Staged Car Accidents Cost Society Much More Than Higher Insurance Premiums
According to an article and video by Tammie Fields posted on tampabays10.com, on May 20, 2008 Rafael Grau of Davenport Florida was arrested and charged with a scheme to defraud. He and Geraldo Larracuente, also of Davenport were allegedly staging fake auto accidents for money. All of the people involved in the staged auto accidents were allegedly treated at Providence Chiropractic located at 2727 Martin Luther King Boulevard in Tampa. Insurance companies were then charged for medical treatment that was apparently unnecessary and may not have even been performed.
Insurance fraud schemes like this one are disturbing for many reasons. The most obvious are the fact that it is dishonest, illegal, and just plain wrong. Furthermore, it drives up the cost of insurance for the rest of us. However, the increased cost of insurance is just the tip of the iceburg. The hidden costs to society created by such crimes can never really be measured.
For example, as people read about this crime it reinforces stereotypes about chropractic care that are often not true. There are many hardworking honest chiropractors that provide a legitimate service to their patients. Crimes such as this one make people question the integrity of the legitimate health care providers that are truely helping people recover from real auto accident injuries.
Staged car accidents also reinforce steretypes about car accident attorneys that are not true. Every profession has dishonesty. In recent years, politicians and corporate lobbyists have used the news media and events like this one to portray the entire profession of personal injury lawyers as criminals. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of auto accident lawyers are honest hard working professionals that are trying to hold wrongdoers accountable and help injured people get financial reimbursement for their losses.
Of course the biggest cost to society from crimes such as this one takes place because of the stereotype it reinforces regarding the types of people that make personal injury auto accident claims. Like the hard working health care professionals and lawyers that try to help them, the overwhelming majority of people that make auto accident personal injury claims are honest. They have been in real accidents and have received real injuries. Crimes such as this one, however, make the people that judge them sceptical. Insurance companies offer people injured in auto accidents less money than their claims are worth because the insurance company either does not believe the person is injured or, more likely, the insurance company knows its lawyers can use events like this one to convince a jury that the person is not injured.
If you doubt that insurance companies purposely take advantage of these stereotypes then ask yourself why they spend so much money on advertisements aimed at publicizing crimes like the one above. Every ligitimate study of the subject has demonstrated that the percentage of fake injury claims is so small it is statistically insignificant. Why then do we see television commercials of fraud investigators from certain insurance companies bosting about how many millions of dollars they have saved the company by catching people faking their injuries. It is certainly not done to convince the viewer to buy that companies insurance.
The real reason such advertising is done is to reinforce the stereotype. If you doubt what I am saying, go down to the courthouse and view most any auto accident personal injury trial. You will see a carefully orchestrated show put on by the defense lawyer to convince the jury the plaintiff was not hurt in the accident. The lawyer cannot direcly accuse the plaintiff of faking unless there is real evidence of it. That is very rare. Instead the defense lawyer uses questioning about the biases of the plaintiff's treating physicians; the plaintiff's work history; the physical activities of the plainfiff before the accident; and the plaintiff's ifestyle before the accident to imply the injuries are not real or were caused by one of these things. The overwelming majority of such cases end with the jury concluding the plaintiff did not receive a permenant injury in the accident even though they did.
Scott Distasio
Tampa Auto Accident Lawyer
DISTASIO LAW FIRM
HELPING INJURED PEOPLE
888-595-0022
