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Can you get hearing loss from a car accident?

8/22/2014

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Can you get an ear injury from a car accident? Yes you can. My name is Robert Mansour and I'm a personal injury attorney in the Los Angeles area. This free video today addresses that very issue.

It is a rare but possible injury from a car accident to have an ear injury. Most of the time people associate ear injuries with people listening to loud music. They play in a rock band. They work construction. They're handling a jackhammer, something like that, where there's a lot of loud noise and that might affect the ear.

That's true. Sometimes that can be true. But, an actual car accident can also cause an ear injury as well. You see, what could happen is there could be damage to the structures inside the ear as the result of trauma from the accident such as hitting your head against something, or perhaps the airbags deploying and hitting the side of your head. Sometimes the whiplash effect is so severe, especially in very dramatic accidents, that that can also cause damage to the inside of your ear.

Sometimes the ear injury is actually related to a jaw injury. There's a condition known as TMJ which affects the jaw portion of somebody's face here. The jaw injury can affect the nerves in the ear which can affect the hearing.

The outer ear captures sound and sends it to the middle ear and then from the middle ear to the inner ear. There are structures inside your ear that if they are damaged can cause a problem. There are three little bones in there - the hammer, the anvil, and the stirrup - which are located inside your ear. If they get damaged, your hearing can be affected.

Also, if there is damage inside your ear there could be fluid that is leaking in there, for lack of a better term, and that can affect your balance. In fact, it is very well known that our ears have a lot to do with our sense of balance. If there is a leaking situation going on in there due to damage to the cochlea or otherwise you could have a balance issue in your ear. If you're noticing a sense of balance problem you may want to go to an ear, nose, and throat doctor and make sure that it's not an ear problem.

The other thing that clients also report, especially in loud accidents where there's a loud crash, is something called tinnitus which is a ringing sensation in the ear that they hear, as if they've been to a rock concert and you continue hearing that sound in your ear. Well, most people with healthy ears, that sound dissipates over time. By the next day you're usually okay. But, for people with an ear injury they hear that ringing all the time. It very much affects them.

If you have hearing loss you really need to see an audiologist. This is a person who can test your hearing and make sure that it's okay or if there are any deficits to your hearing. Also, you want to go see an ENT - ear, nose, and throat doctor, because those doctors specialize in those kinds of injuries.

You also want to make sure you act early. You don't want to bring up the ear issue several weeks or months later. Because the insurance adjuster for the responsible party is not going to believe that your ear injury is related to the accident if you bring it up weeks later. So, if the issue is a problem, make sure you mention it right away - right when you notice the problem. If you're going to the doctor the day after the accident saying you know, I have some ringing in my ear, I don't know what the problem is.

Or, one of my clients recently got involved in such a severe car accident that he has appreciable hearing loss in both ears, 50% in one ear, 30% hearing loss in the other ear, so much so that they had to get him hearing aids. Unfortunately, his condition is permanent, and he's going to have to wear hearing aids for the rest of his life. He never had hearing problems before the accident. He reported them in a timely fashion, and the doctors believe that it's most likely than not from the car accident.

Hearing aids can be very expensive, and they have to be replaced every few years. They have to always have batteries. It's just kind of a thing that enhances your hearing, but my client tells me that it sounds like the sound is digitized. It's not quite the organic sound that he was used to hearing before he had the hearing loss.

He also noticed the problem because when people in the family would try to talk to him, his wife, his friends, he couldn't hear them very well. He kept saying what, huh. Then, when he watches his television he has to put it up all the way to almost the highest volume in an effort to hear television. That's when he noticed that things were very different after the accident. He noticed it within 48 hours and reported it to his doctors. That's really the key, acting quickly, reporting the hearing loss quickly, reporting the tinnitus or the ringing in the ear quickly.

So, yes, it is possible to have a hearing injury, an ear injury, from a car accident which can affect your balance, can affect your hearing. My name is Robert Mansour. If you want to learn more, please visit my website at valencialawyer.com. Or, call my office at (661) 414-7100. Thank you very much

Renting a car after a car accident

8/8/2014

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello, this is Robert Mansour, and I wanted to make a brief video today about renting a car after your car accident. Let's say you get into a car accident. You have several options. You can rent a car and have your insurance company pay for the rental if your insurance company provides you with rental car insurance. Now, don't assume that insurance pays for that. You've got to call them first and go through them.

