I recently saw the new commercial by All-State.  The scene is set in a court room just as a verdict is announced.  The defendant is a young man about the age of eighteen.  After the $100,000.00 verdict is read, the plaintiff's attorney walks over the defendant's counsel and indicates that they will begin collection immediately.  The very caring and concerned defense counsel then indicates that they "may not" have enough insurance to cover the judgment.  The ruthless plaintiff's attorney then goes on to say that he doesn't care, they know that the family has money somewhere, perhaps in the youngster's college savings. 

This commercial cannot possibly be a more disgusting misrepresentation of how it really works, and it is clearly aimed at forcing the so-called need for "tort-reform."  First of all, the defense attorney would never know if the insurance "may not" cover.  One of the first things we always ask in the beginning of a case is how much coverage there is.  Everyone knows this exact number straight from the outset.  Second, as a plaintiff's personal injury lawyer in St. Louis, if we think the verdict may exceed the insurance coverage, we will send a request to settle for the amount of the insurance coverage immediately.  However, it is often the insurance companies who refuse to pay the insurance limits, even when there is no good reason not to.  Thus, there are many occasions when we will take a case to trial and obtain an excess verdict, however, it is not to take money from the defendant personally, and I have never heard of one occasion where any plaintiff's attorney has done this.  Instead, we then sue the insurance company directly in what we call a "bad-faith" lawsuit.  Actually, it is not the injured client who sues, but the defendant who sues their insurance company.  The theory behind a bad faith lawsuit is that the insurance company refused to protect the defendant by failing to settle the case for the limits of the insurance coverage when they had a chance.  The insurance company can then be held liable for the entire verdict.  If you think that this type of thing happens just once in a blue moon, you are entirely wrong.  In fact, it happens all the time, and there is a whole industry of law and lawyers devoted to bad-faith lawsuits.  However, many times, it doesn't even have to get as far as a bad-faith lawsuit, as the insurance companies will often pay the excess verdict because the know they are liable for the bad-faith lawsuit as it is anyway, and they don't want an additional lawsuit on the books. 

Long story short, it just never happens the way this commercial makes it out to be.  Unfortunately, the plaintiff's attorneys often work individually or with small firms, and we just don't have the resources like the billion-dollar insurance industry to put out our own commercials to tell the truth.