Joseph Fried mentioned on Twitter recently that he had an unusually busy calendar, with a string of back-to-back trials. But by last weekend that seemed to change. A Saturday tweet said, “Case settled. No trial Monday.”

On Monday morning, that more traditional type of communication, a phone call, revealed it wasn’t just one case that settled last week. It was six, including two on Friday.

Six?

“I guess the planets aligned,” said Fried, a partner at Fried Rogers Golderg. “I resolved six cases last week.”

Total value of the six settlements: $20 million. Fried said his partner, Michael Godberg, told him, “You just had an incredible year – in a week.”

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A Fulton country jury last week awarded nearly $2 million to a woman whose leg was badly fractured when her car was rear-ended by a commercial van, and added another $218,000 for the woman’s husband.

Because the woman offered to settle for $1 million almost two years ago, the final judgment includes more than $109,000 in interest, bringing the total award to almost $2.3 million.

The case illustrates what Fried Rogers Goldberg partner Michael L. Goldberg described as a noticeable trend of insurers undervaluing injuries that, while not life-threatening, result in invasive surgery and permanent damage.

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Joe Fried is a former police officer and judge with a diverse background in physics, engineering, and accident reconstruction as well psychodrama, neurolinguistics, and story-telling. While undering the technical aspects of cases is important, the key to winning, Fried emphasizes, is: “understanding what makes people tick.”

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I was recently asked about the validity of “driver exclusion” in a liability insurance policy. Many times substandard auto insurers will issue a policy to an individual but will specifically exclude certain people from driving the vehicle, such as a wife or child. Unfortunately, these exclusions are valid.

If the person who caused the wreck and injures someone is a specifically excluded driver, there will be no liability insurance available to the injured party, or “claimant.” The claimant must look to his own uninsured motorist coverage to provide coverage for the loss.

If the claimant’s insurance carrier (the uninsured motorist carrier) does not agree that the excluded driver has no coverage, then the claimant has to file suit against the excluded driver and serve the uninsured motorist carrier. Once the liability insurer refuses to provide a defense to the excluded driver, the uninsured motorist carrier will have no choice but to step in and defend the excluded driver and to admit that the driver is uninsured or risk a default judgment. With the help of an attorney, filing that claim can allow the claimant to ultimately receive coverage and compensation from his or her own uninsured motorist policy.