Where should you look to find the age of your tire?

If you look at your tire, you need to look for the letters D, O, T that will be followed by anywhere between 10 to 12 numbers after the letters D, O, T.

Those last four digits that follow D, O, T are going to give you the week and the year in which your tire was made. So let’s say it’s the second week in 2012. It would be 02012. It would be the four digits that you would see on your tire.

This is significant because a lot of people, when they go and they get replacement tires at Gerald’s or wherever it is you have your tires replaced, those tires could have been sitting there for three, four, five, six years. There’s no telling how long they’ve actually been on the shelf.

Whether you realize it or not, tires are just like anything else. If they sit around, they can dry rot and if they dry rot, then they’re more likely to explode.

If they’re more likely to explode, then your car is more likely to roll over and that can be a real issue and it can be a negligence issue on the person who installed your tire to begin with and on the manufacturer themselves. As a last thought, if the tire happens to be on your rear axle and that’s the one that actually explodes when you’re rolling down the road, that can be catastrophic because it has been show in studies that particularly on the rear axle, if you have a tire explode there, the car is likely to – the person – what you’re going to find is the person typically over corrects and then goes back the other way and then the car flips and the injuries that can result from that can be catastrophic.

If you’ve been in a single car accident, you’ve been injured, and you’re wondering what you can do about it, contact the Hartman Law Firm at (843) 300-7600 today!

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What is a Medicare set aside or open medicals as it relates to your worker’s compensation case?

Open medicals is an option that someone would pursue in a worker’s compensation case if they have been injured permanently as a result of their injury that occurred on the job.

What I mean by that is something that it’s an injury that’s going to linger forever into the future. It’s not something like a broken leg or something that will heal and then ultimately you will be fine and you can go on with your life. It’s more along the lines of maybe you’ve got a degenerative back problem that you’re going to be living with for the rest of your life that is essentially a permanent impairment.

When that sort of thing happens to you and it’s something that they have to account for as it relates to your worker’s compensation case, they can opt for something called open medicals. What that means is that when they close your worker’s compensation case and you get your final payment for whatever your injury is, they can actually “leave your medicals open” and that means that from that point forward, you will always be able to come back to the worker’s comp doctors for treatment for the injury that brought that worker’s compensation case to the forefront. 

This is an important aspect of a worker’s compensation case that the typical layman is not familiar with and it’s something that only an attorney is going to be able to pursue for you and ultimately get.

A Medicare set aside is something that has come about fairly recently as Medicare has become – well the federal government and Medicare generally has become more interested in trying to get the money that they spend on people’s medical care back.

Medicare set aside means that as it relates to your injury, your lawyer and your doctor have to anticipate what your future medical costs are going to be as far as the treatment is concerned for the injury that you sustain in your worker’s compensation case.

So you have to anticipate that as far as the entirety of that person’s lifetime. Set aside, i.e. Medicare set aside, that amount of money as part of your worker’s compensation case in some sort of trust or escrow account to be used as is necessary for ongoing treatment.

This is a secondary aspect of worker’s compensation case and it’s also something that a lawyer that’s familiar with that law is going to be able to work better simply because he’s familiar with it and he has been through the process whereas your typical layman or somebody who’s going unrepresented isn’t going to know about these things.

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The question that you’re naturally wondering at this point is, “Well, why is this important to me?” Well, the reason why it’s important to you is if you don’t have a lawyer to help you with these, that knows about these particular issues, chances are you’re not going to be asking for them and you’re not going to get them. That’s a real problem because once you close your worker’s compensation case, you’re not going to be able to go back and get a second bite at the apple.

So I would strongly encourage you, if you’ve got a worker’s compensation case that is significant and certainly has resulted in a permanent injury, you need to go and obtain representation because there are rights that you’re probably not aware of that you need to protect. 

If you have an ongoing worker’s compensation case or you have any general questions, contact the Hartman Law Firm at (843) 300-7600 today.

