GALVESTON - An area resident who sued her insurance company for not covering injuries she sustained in a 2009 one-vehicle accident at a Houston high school has submitted a motion to retain into her lawsuit, recent court records show.
Emy Deguia's three-page motion was filed May 31 before the Galveston County 10th District Court after Judge Kerry L. Neves issued an order setting the case for dismissal for want of prosecution.
Deguia explains in her suit from late February that Allstate Property and Casualty Insurance Co. denied her underinsured motorist coverage after the subject event at Clear Lake High School on Feb. 26, 2009, inflicted “severe neck injuries and causing irreparable damage to her vocal cords.”
Deguia was driving a vehicle manufactured by Deere & Co. on school property during a softball tournament when "she struck a cable/wire that was attached to two stationary objects on the roadway," which reportedly resulted in a complete tracheal transection at the level of the cricoid cartilage and near total transection of the esophagus.
She further shows that she received inpatient hospital care for almost a month and outpatient care for more than two years afterwards and is no longer able to speak nor pursue her coaching and athletic trainer career.
Deguia notified Allstate about the accident as well as fully complied with all of the conditions of her policy, but she was not paid the underinsured motorist benefits as called for by said policy, the original petition says.
AllState did not provide an original answer to the allegations.
The motion states that the plaintiff's attorney, Charles Peckham of Peckham PLLC in Houston, "have been attempting to resolve this matter prior to service."
It insists the plaintiff's counsel's failure to appear at a May 23 status conference was "inadvertent and was due to a mistake and was not due to conscious indifference."
Case No. 13-CV-295
Accident victim's motion to retain says attorney's failure to appear at status conference a mistake
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