—or with how much evidence must s...

When I sit down with a potential new client, one of the important things we go over is what the case is ultimately going to cost them financially. As with almost all attorneys on personal injury and wrongful death cases, the attorney fee is going to be a percentage of the money we are able to o...

Bill Thayer of Schauermann Thayer Jacobs Staples & Edwards PS spoke as one of the presenters at a Continuing Legal Education course entitled “Ethics in Mediation" on December 6, 2018 at the Red Cross Building at Fort Vancouver.  The course was presented by the Clark County Bar Association.     ...

“Training Day” is one of my all-time favorite movies. Denzel Washington's performance was totally deserving of his Oscar win. It also gave me a line to help explain to my clients why communication with medical providers is so important, and following through with a medical treatment plan is absol...

When I meet with a potential client who's been involved in a car crash, I always ask them about their own auto insurance coverage.  Specifically, the coverages I'm most curious about are Personal Injury Protection (“PIP”) and Uninsured/Underinsured Motorist (“UIM”).  You can find helpful explanat...

Our clients and potential clients who reach out to our firm consistently tell us that they have been threatened by an adjuster working for the insurance company of the person or company who caused a car crash, slip and fall, or other injury to them.  Whether it is the adjuster telling them they w...

The short answer is yes. The long answer is somewhat more complicated, and unfortunately there is no easy way to break it down into a simple explanation. But if you are still interested despite the technical nature of where this is headed, feel free to read on.

To answer the titled question simply, a mediation is a formal and structured opportunity to resolve a lawsuit. In a typical mediation, one party sits in one room, the other party in another room, and a mediator will walk back and forth between the parties to try and settle the case. Mediators do this by building and developing a relationship of trust with both parties and then helping each party to better understand the case—the good and the bad.

If you’ve been involved in an auto collision, the other driver’s insurance company is likely going to contact you by phone within the first several days afterwards. They will likely seem quite pleasant and concerned for your well-being, especially if it’s pretty clear their insured was at fault for causing the collision. The adjuster will probably want to take a statement from you about the collision and your injuries, and they’ll want to record it. What do you tell them?

Insurance can simultaneously feel like the most expensive thing you hope you never need, and the cheapest thing you ever bought. Even though there are laws in Oregon and Washington requiring drivers to have auto insurance, it is a sad reality that there are still many drivers on the road driving uninsured.

In my representation of my clients, my goal is to try to get the adverse insurance company and its representative to see my client as more than a file on their desk or a claim number.