EP 27: Takeaways - Scott Rodriguez & Investigating Claims

Hi, and welcome back to catastrophic comeback. I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes about my three takeaways from my conversation with Scott Rodriguez. If you'll remember, Scott is a former law enforcement officer and currently an investigator with Speex law firm. He talked about his approach to investigating catastrophic accidents. He talked about his experience as a law enforcement officer and how that helps them. The first thing that I thought was really interesting about what he said was he talked about why coverage and investigating and finding coverage was so important. And and, and the reason is because if a person has $50,000 a day, if a driver has $50,000 in coverage, and that driver causes a million dollars in damage to somebody else, then the all his insurance company or her insurance company ever has to pay is the $50,000 of insurance covers that they purchased. So that person goes out and hires in in Bhasin insurance policy for $50,000 and then causes a million dollars in damage, there is that deficit, the difference between that 50 And, and the million is just there's no place to recover it. And so that's why finding this coverage becomes so important finding if the person if there's a resident relative, and if there's another policy funded, if there's an umbrella policy funding, if there's a work policy, or if there's some other basis for recovery beyond the obvious driver of the other vehicle, it becomes so very important. And he talked about that, and how he might go about pursuing that. And that leads to the second thing I thought that was interesting is, is in his investigations here. Because traditionally, we think of in Providence, I mean, a an investigator in this context, you know, we all think of an investigator on there might be going out and talking to witnesses and taking pictures and that sort of thing. And that's a big part of it. But he said a lot of his investigation was digital, it typically takes place on a computer, where he does Computer Research, and he does an electronic investigation to, to go out and gather and preserve and document different different parts of the case that are important, whether it's coverage or even fact, evidence. So I thought that was interesting. The third thing that I thought was really interesting about what he said was how important it is in an after a catastrophic accident, to to get involved quickly in an in as soon after the accident as possible, because you may need to preserve that evidence before it's destroyed, preserve that evidence before it's eliminated in or taped over. And he talked about the need. And what we do in those cases is send out a spoliation letter as quickly as we possibly can. And the spoliation letter is intended to put the other side on notice, hey, do not, you know preserve this evidence, go get these videotapes GO, GO preserve these photographic evidence so that we so that we can access this later because and the reason that's important is because, you know, these videos get taped over if there is any kind of video evidence from from the site or from a neighboring site, or from an individual who might have been nearby, then these these things have a way of getting erased or deleted or taped over. And especially as the resolution improves, even though the storage capacity may improve as well. These items have a way of getting lost or destroyed. And we want to get out and preserve those because they can be the difference between winning and losing. So I thought that was really important. Those were really important things that Scott said. Hope that's helpful. Thank you for joining us.

Hi, and welcome back to catastrophic comeback. I'd like to talk to you for a few minutes about my three takeaways from my conversation with Scott Rodriguez. If you'll remember, Scott is a former law enforcement officer and currently an investigator with Speex law firm. He talked about his approach to investigating catastrophic accidents. He talked about his experience as a law enforcement officer and how that helps them. The first thing that I thought was really interesting about what he said was he talked about why coverage and investigating and finding coverage was so important. And and, and the reason is because if a person has $50,000 a day, if a driver has $50,000 in coverage, and that driver causes a million dollars in damage to somebody else, then the all his insurance company or her insurance company ever has to pay is the $50,000 of insurance covers that they purchased. So that person goes out and hires in in Bhasin insurance policy for $50,000 and then causes a million dollars in damage, there is that deficit, the difference between that 50 And, and the million is just there's no place to recover it. And so that's why finding this coverage becomes so important finding if the person if there's a resident relative, and if there's another policy funded, if there's an umbrella policy funding, if there's a work policy, or if there's some other basis for recovery beyond the obvious driver of the other vehicle, it becomes so very important. And he talked about that, and how he might go about pursuing that. And that leads to the second thing I thought that was interesting is, is in his investigations here. Because traditionally, we think of in Providence, I mean, a an investigator in this context, you know, we all think of an investigator on there might be going out and talking to witnesses and taking pictures and that sort of thing. And that's a big part of it. But he said a lot of his investigation was digital, it typically takes place on a computer, where he does Computer Research, and he does an electronic investigation to, to go out and gather and preserve and document different different parts of the case that are important, whether it's coverage or even fact, evidence. So I thought that was interesting. The third thing that I thought was really interesting about what he said was how important it is in an after a catastrophic accident, to to get involved quickly in an in as soon after the accident as possible, because you may need to preserve that evidence before it's destroyed, preserve that evidence before it's eliminated in or taped over. And he talked about the need. And what we do in those cases is send out a spoliation letter as quickly as we possibly can. And the spoliation letter is intended to put the other side on notice, hey, do not, you know preserve this evidence, go get these videotapes GO, GO preserve these photographic evidence so that we so that we can access this later because and the reason that's important is because, you know, these videos get taped over if there is any kind of video evidence from from the site or from a neighboring site, or from an individual who might have been nearby, then these these things have a way of getting erased or deleted or taped over. And especially as the resolution improves, even though the storage capacity may improve as well. These items have a way of getting lost or destroyed. And we want to get out and preserve those because they can be the difference between winning and losing. So I thought that was really important. Those were really important things that Scott said. Hope that's helpful. Thank you for joining us.