Personal Injury Law

Foreclosure Article Outlines Serious Financial Problems Traffic Accidents Can Cause

By Jeff Lowe, Esq.

As a St. Louis auto accident lawyer, I was interested to see a recent report on how attorneys can help homeowners in foreclosure. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported Nov. 30 on the practice of suing lenders who are about to foreclose for reasons the borrower considers unfair. Our firm primarily handles personal injury work rather than foreclosures, but the article started with the story of a woman who was sent into foreclosure by a personal injury she never expected. Darlene Lehman was injured on Christmas of last year in an accident that was not her fault, keeping her out of work for four months. This meant she lost income, which in turn put her behind in mortgage payments. Only with the help of an attorney did she manage to hold on to her home.

Lehman was driving a van for a hotel on Interstate 70 when the accident took place. Cars around her van began spinning out and crashing on the icy road, so she stopped her van. Unfortunately, drivers behind her didn?t or couldn?t stop, and she was rear-ended, triggering a chain reaction of rear-end accidents that shoved her van into a median. She told the newspaper that she blacked out after severe pain to the left side of her head, and eventually woke up with injuries to her head, neck and back. Ultimately, the injuries took her out of work from Christmas Day until early May, and she was not able to make mortgage payments. Together with $1,500 in foreclosure fees and attorney costs for her bank, she owed more than $5,000 she couldn?t pay. The bank had scheduled a foreclosure sale before her attorney convinced it to take an expected workers? compensation settlement as payment in the future.

This article goes into detail about the services of foreclosure attorneys as well as their problems. But as a southern Illinois car crash attorney, I want to highlight the financial problems this crash caused for Lehman. Lehman had a job and an income, but all of that was taken away in an instant by the 25-car pileup. Her injury took her out of work for several months, during which time she was not able to make an income and apparently was also unable to secure the workers? compensation that typically applies to accidents on the job. Unfortunately, this is a typical story for people who are sidelined by serious injuries not their fault. As this woman found, serious injuries create sky-high medical bills and other costs, while taking away victims? ability to earn the money they need to pay for care, let alone support themselves.

Full post as published by Missouri Injury Lawyer Blog on December 01, 2010 (boomark / email).