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[Thomas Beckett <thomas AT tbeckett.com>]

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Ruth Suehle wrote:
> My husband went to the dentist in July 2004. The dentist's office
> didn't file the claim with insurance until December 2005, so the
> insurance company rejected it because the time limit to file had
> expired. Now the dentist is taking him to small claims court to make
> him pay up. Now logically to me, this is entirely the dentist's fault
> for not filing the claim in a timely fashion. Is this an easy case of
> telling that to the court and walking away, or am I missing
> something?

It pretty much is that.  A law prof. of mine once did some research on
small claims court and found that the effectiveness of each party's
narrative had a lot to do with whether they won or lost.  The rule of
thumb is to tell a story, keep it simple, and don't bicker with the
other side.  No whining, either.

The legal angle on this is that you /relied/ on the dentist to present
your insurance claim in a timely fashion, it was a responsibility that
they took on.  If the dentist has not told you that they would present
the claim to insurance, you would have done it yourselves and the
dentist would have been paid.  It was reasonable to rely upon the
dentist to process the claim, because it was in their self-interest to
do so and get paid.

To recap:  tell a story, keep it simple, emphasize your reliance,
emphasize the reasonableness of doing so.

Good luck!  Hope you don't have to deal with Small Claims v. 2.0, appeal
to District Court.

Thomas


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Thomas A. Beckett, JD & MBA                  Business Law and Consulting
828-713-1668            <http://www.tbeckett.com>           919-824-5696
Authentication instructions: <http://www.tbeckett.com/verification.html>
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