Texas Federal Court Overturns Ban on Chiropractors Contacting Car Accident Victims
Last year, our Texas Legislature passes a new law that prohibited medical professionals from contacting people who have been injured in an accident for at least 30 days after the accident. The law was aimed at a few unscrupulous chiropractors who would call and mislead people who had been injured in car wrecks. Usually, the marketers, as they are called, working on behalf of the chiros would obtain the information from the publically available crash reports completed by the local police department. The marketers would then call the injury victims and mislead them that the insurance company had authorized a medical visit.
A chiropractor from Houston filed a federal lawsuit challenging the new law and on Friday, a federal judge from Austin overturned the law saying the law violated the chiropractor’s right to free speech. The Texas Attorney General’s office has 30 day to decide if it wants to appeal this ruling. I certainly hope the AG’s office files an appeal, as this law seems to me to be a reasonable restriction on free speech. After all, it is done to protect the consumers from this misleading conduct while they recover or possible grieve the loss of a loved one.
On a related topic, The Texas Department of Public Safety recently enacted a change in the way crash reports are written in order to address this issue. No longer are phone numbers included on the accident reports. While this is a small deterrent, it has caused some marketers to resort to going to the home of the accident victims. While that makes the marketers’ job harder, ultimately it makes the contact more invasive.
I think the best way to handle this is to make the crash reports unavailable to anyone accept the people involved in the accident. That way, the reports could never get into the marketers hands and the phone calls (or door knocks) could never happen. Of course, there is always the possibility of someone selling the reports out the back door of the police station, but that is a whole different problem.
Commentary by Fort Worth Injury Lawyer Mark A. Anderson, who can be contacted at 817-294-1900 or through his website at www.maafirm.com.
Comments
Accident reports are generated by police that are paid salaries by tax payers. Therefore, your contention that their reports remain confidential to only a privelged few would bypass the public portion of public service they are intrusted to perform with a bit of transparency.
As a medical professional, I have seen doctor/attorney practices that educates the potential patient how to manipulate the system for nothing but financial gain. This business of personal injury is at best a waste of insurance perimium dollars that the attorney and doctor share the larger portion of, not the patient themselves.
As such, this is not an isolated chiropractor thing, yet they are easy targets by legislatures, as medical doctors have no superior treatment to soft tissue injuries that spinal manipulation, and the injured would be denied a valid service (if done ethically and not for material gain). If there were a law preventing the use of an attorney for a period of say 6 months, those involved with accidents would be more likely to look for the most cost effective solution (likely chiropractic treatment)to their soft tissue injuries, not the easiest path to a large settlement which attorneys assist.
Also, soft tissue injuries as such heal the most in the first 30 days. If treatment is delayed by legislation, who will ultimately bear the burden of chronic injury as a result? Medical insurance would bear the burden and auto insurers would be let off the proverbial hook, as the insurance lobby hoped for.
Posted by: Robert Hagood | May 11, 2010 9:06 PM