Why you should hate GEICO

In the context of an auto accident claim, insurance companies typically use three and sometimes four tactics when dealing with a client.

Those tactics are delay, denial and defend. What I mean by that is when you as a client contact them as a potential claimant and you’re unrepresented by an attorney, they are going to find a reason to delay the payment for your bodily injury claim by saying they didn’t get your medical records or they didn’t get the last voicemail that you left.

A lot of people have a tendency to want to call as opposed to sending letters and that’s the biggest issue that I see or they deny your claim based on liability, essentially saying that for some reason, factually speaking, they did not think that their driver was at fault or they defend. By defend, I mean that you actually have gotten a lawyer and really without basis or without reason, they insist on whether it’s a value-driven decision or whether it’s a liability-driven decision.

They make you get an attorney and they defend the lawsuit as opposed to actually paying on legitimate claims. The fourth thing that I want to talk about and a tactic that I’m starting to see is what I like to call ignoring.

When you call and you attempt to make a claim with them, this is what you can look forward to when they offer you certain options.

Example:

[Upon calling the company, the customer service auto response recording answers]

One option is “further assistance” which is what I would like is to get a customer service rep on the phone.

[Customer service auto response recording continues]

When I press zero, it essentially restarts the entire process over again and I can never actually get a customer service representative on the phone. Let’s try it again.

[Customer service auto response recording continues]

I then dial zero.

[Customer service auto response recording continues]

Now just imagine being a claimant out there and all you want to do is talk to somebody so that you get your car fixed or a rental car or tell them how you’re hurt. Do you want the fax number? Let’s dial zero again.

[Customer service auto response recording continues]

This is a tactic that is being more and more commonly used by insurance companies and the reason why they’re doing it is they want you to give up on getting your car fixed and specifically your bodily injury claim. They don’t want you calling. They don’t want to pay it and they know that if you run into these road blocks and you get frustrated enough, there’s a decent possibility that you’re just going to walk away entirely and you’re not going to call me, which is exactly what you should be doing.

If you have any questions or need help don't hesitate to contact the Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.

What Is A Guardian Ad Litem?

A guardian ad litem is a person appointed by the court in a divorce action. Usually it’s related to a child custody issue and the guardian ad litem is an objective third party that the court appoints who examines both parents and both living situations to make a determination about who is the more suitable parent as far as primary custody is concerned.

The way that they go about doing that is it’s in conjunction with the Department of Social Services obviously. They will go and they will inspect each house of either respective parent for several things.

One, it’s pretty obvious, the basic necessities. They want to see that there’s power. They want to see that there’s running water. They want to see that the house is clean. They want to see that there’s food ready and available and they want to see that it’s a stable environment that is one that’s conducive to child rearing. All of those kind of come into – they’re thrown into a pot as far as the guardian ad litem is concerned and they consider that when they’re determining who’s the person who should be primarily responsible for the child?

When it comes to who gets custody, the guardian ad litem is going to take all of the factors that we discussed in together and he’s going to make a determination about who should be the primary custodian of the child, either the mother or the father.

Historically, the court has favored that the child be with the mother and that trend continues. However, joint custody and children being placed with the father as the primary custodian is becoming more prominent in South Carolina courts.

The guardian ad litem plays a significant role because ultimately he is the arbiter as far as the judge is concerned and the judge is going to take his opinion to heart more so than even the plaintiff or the defendant because both the plaintiff and the defendant obviously they have a very colored view on how things should be because they both want the child.

The guardian ad litem is supposed to be the middle neutral, the person who essentially is taking the best interest of the child into consideration and that’s the only thing that he’s considering. In that respect, the guardian ad litem is someone that your lawyer and you need to cater to. You need to be able to present a suitable place for a child to grow up. You need to be a suitable parent and you need to be the sort of adult that a judge is willing to allow to raise a child because in family court, the best interest of the child is the governing standard.

If you would like to know more about guardian ad litem or you have any questions, please feel free to contact The Hartman Law Firm at 843-300-7600.