I love WC adjusters. I have a client who has an accepted left shoulder claim. She does janitorial work at a high school. Rotator cuff tear, surgery recommended, light duty restrictions of "no use of left upper extremity." She's kept working since the injury in October in a job that is allegedly "suitable," and every time she calls us she says she's still doing the same work and she has to use both arms and blah blah blah. She tells them she can't do the work and they just threaten to fire her if she won't do it. We request they commence benefits and she stops working. They say no because work is suitable. Now she says her right shoulder is killing her. They deny it just because. I'm trying to negotiate. Adjuster low balls the hell out of the claim. Then she says "I have surveillance of this lady VIGOROUSLY cleaning windows with both arms. She's fine! I strongly recommend she take our offer!!!" I'm over here thinking "fuck, they got her at home cleaning her house and shit with both arms." Surveillance video shows her doing the job that is allegedly suitable. Her normal fucking job from before she was ever injured. Cleaning windows, sweeping, etc. Again, she has restrictions of no use of the left arm. Thanks for sending me Exhibit A in my fucking trial notebook, adjuster! You just admitted that the employer has been lying about providing suitable one armed work to my client for the last 8 months.
Did that a few months ago (where they perform the SFSTs on you after getting you drunk). Was a blast.
It was supposed to help me convince her to settle for what they were offering. Joke's on her...she would have taken whatever I told her to take. I didn't think it was worth it.
It helps both sides. It gives us perspective on what it's like to have these test administered on you, and it helps new officers learn to get better at doing them properly in the field.
comp gets really old. its always a game like that. and you don't have a jury and you don't get any non economics. They always try to put them back to work and find some BS job for them to do and claim there is no loss of wage earning capacity. or they send them to some doc that is bought and paid for by the insurance company and he zeroes them out.
I'm guessing he's going to be pro hospital anti cap anti plaintiff as he's an insurance defense lawyer-with all due respect to him.
Had a blast last night - got seriously lit... Got up to a .17 after two hours of drinking. Getting to a .17 is one thing... Going from .000 to .17 in two hours is another
Resting nystagmus? The more cases I try the more I find jurors have a hard time believing HGN clues unless the officer has a body cam and they can see the nystagmus for themselves. Interesting because NHTSA considers it the most reliable test. Go figure.
Yep, resting nystagmus... Apparently ~1% of people have it. I'm preaching to the choir but HGN is the best/most reliable test because, unlike the WAT or OLS, it doesn't matter whether the person being tested is in peak condition or 200lbs overweight and it doesn't matter what someone's experience/tolerance level with alcohol is. Most jurors are just skeptical of DUI cases. I think it's a combination of people thinking it's harmless, that the punishments are too severe, and perhaps most importantly the jurors simply feeling "but for the grace of god I go" - they're uncomfortable convicting someone for something they themselves may have done. DUI is the one crime that most jurors have committed, perhaps many times over.
might've signed up the best case of my life on saturday. dude is a painter who fell off a ladder at work; life flighted to a hospital in houston; two broken wrists and broken shoulder; three surgeries; 8 day hospital stay; already has 270k in legit meds from the hospital. his employer is a non-subscriber, so should be able to go after their general liability policy. also, his company only worked for a home builder in katy, texas. he worked on these homes for over a year. so can probably go after the home builders policy too if can show control, etc. leaning towards referring it out, but haven't decided yet.
I'm not a plaintiffs attorney, so I may be mistaken, but seems like 1) you'll need help and a decent amount of money to prosecute the claims so I'd say you need to bring someone else on; 2) why refer it out as opposed to co-counsel? Seems like you'd make more money and get some great litigation experience out of it.
Yes. Completely. Being a lawyer, you should know that "making a fatal mistake" isn't enough to be successful in a medical malpractice suit. Nearly every state has passed extremely pro-healthcare provider medical malpractice statutes that make it almost impossible to successfully sue a healthcare provider. If you do, it's going to cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars to even bring it to trial. The boogeyman of people not going to medical school out of fear of malpractice suits is made up bullshit. Doctors get paid well because they deal in risky business. If they violate their own standard of care, they ought to have to pay for it. Wrong. I've said it before in here multiple times -- I don't carry anybody's water.
Huntsville city police bring people in when they have a cadet class doing the field sobriety training. They get you hammered, breathalyze you and mark the readings down. Then you'll have like two groups of cadets do the field tests and remark on what they think our BAC is and what they would do. Then the cops drive you home and will send someone to bring you back to your car the next day. Last time I did it, I blew a .18. Had one group say they figured I was around .06 and would have let me go with a warning or have someone come get me. The other group was like "no he's fucked up" and said I was around .12. But they had the unfair advantage of having one of my drinking buddies in their group so he knew how I acted when I was hammered. Wen to the strip club with a bunch of cops and cadets after that, hell of a night.
well that's extremely refreshing to hear you say that. They have made the terrain for even filing a med mal case here nearly impossible. CBS news host Steve Murphy just called me for his show Justice in America and they've been following that Dollar General case I told yall about and were asking questions about it-they have 3 more segments they want to run and are looking for possible candidates. The whole time I was wondering if I was getting scammed.
How would one go about signing up for one of these classes? I remember I was invited to one in Knoxville while in law school but was scheduled to be out of town and couldn't make it. Have always regretted that decision.
Yeah, it's the same here. We don't have the caps, but we do have unbelievable procedural safeguards to protect the providers. It's not cost effective to pursue them, so you only have a handful of plaintiff's lawyers who are even willing to take them. That's badass. Remind me what the facts are.
