Sometimes personal injury cases take on a life of their own. The liability is not disputed, or the injuries are obvious and serious, or the insurance coverage is ample, but not so huge that insurers can drag their feet.
My client J’s case was such a case.
At first glance, it appeared not to be an exciting kind of case. My client was older, 81. And while she was hit hard by the other vehicle, her injuries were not obvious or serious at first analysis. And I had no idea what type of insurance liability limits existed.
Then things began
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Lawyer Referrals
If you’ve been conscious for the last few decades, you have undoubtedly been bombarded with (and are undoubtedly sick of) the lawyer ads that jump out of your television, attack you in your car from billboards, and assault you on your electronic devices.
Needless to say, especially in areas of practice where the lawyers try to reach consumers directly, such as personal injury, workers’ compensation, medical malpractice, bankruptcy, mass torts, and criminal and traffic offenses, these ads are ubiquitous.
And annoying.
But since the 1970s, they’ve been legal. For my entire legal career, which began in 1990, lawyer advertisements have
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A Personal Injury Case in Two Parts
It’s been a while since I have written about topical case results and resolutions. Thank you for waiting patiently while I worked on a rather involved case.
At first glance, it’s a simple case; a woman, stopped for a red light, was rear-ended by someone who failed to stop for a red light. Her car was heavily damaged, and she was injured.
To many of you regular readers, this sounds like a “snoozefest”. Nothing exciting happening here.
Except that my client is 81, and before the crash she’d had a spinal stimulator surgically implanted to keep her back pain under
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First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All The Lawyers
The famous quote “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,” is from Shakespeare’s play, Henry VI, Part II. While not meant literally in the context of a rebellion, it alludes to getting rid of the legal system and established order of society.
Like us or not, we lawyers, judges, and other folks who comprise the legal system in this country, are responsible for order, predictability, protection of rights, and the functioning of our society.
So why are lawyers under attack lately?
Trump Versus the Legal System
Whatever your thoughts about President Trump, there is no doubt his
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OMG…My Insurance Went Up!
If you own a car, a condo, a house, or anything else that you have insured, you undoubtedly noticed your bill got a LOT larger recently. You probably have two questions:
1) Why?
2) What can I do about it?
The Whys
Insurance premiums increase (they almost never decrease!) because the entire insurance industry is based upon risk. If an insurer is more likely to face claims, or higher amounts of claims, it will protect itself by raising premiums.
So what in the world is going on to cause such stark increases? A lot of things.
A recent article in
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Six Months a Laboratory Rat
You may be wondering, “why is he still writing about his darn shoulder surgery?”
Hey, it’s my blog and my shoulder, so I’m allowed to write about what I want.
In all seriousness, I have a reason for writing one more time about all of this. By the time you read this, I will have met with my surgeon for the six-month post-operative appointment. The only reason this appointment exists at all is because I was the recipient of an allograft, or graft of tissue from a deceased donor. This was done to strengthen the shoulder repair.
Lonzo and Me—What’s
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Shhh…It’s a Secret
Most of the time, when I achieve a great settlement, arbitration award, or verdict for a client, I want to tell the world. Most of the time, my clients are only too happy to allow me to do that, provided their names and specific identifying information isn’t included.
But there are exceptions.
One of my latest settlements was a great result for a deserving, and very satisfied, client. I suspect the attorney who referred this case to me would also be rather pleased.
However, we cannot really talk too much about it.
Why, you ask?
The specific terms of the
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Thirty Five Years in Practice!
May 10th will be the anniversary of my 35 years as a lawyer.
It’s been a wild ride, and I couldn’t have imagined at the start it would be as interesting, successful, or fulfilling as it has been. And it’s not over yet!
A lot of lawyers write on LinkedIn about how wonderful they are. I hate that. The attorneys who resonate with me – and probably with you – are open, honest, and human. Human beings, flawed as we are, make pretty good lawyers – because our clients are also human beings. And so are defense attorneys, insurance adjusters,
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Back For More
Does your back hurt? Do you think about your back? Do back exercises? Had surgery, acupuncture, injections, or physical therapy to help your back? Do you think about how long you have to sit or on what surface when invited to travel or attend an event?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you’re probably among the vast majority of Americans who experience back pain; studies show up to eighty percent of the population will have some level of back pain at some point in their lives.
What spurred me thinking about all this?
A recent trip my
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Armed for Victory
By the time you read this, I will finally have completed physical therapy following my October 1, 2024 rotator cuff and adhesive capsulitis (that’s “frozen shoulder” to non-medical nerds) surgery.
In other words, five months post-surgery, I am now free to not go to physical therapy. But that doesn’t mean I will not be performing therapy on my own. Probably for the rest of my years.
Why does it take so long? When is it completely healed? Why do you still have to do exercises?
The End…Sort of
My therapists have been wonderful, with the primary one, E, not just
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I Got Fired/I Fired My Client
Yes, my client fired me. Or did I fire my client? It’s hard to explain exactly who did what, but let me give a little bit of background.
My client was a long-time acquaintance. I’d known him for decades. He was a professional who had referred some of his own clients to me when they needed a personal injury attorney. I’ve handled a few cases for him personally over the years too. So when he told me about the horrific car crash he had been in, I was only too happy to help him out.
As is my standard practice,
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Grafting Solutions
This is now number four of my series of blogs about my recovery from rotator cuff surgery and its attendant ups, downs, complications, and progress.
Last time I wrote, I was fighting some knee pain that was slowly resolving, while simultaneously working in physical therapy to improve my shoulder range of motion and slowly strengthening the shoulder.
I have made some positive progress. As with all recoveries, it is not linear or perfect, and, to quote the great unintentionally wise man, Yogi Berra, “it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Four Months
Four months since my shoulder surgery on October 1st!
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Gaming the System
You’ve heard the calls frequently that workers’ compensation recipients are “gaming the system” and sitting around at home collecting checks for not working. If your own opinions run along these lines, you probably also believe the attorneys who represent petitioners (the workers’ compensation word for “plaintiff”) are also somehow doing something unethical or unseemly.
Allow me to dissuade you of both notions with a few stories of some legitimately injured hard-working clients of mine whose workers’ compensation cases recently were resolved.
Chase a Suspect; Blow Out a Knee
You may have read my recent blog post about D, the police
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In (K)need of Speed
Policing is a dangerous profession. We all know that. But most of us think in terms of truly dire injuries or even fatalities, usually involving firearms. Those are all terrible situations and when we see them on the news, they make us recognize how special the brave men and women who choose this profession truly are.
What most people do not think about is that police officers get hurt in a myriad of different ways. Some of them are rather banal and routine, yet painful nevertheless. In my client D’s case, he was chasing a suspect in the suburbs and
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Shouldering The Load Over the Long Term
This is the third installment of my blog on my recovery from my October 1st rotator cuff surgery. The good news is that my shoulder range of motion is coming along ahead of schedule. We are just at the point where strength improvement enters into the mix—more on that later.
So everything is great, right?
It’s me we’re talking about, so of course something has to get screwed up!
My knee is bad. It’s been bothering me for several weeks now. No, it’s not the left knee that I have had surgically repaired twice, thirty years apart. It’s the
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What’s Yours is Yours; What’s Mine is Yours Too?
We are the masters of our destiny, kings and queens of our castle. We live in a world where we can choose everything we experience—our playlists, podcasts, social media connections—so you would assume you have complete control of what happens when you settle your personal injury, workers’ compensation, or medical malpractice case.
But you don’t. At least not completely. Especially if you are married.
Am I advocating against people getting hitched? Of course not!
But if you are married when you get injured, be wary that what you think is coming your way may not be all yours after all.
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