Subrogation is a term that's well-known in legal and insurance circles but often not by the policyholders who employ them. If this term has come up when dealing with your insurance agent or a legal proceeding, it would be in your benefit to know an overview of the process. The more information you have, the more likely relevant proceedings will work out favorably.
Every insurance policy you hold is an assurance that, if something bad occurs, the company that insures the policy will make good in a timely fashion. If you get hurt at work, for example, your company's workers compensation agrees to pay for medical services. Employment lawyers handle the details; you just get fixed up.
But since ascertaining who is financially responsible for services or repairs is regularly a time-consuming affair – and delay in some cases compounds the damage to the policyholder – insurance firms often decide to pay up front and assign blame afterward. They then need a way to recover the costs if, ultimately, they weren't actually responsible for the payout.
Let's Look at an Example
You are in a highway accident. Another car crashed into yours. Police are called, you exchange insurance details, and you go on your way. You have comprehensive insurance and file a repair claim. Later police tell the insurance companies that the other driver was entirely to blame and her insurance should have paid for the repair of your auto. How does your company get its money back?
How Does Subrogation Work?
This is where subrogation comes in. It is the way that an insurance company uses to claim reimbursement 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. Under ordinary circumstances, only you can sue for damages to your person or property. But under subrogation law, your insurance company is extended some of your rights in exchange for having taken care of the damages. It can go after the money that was originally due to you, because it has covered the amount already.
Why Does This Matter to Me?
For one thing, if you have a deductible, your insurance company wasn't the only one who had to pay. In a $10,000 accident with a $1,000 deductible, you have a stake in the outcome as well – to be precise, $1,000. If your insurer is timid on any subrogation case it might not win, it might choose to recoup its expenses by raising your premiums and call it a day. On the other hand, if it has a capable legal team and pursues those cases efficiently, it is acting both in its own interests and in yours. If all $10,000 is recovered, you will get your full thousand-dollar deductible back. If it recovers half (for instance, in a case where you are found 50 percent responsible), you'll typically get $500 back, based on the laws in most states.
Additionally, if the total loss of an accident is over your maximum coverage amount, you may have had to pay the difference. If your insurance company or its property damage lawyers, such as immigration defense attorney South Jordon UT, successfully press a subrogation case, it will recover your losses in addition to its own.
All insurance agencies are not the same. When comparing, it's worth weighing the reputations of competing firms to evaluate if they pursue winnable subrogation claims; if they resolve those claims fast; if they keep their clients updated as the case continues; and if they then process successfully won reimbursements right away so that you can get your losses 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 profit margin by raising your premiums, you'll feel the sting later.