City: Wauseon, Ohio

County: Fulton County, Ohio

Date: September 16, 2010

Type: Bus / Truck Accident
 
According to the Ohio State Patrol, a semi-truck collided with a Wauseon City Schools bus September 16. The bus was transporting a girls soccer team (15 girls, plus driver) when the collision took place. One athlete was injured, and taken to St. Luke’s Hospital. No other injuries were reported. The crash is still under investigation. 

Accidents involving city school buses can invoke the doctrine of qualified immunity if the city bus driver is at fault, as I have spoken about before. If the bus driver was at fault, everyone who is filing a claim against the driver/city would first have to use their own auto and health insurance to pay medical bills, and whatever is left gets picked up by the city, including lost wages, pain and suffering, unpaid medical bills, etc.  Health insurance would not have to be repaid unless they were a self-funded plan, as I have discussed before.  These issues get complicated, and should not be dealt with in my opinion without a lawyer's involvement to some degree. 



You do not want to settle with the city only to find out that the money is really going back to your health insurance company for no reason other than the health insurance company wrongly claimed a lien or subrogation interest and you did not know what was going on. Some health insurers even try to go behind your back and get their money back directly from the party-at-fault without you even knowing about it. This can be a problem if they have no right to the money such as trying to get money back for treatment not related to the accident, or there is limited auto insurance coverage for the party-at-fault and the health insurer wants to "eat the whole pie," leaving no money to you. You would then have to sue them to get the money back they had no right to take from your settlement in the first place. Don't let health insurance and auto insurance get money from your settlement they may not be entitled to. Don't let them take money out of your pocket because you do not understand the intricacies of personal injury law. And I bet you thought that it was only the auto insurance company you had to worry about. Think again. 

If the truck is at fault, then qualified immunity does no apply and everyone just files claims with the auto insurance company for the truck company.

Fulton County, Ohio (population 42,084) had a total of 1,201 reported accidents in 2008, with 8 of those being fatal. 255 of the total reported crashes were injury crashes, resulting in a total of 391 injuries. Wauseon, Ohio (population 7,091) had a total of 142 reported accidents in 2008.


If you've been seriously injured or have lost a loved one in a Wauseon truck / car accident, call the Fulton County auto accident and wrongful death attorneys / lawyers at Chester Law Group at 1-800-218-4243 or order your FREE BOOK entitled The Insider’s Guide to Handling Ohio Accident Claims at www.ChesterLaw.com.