The Bad-Hands People

ick Bruns, possessing a weary face and an unruly shock of dark hair, exudes the kind of devil-may-care attitude of a man who's succeeded in his chosen profession, little concerned anymore with the quotidian scramble to make a buck. You might say that suing United Auto has become something of a challenge to him.

He's been practicing chiropractic medicine in Fort Lauderdale for about 25 years, currently out of two converted bungalows a few blocks south of the New River near Federal Highway. Hanging on a wall near his desk is a glass case holding Ronald Reagan memorabilia, including a Dodgers shirt signed by "The Gipper." Defeated in a run for a Broward County Commissioner's seat in 2004, he now expresses disappointment in both political parties. He reserves his real disgust, however, for United Auto.

Colby Katz

Regina Jordan's three-car crash involved a police squad car and left her hand permanently damaged. United Auto suspected fraud, naturally.

Wyatt Olson

A collection agency is hounding Frank Morales over hospital bills United Auto won't pay.

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"In all my years of practice, I have never received a penny from United without suing," Bruns says during an interview in early August. "I have five lawsuits going right now against them. I've probably had 15 total."

One of those active suits involves Gibbons, who came to him during her sharp, post-accident learning curve about United. She recalls: "Dr. Bruns said, 'We'll take a look at you, and if it's really bad, we'll do something. '" She had a herniated disc in her neck as the result of whiplash.

"I never stayed away from work," says Gibbons, who commuted by bus to work until the other driver's insurance company ponied up a whopping $700 to replace her totaled Ford. "I live alone. I can't afford not to work. I just suck it up and take my muscle relaxers and do what I can. I'm not a crybaby."

Some might call Gibbons a real fighter. Or maybe a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, a woman struggling to remain afloat in the wake of a bad, bad night out.

But to United Auto, Sue Gibbons is a fraud, just as, the company contends, the vast majority of its clients who make accident claims are.

"Why go through all that trouble?" Gibbons posits. "First of all, you take an hour or two off your job, drive to therapy, drive back. I have to have all these things in my neck twisted and turned. That accident was not fun."

Gibbons epitomizes the average United policyholder who attempts to make a claim, Bruns says. "She's paid her premiums," he continues. "She gets into an accident, not her fault. She goes to physicians, and as soon as they find out she has United as a carrier, they tell her they don't take that insurance, which makes her literally uninsured."

United notified Gibbons that she would have to undergo an independent medical examination, or IME, by a chiropractor chosen by the insurance company. She met with the chiropractor about two months after the accident and gave him copies of her x-rays and MRI tests.

"The first doctor didn't even read it," she recalls. "He tested my reflexes in my leg and foot. He asked me to turn my neck this way and that way." He then told her he was going to review her file. "Someone called his name, and two seconds later he handed me back the folder." She shakes her head and laughs incredulously. "It takes more than two seconds to read my file!"

A second doctor took a more hands-on approach. "He takes my neck and wrings it around," she says. "After they made their report, they sent Dr. Bruns paperwork stating there was nothing wrong with me. They didn't even ask me any questions, so how would they know? They did nothing."

United has paid nothing on the claim and provided neither Bruns nor Gibbons with any reasons for the delay or denial.

hen no-fault insurance was instituted by the Florida Legislature in 1972, it was supposed to end the adversarial approach to processing injury claims. Instead of arguing over fault, medical bills would be paid by your own insurer regardless of who caused the accident. All drivers were required to purchase a PIP policy.

As Miami-Dade Judge Charles Edelstein recently described no-fault's raison d'être: "The idea behind PIP was to get medical bills paid promptly so that there would be a pool of providers who would render medical services to people without medical insurance or the personal ability to pay. Since over 45 million Americans have no health insurance and many more millions have policies with big deductibles and limited coverage, and since many of them live in Florida, without PIP, it's either no medical care or at the county hospital at taxpayer expense."

Ten grand these days, of course, isn't much, when it can be eaten up by an ambulance run, a one-night hospital stay, a specialist's examination, and a few tests. Thus, many drivers take out additional insurance to provide medical coverage for themselves, their passengers, or others who might be injured during a collision. But that coverage adds hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to premiums, and many low-income drivers take the minimum to get on the road: PIP (plus a small amount of property damage coverage).