92-Year-old Woman Hit By Car, Gets Sued

Rose Ramsey went 92 years without any legal trouble.

"I've never had a lawsuit in my life," Ramsey said.

But that record was shattered along with her hip and the car she was riding in while on her way to church. According to the accident report, a driver running a red light smashed into the church bound car filled with little old ladies.

"They couldn't take us out so they had to wait for the jaws of life and brought it and cut the car up," Ramsey said. "And when they took me out of the automobile they dropped my leg and even though I was unconscious I screamed, my leg my leg."

After the accident Ramsey needed months of home health care.

The crash which happened in Austin took a strange turn for Ramsey. Now she's being sued by the medical team that provided her with home health care.

"It's absolutely horrendous to think that a 92-year-old woman would become the victim twice by suffering not only serious injury in an automobile accident, but then become the victim again by being sued by her own medical provider," Ramsey's attorney Frank Daniel said.

In it's lawsuit against Ramsey, a company called The Medical Team and Custom Care Team claim she owes them thousands in past due home health care bills. But Ramsey said the company is at fault for not properly billing medicare.

However Ramsey says her biggest concern lies with State Farm.

She's filed a countersuit claiming the insurance giant should be paying her medical bills since they cover the driver who ran the red light.

An attorney for The Medical Team declined comment.

In a written statement State Farm told FOX 26 Investigates, "State Farm's policy is to pay what is owed as promptly as possible....we have no control over the length of time it takes for a claimant or their attorney to respond to offers....the fact that a claimant has medicare or any other health insurance coverage is not a factor in determining whether a claim is owed....we negotiate settlements in good faith"

"This is clearly a stand-off between State Farm and medicare," Daniel said.

Ramsey's attorney said State Farm is using a controversial Texas law to delay payment.

That statute allows insurance companies to wait and see how much everything is going to cost before they pay up, leaving accident victims like Ramsey with a stack of unpaid bills and now a lawsuit.

"Big insurance companies are now able to stand back, as they are doing in this case and delay payment on claims by saying until
we know what has actually been paid on behalf of the damaged party we are going to delay evaluating the claim," Daniel said.

And the 92-year-old wonders if the insurance company is betting that time is on it's side, not hers.

"They might be surprised because people are living longer," Ramsey said. "they're living better and they can handle life's situations better."