Get to know some local cops. That's how I got the invite. I was friends with the training sgt and a couple other training officers. You can probably call the local academy and ask if they even do it?
yah you have to list the address of the plaintiffs at the time of the incident and their present address on the notice of claim per the statute. I've heard of people screwing that up. If its a state tort claim case then there are like 6 areas you have to address in the notice of claim. You have to sign a certificate and attach it to the complaint that you've consulted with at least one expert on the standard of care. So you have to have your expert before filing. One year statute if its a state entity. 2 year statute if private. It's weird I don't know why they wanted to talk about that case. Facts are client was customer at Dollar General. The employees of the store left shelving in the middle of the aisle from when they were working on an end cap display. I've alleged that Dollar General deliberately understaffed in order to save money and that there's no way 2 employees can safely do everything they are supposed to do at the store. Some of the dollar general employees admitted in their depositions that the store was understaffed and they had concerns it was understaffed. I don't know if that's what caught this guys attention. There is a pending motion for summary judgment as to punitives which will probably be granted if I had to guess.
Some people on the AAJ list serve are telling me this guy is for real. Some people are telling me he wants you to pay him money for him to produce a video that you can put on your website that's basically an infomercial.
Yeah. I know they are the biggest employment firm in the country, have competitive salaries, etc, but was hoping to get some honest assessment of what it is really like to work there. So many postings like you described, and what appears to be relatively high turnover for associates seems like a bit of a warning sign that working there sucks. A headhunter contacted me about an opening there, but I am a little apprehensive about it. I like my firm now, but the money is better and the billable hour requirement, at least according to the recruiter, is less, although only negligibly.
if you like where you work, you should stay there unless the money is significant. most firms/bosses suck ass.
I need to subpoena a doctor in Sherman Texas to a deposition in a case pending in MS. He will not return my phone calls and he's not going to show up for the depo unless he's under subpoena. He's a fact witness in that malpractice case I've been talking about. The clerk in Grayson County TX did not know what a letters rogatory was and said the only way they'd issue a subpoena is if I have a case filed there. Any help from Texas lawyers or otherwise?>
Texas doesn't abide by the UIDDA. You're going to have to get the MS judge to issue a request that the TX county's clerk issue the subpoena. Check the TX rules of civ p to make sure of what all you need in it and file it as a proposed order. You're probably going to have to do the deposition in that county, too.
yah that's originally what i thought and i call the court clerk to ask if that was correct and she didnt know and told me bad information. i spoke with a fellow trial lawyer from texas and told me what you said is the proper procedure which is what i suspected from the get go. i hate to take an important fact witness depo without speaking to him first but he refuses to speak to me.
I have three bosses. I write about 95% of the dispositive documents that come out of my firm. I think I'm a alright writer and I think two of my bosses are great writers and whenever we work on something I think we put out a great product. My last boss is the opposite. I cringe every time he adds shit to something I write. But I can't tell him, "Hey man, this is shit and I'm deleting it." So I'll have my signature on a document that I'm not proud of. It's kinda embarrassing.
yah i asked the clerk about that yesterday and she didn't know what that was. I now know that she just was mis/uninformed and I'm going to send a letters rogatory to the district clerk .
we do two weeks paid vacation and dont have a set policy for paid sick days. my paralegal and secretary have both used all 2 weeks paid vacation and have both used 9 paid sick days so far this year. I'm thinking 7 paid sick days and any after that are unpaid and you must bring in doc excuse for a paid sick day is a good policy. Is that draconian or reasonable? I'm the only one at the firm that has this problem with their secretary/paralegal. I don't know if its because I work them too hard and they hate life, if they think they can just walk all over me, or its a random confluence of events and nothing related to me.
I think 5 days of paid sick leave (one full work week) on top of the 2 weeks of paid vacation is more than enough.
Is the 2 weeks paid vacation 2 work weeks (10 days), or 14 total days of missed work? Blah, either way. I really despise the Protestant work ethic, though
My bosses don't really monitor vacation or sick days and I don't believe we even have a policy (only like a 10 person office). I'm basically allowed one full week of vacation a year, but can take a couple Fridays off to make a couple three day weekend as well. The assistants get between 2 or 3 weeks. If anyone is sick, they don't come in. We don't want to get everyone in the office sick and I don't think it is good policy to start questioning degrees of sickness among employees. If someone starts abusing that policy, then take it up with them. Jmo
That's how our office is, we don't have a policy. Just get your shit done on the front end and don't leave anyone hanging. I miss a lot of weekdays, but I also work a ton of weekends. If your hours are good at the end of the year they don't care how you got them.
I would think asking for a Dr's note to get a paid sick day would have some serious push back. I mean can you legally even do that? Granted this is the lawyer thread so y'all should know that already.
Nope. But 3 weeks of paid leave (vacation/sick leave) seems pretty decent. I am assuming they also get paid leave on major holidays. I don't know many people in the working world, not just law, that get any more than that.
Agreed. All national holidays + 3 full weeks is a pretty decent number of days off. We don't have any vacation policy, which has its positives and negatives. Have to think the reasoning is that most people end up billing hours on their "days off" anyway, so it'd kind of be bullshit to have to use a vacation day and still be on call and responsive to emails.
I don't have billables or anything since I work in-house but since I'm decently new (only been in-house for 1.5 yrs) I wanted to work hard. Had a vacation day scheduled and my boss asked for me to join him on a call. Obviously I did and it was only about 1.5 hrs long. He called me after to get some feedback and he asked what the rest of the day looked like for me. When I told him that I was on vacation he told me that I should have told him to "piss off" when he sent the invite (he's British) and that whenever I'm on vacation that I shouldn't bother looking at my phone or email or anything work related unless our entire organization is on fire, literally or figuratively.
I'm confused. In MS that would be a comp case. If someone gets injured in the course and scope of their employement in TX it's a tort and you can get a jury trial?