A RECORD OF RESULTS
RESULTS OVER THE YEARS Through the years, the practice of law has been good to me and most of those whom I have represented. I have obtained settlements exceeding a million dollars. One settlement comes to mind involving a teenager who was a passenger in a car which was struck by a drunk driver who had whiskey bottles with the seals broken in the vehicle. My client almost lost her life but through the heroic efforts of her physicians, she was spared and has gone on to lead a very productive life in spite of the catastrophic injuries she suffered. That case produced a recovery of 1.1 million dollars plus.
Not every case is like that. Some are more and many are less. I have had even higher results in other types of personal injuries. However, in looking at car wrecks alone, over the last 46 years, I have collected millions of dollars for injured people.
If you come in to see me, this will not be my first rodeo. I have represented thousands of people and I am as interested in practicing law at this time as I was on day one. It is a fascinating and interesting profession. The punch line is that there are rewards which go far beyond financial considerations such as the sense of accomplishment of helping people who otherwise would not do as well without assistance. That is a big part of the incentive to practice personal injury law. It is competitive, it is fast, and it is stressful. Nevertheless, it is rewarding in many different ways.
CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION TO BETTER SERVE YOU
By russthomas | Published December 15, 2019 (2019-12-15TO8:57:50+0000) | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION TO BETTER SERVE YOU
CONTINUING LEGAL EDUCATION
Some attorneys believe that they know everything and attempt to keep their education to the required minimum of 15 hours of continuing education per year. In the last few years, I have attempted to take additional continuing education courses in the field of personal injury so that the minimum requirement is doubled or tripled.
In December of 2016, I ran into Don Keenan in Chattanooga. He is an interesting character. He is one of the top trial attorneys in the United States. David Ball has been his business partner in continuing education endeavors. David is one of the leading jury consultants in the United States and “yes” there are actually people out there who do what a less Hollywood version of “Bull” does. David is a jury consultant who has done years of research into jury attitudes.
It is important to not only understand how insurance companies work to help to get a settlement, but it is important to be prepared and equipped to try the case if negotiations fail. Therefore, to better equip myself and to update myself on cutting edge trial techniques, I took two days of courses and passed two tests to get admitted and then went to the Keenan Trial Institute in Atlanta and have spent hours which turned into days in closed door sessions studying trial techniques with other trial attorneys from all over the United States. The lessons learned have been invaluable in my practice. I am forever striving to be a better lawyer. We all should. The reality is that some do and some do not.
As of October, 2019, I finished the seventh course which puts me in a status of being eligible to graduate from undergraduate studies. I intend to continue on with graduate studies. The exchange of ideas on trial techniques and learning new trial techniques has kept the practice of law fresh, exciting and even more interesting for me. I believe the techniques I have learned will inure to my clients’ benefit as well.
I am also a graduate of the Keenan Trial Institute in Atlanta, Georgia which is a school for advanced trial techniques for practicing attorneys. I graduated in 2019 and am one of only 350 graduates in the United States.
INSURANCE COMPANIES AND COVERAGES
In a previous article, topics were briefly touched on concerning uninsured/underinsured insurance coverage. To expand on that, uninsurance coverage kicks in when the party causing the accident does not have liability insurance. Underinsurance kicks in when the at fault party has inadequate insurance limits. People in Tennessee are required to have liability insurance with minimum limits which usually run $25,000/$50,000. What that means is $25,000 per person or $50,000 with more than one person.
Therefore, in a car crash involving five people, if there are minimum limits in effect, each person may be competing for a pool of $50,000 irrespective of the severity of their injury. Minimum limits are inadequate in many cases.
The next coverages which are commonly seen are $50,000/$100,000 which, again, is $50,000 for a single injury and $100,000 for multiple persons; then $100,000/$300,000; $300,000 single limit; $500,000 single limit, and there are various umbrellas. After one gets to $300,000, usually one can buy umbrella coverage relatively inexpensively. Umbrella coverage to protect yourself and family is one of the most important things you can do. The expense of getting an umbrella policy from $300,000 to $1,000,000 is very low when one looks at the risk which is eliminated.
What that means is that if you have uninsured motorist coverage of more than minimum limits of $25,000 then the first $25,000 comes from the liability carrier of the person who struck your vehicle and caused the accident. The excess comes from your underinsurance coverage. Therefore, in serious injury cases, a person has resources many times from their own underinsurance policy, with which to pay serious damage claims including reimbursement of their health insurance, unpaid bills, lost wages, etc.
Most insurance policies will have a provision also for property damage. Therefore, one sees policies which are $25,000/$50,000 and $25,000 for property damage as an element of coverage. The numbers differ. The amounts of medical payments coverage may be different. Med-Pay can run anywhere from $1,000 to as much as $100,000 in the usual policy.
Insurance companies really do not push umbrella policies because they are so inexpensive and they create such a big risk for the insurance company. As a consumer, you should push it and get that coverage if at all possible. You owe that to yourself and your family so that the situation is taken care of if you are hit by someone who has no insurance or minimum limits of $25,000.
So, the checklist which you have to go through when buying insurance is to be sure that you have adequate liability insurance to cover the other guy if you cause the accident, uninsurance/underinsurance coverage, collision coverage and medical payments coverage.
Almost everyone says “I have full coverage” but then the question becomes what does that mean? It may mean that you have very good coverage and that you should not worry about things or it may mean that you have very inadequate coverage. Be sure and run your checklist with your agent and be sure that your family is covered in the event of a catastrophic accident. You cannot count on the other party’s insurance to cover you and your family. Buy a reasonable level of uninsured/underinsurance.
MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN
Tennessee does not have a direct suit provision except in UM claims and then the insurance company may defend in the name of the person or the insurance company at their election. Normally, unless they have someone with big problems who they do not want a jury to ever lay eyes on, they will elect to defend the person rather than the policy upon the theory that most jurors do not care for insurance companies. What I’m still amazed at in talking with jurors after the case is over, are the misperceptions. We’ve all seen The Wizard of Oz. The Wizard of Oz was created with an entire presentation of flames and a big face upon the wall to scare Dorothy, Toto and company. That was until someone pulled back the curtain and there was a little old man there who had worked for a carnival in his earlier lifetime.
In debriefing jurors (this is especially true of very young defendants or very old defendants) the jurors sometimes say, “well they could not award a large amount of money because it would just ruin a young person’s life.” I’ve often heard that said about older people, that it would ruin the remaining years of their lives. What jurors will not accept and possibly do not understand is that the person is court is just a “prop” to develop the optics that the individual is being sued without insurance coverage.
To make matters worse, under Tennessee law, the attorneys cannot talk about insurance. Therefore, the defendant may have a 19-year-old young or an 80-year-old elderly woman and the optics of it are that the jury feels sympathy and wants to reach out and help the person who may be harmed through a large verdict.
The reality is that 99.99% of the time, there is no personal liability because with the liberal bankruptcy laws, attorneys and litigants accept whatever is available and move on. Otherwise, they become embroiled in a three to five-year bankruptcy process. On a Chapter 13 payout, that would be a five-year process. There is every reason in the world to take the insurance limits and close the claim. There usually is no good reason to go for an excess except in rare cases. In some cases, the insurance company can be held for the excess if they have dealt in “bad faith” in failing to settle the case.
Therefore, the next time anyone hears about a case against a young person or a very old person and there is some discussion about how badly this would affect their life, pull that curtain back. Behind that curtain, you will find a multi-billion dollar insurance company who is simply using the person in court for a “prop” and that same company has filed a motion with the Judge, before the trial, to prevent anyone from using the word “insurance”. Talk about misleading, the next time you see The Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain, compare that situation to the situation of jury trials under Tennessee law…not so different. So, is it really a man behind the curtain situation or just a plain old wolf in sheep’s clothing? You decide.
WHY DO YOU CALL AN ATTORNEY?
By russthomas | Published October 30, 2019 (2019-10-30T17:33:30+0000) | Posted in Blog | Comments Off on WHY DO YOU CALL AN ATTORNEY?
WHY DO YOU CALL AN ATTORNEY?
There are various reasons to call an attorney. These include:
1) You want to be on equal footing with the multi-billion-dollar insurance company which will direct the defense and attempt to defeat your claim in the usual case;
2) There is an aggravation factor like a Chinese water drip for persons who have been involved in an accident not wanting to have to deal with a trained adjuster. They usually, in various ways, attempt to stack the deck in favor of the insurance company in obtaining evidence to help their insured. Most injured people would rather concentrate on their healthcare concerns and what needs to be done to treat their injuries;
3) It is true that it is difficult for anyone to represent themselves legally. The old saying among law firms is that “a lawyer who attempts to represent himself has a fool for a client.” This extends beyond lawyers and extends to most folks. Calling someone a fool is not very polite but the point taken is that it may not be the wisest course to attempt self-representation. It is hard to be objective. This is especially true where you have no legal training nor have the training of an adjuster who has been through various schools to learn ways to defeat or to suppress the value of the claim;
4) The rules applying to car wrecks should be simple, but they are not. In the usual care, there are issues as to what coverages apply to what part of the claim and from whose insurance. For instance, if you are a passenger in someone’s car, did you know that your uninsured motorist coverage would pick up to potentially pay part of the claim even if the other party has insurance. Therefore, if the driver has $25,000 in liability insurance, runs into a ditch in a one car accident and you have $35,000 in medical expenses as a passenger, then your uninsurance/underinsurance coverage would kick in to pick up additional compensation so that your medical bills could be paid and your other injuries compensated for, for pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life and wage loss if you have adequate coverage;
5) I often have people come in and say “I have been in an accident and I am in terrible trouble because I have no health insurance.” Well, you may have what is referred to as medical payments coverage which runs in increments of $1,000.00, $5,000.00, $10,000.00, $25,000.00, $50,000.00 and $100,000.00. The point to this is that without training as an insurance agent or other specialized training which would make you knowledgeable of the different coverages available, you may very well miss coverages and not understand which coverages apply;
6) Another difficult area that persons encounter is in subrogation. Subrogation is a Latin term which means to stand in the place of. Your health insurance company, if it pays part of the medical bills for the accident, would expect to be reimbursed. This is usually subject to negotiation. It is almost always subject to some negotiation to get a reduction. Therefore, having an attorney can not only maximize the recovery through guiding through what coverages apply to a particular situation to maximize the coverages, but the bottom line of what you get can be significantly increased by negotiation of the repayment obligations to health insurance.
These are the six reasons that immediately come to mind when I am asked the question of why you need an attorney. All of these reasons revolve around a single bottom line, you want to increase your chances of playing on a level playing field against a multi-billion dollar insurance company which has trained adjusters and agents. Without that training, it is not a level playing field and the insurance companies will take advantage of you if you let them, to deny the claim or suppress the value of the claim. Good luck to you in these matters. If we can ever be of assistance, feel free to call.