QUESTION
Do dual roles as escrow agent and attorney during car insurance settlement have to be disclosed?
Asked on Aug 05th, 2014 on Insurance - Florida
More details to this question:
We recently settled a claim through our lawyer with our car insurance company. One transaction for the hospital bill was excluded since we wanted to dispute the bill, our lawyer decided to leave the money in her trust account. Now she claims that since the 2 parties can not reach an agreement (us and the hospital) she wants to interplead and charge us additional money. We were under the assumption that the lawyer we hired is working for us. If we understand it correctly for her to interplead means that she has no clue who the money is owed to, therefore she takes the ball and leaves (it up to the court). Do lawyers in Florida have a requirement to inform their clients about the potential conflict of interest when they take the dual role of lawyer and escrow agent? Had we known this we would not have settled to make sure that the lawyer is not getting paid until the hospital bill dispute was resolved. At least then our lawyer would have had an incentive to help us come to an agreement.
1 ANSWER
Consumer Debt Collector Harassment & Abuse Attorney serving Tampa, FL
Partner at
Tischhauser Law Group
2 Awards
Negotiation of your contractual obligations for medical bills is typically a courtesy not an obligation by the PI lawyer in most instances. Trying to hold a lawyers attorney's fees hostage unless they provide other services at thier expense is simply wrong, end of that discussion. The part about "us coming to an agreement" I assume you mean, someone OTHER than you, as you could easily agree to pay the hospital bills for the service they provided. If what you meant was, FORCE the hopsital to agree with your position and take less than they will agree to for the services they already provided, well......now you are expectingsomething that no lawyer can typcally deliver. There is no "dual role" and they are not your "escrow agent" like a real estate deal. If there is a dispute over entitlement to the money, usually associated with some form of lien claim, the proper procedure according to the Florida Bar is to interplead the money, allowing you and the hospital to fight over the entititlement in court. It is not the lawyers job to resolve who is right or wrong or determine who is owed the money, if the disputing parties wont agree, but only to protect both interests adequately.
Answered on Aug 08th, 2014 at 2:21 PM
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