I was driving south on I-80 through Draper, Utah, in my 2025 Tesla. Traffic was slow. The driver behind me was on his phone. He admitted it to the state trooper at the scene. Same day, I went to the ER. I was told to get a lawyer. I did. The lawyer told me to see a chiropractor. I did that too — for four months.
After the treatment, I asked the lawyer to push the personal-injury claim through so I could replace my totaled car. From that moment, it took almost a year. In that entire year, the lawyer's office never called me once. Not one check-in. Every call, every email, every "what's going on with my case" — I made it.
The first time they finally got back to me with numbers, they said I would owe $1,700. After my own injury claim. After the at-fault driver admitted fault at the scene. The lawyer said he could try to negotiate the liens down. A few days later he emailed: he could get me $3,900. Then he emailed again — sorry, mistake, it's $2,900. That was two weeks ago. The check still hasn't come.
While the chiropractor stacked treatments — smiling at every visit, recommending one more thing, then one more — nobody on my side told me the bills were eating my settlement alive. Not the chiropractor. Not the lawyer. The first I knew about it was when the math had already happened to me.
I lost a $26,000 Tesla. I was in pain. I missed work. I now have PTSD in cars from the impact — every time someone gets too close behind me, my body remembers it before my brain does.
Final breakdown:
- Gross settlement: $15,300
- Attorney fee (33⅓%): −$4,600
- Medical lien — Elevations Chiropractic, originally $7,521:
−$5,000
- Health insurance lien — Select Health, originally $3,289:
−$2,192
- Costs: −$600
- Net to me: $2,906 — 19% of the settlement.
The driver who hit me admitted he was on his phone. After 548 days, I walked away with $2,906 — and as of right now, two weeks after that "final" number, I still haven't been paid.
The settlement amount isn't the scandal. The scandal is that I almost owed money on my own injury claim, that the people who were supposed to be on my side never warned me what was being done in my name, that I had to call them every single time to get an update on my own case, and that I came out the other side carrying PTSD nobody is paying for.