I would also recommend against going and renting a car first, and then expecting your insurance company to repay you later. Here's the deal, you go and you rent a car for $35 a day, $40 a day, $50 a day, and then you turn in the bill. Then your insurance company says, "Well, we only pay for $25 a day. And we only pay for a certain number of days, and you've exceeded that. Therefore, you're on the hook for the rest." So, be careful. You can also have the responsible party's insurance company rent you a car. I would do the same thing. Go through them. Most of these insurance companies have arrangements with the rental car companies at a prorated, or a discounted rate, I should say.

You usually want to go through the insurance company, have them arrange for the rental car directly or have the rental car company arrange directly with the insurance company. Do not pay out of your pocket. Also, be very careful. If you rent a car that's too expensive, the insurance company may give you a hard time about that. Also, if you rent a car for too long, without any substantiation, they also may have a hard time with that. I recently had a case where my client's repair was taking a very long time. There was a lot of parts that needed to be ordered, and the repair shop had to keep calling the insurance company to explain to them why they are running into problems. So, the insurance company agreed to keep extending the rental.

Rental car issues can be very, very thorny. The biggest problems I see is when clients rent the vehicle for far too long, rent it on their own without informing the insurance company, and expecting to just simply be repaid, or renting a car that is too expensive. Anything that is over $25-$30 a day, you're going to run into a problem with the insurance company. They generally don't want to pay more than that, which is why I recommend going directly to the insurance company and having them arrange for the rental. That way it's between the insurance company and the rental car company and not you. You're just there to pick up the keys and turn in the keys. I hope this helps you with the rental car issue, and if you have any questions about this, please feel free to contact my office. Thank you very much.

Call (661) 414-7100 for help with your personal injury case today.

Understanding the benefits of Medical Payments Coverage

8/1/2014

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: Hello everybody this is Robert Mansour and I wanted to make a brief video today about the issue of medical payments coverage. Medical payments coverage is something that a lot of people have under their insurance policy, and they're not even aware of it. Your auto insurance policy may have some coverage for you called medically payments coverage, or MPC. And what that means is they basically serve as a health insurance company for you.

So, let's say you don't have health insurance. If you have medical payments coverage under your auto insurance policy, they might be able to pay for your health care coverage, or your health care needs after an auto accident. Now, it's important to know what the limits are of your medically payments coverage. So, for example you, might have $2,000 available to you or $50,000 available to you. You need to make sure, number one, that you have it available. And number two you have to know what the limits are. In some cases, I've seen client with $25,000 of medical payments coverage available to them, and the nice thing about this is you can get your health care providers paid quickly.

Some of the health care providers don't understand personal injury cases and they don't want to work on a lien, for example. They don't want to defer their payment or late on in the case, they want to get paid now. And, if you don't have health care insurance, it might be good to use your medical payments coverage. In some cases, it might be good to use your medical payments coverage. In some cases the medical payments coverage will only pay after you've exhausted your health care coverage. So, if you use your health care coverage first, and then you have some money left over that you have to get paid, some bills, you can use your medical payments coverage at that point.

The other thing is they may want you to exhaust your health insurance coverage first, your health care coverage options, or at least demonstrate that you don't have health care before the medical payments coverage kicks in. In many cases, and I would say in most cases, the insurance company has the right to reimburse them of their medical payments.

So, let's say that you recover money from the party at fault. You probably have to repay your insurance company for the medical company they advanced on your behalf. So, it's, not necessarily a freebie. So, let's say that the insurance companies pays $5,000 to the doctors on your behalf under your medical payments coverage. If you recover money from the other party – let’s say you recover $10,000 - you have to repay your insurance company for the medical payments coverage that they extended for you. Now, that is in most cases a contractual obligation that many clients aren't even aware of.

So, make sure you talk to your lawyer about your medical payments coverage, whether or not it's even going to be available for you, and also make sure you discuss the right of reimbursement that most insurance companies have when it comes to the medical payments coverage provision. If you don't have medical payments coverage, talk to your insurance professional and see if it would be appropriate for you. In most cases, it's not very expensive and it can be very helpful if you have a personal injury case. Thank you very much for watching this video, I hope you found it helpful.

Call (661) 414-7100 for help with your personal injury matter.