I've been having to file suit on a lot of my soft tissue MVA cases but I'm getting a decent amount of them settled without having to do serious litigation. They usually throw enough additional money on them after I file suit and serve defendant to get it done.
This isn’t in-house or anything, so it’s definitely not going to be cheaper. They could settle this case for $10k, but are going to pay to try it? Its possible that I might not get that much at trial, but I will get a verdict. I don’t get the strategy. It doesn’t make sense for either party. I’m about to start racking up expenses that will make it harder for me to settle, and they are paying for their defense the whole time and will have to pay me something eventually.
Do you any sense of whether they are giving different offers to different firms? I wonder if they know smaller firms don’t have a deep bench of trial attorneys but still depend upon volume case turnover. Squeeze those firms with too many trials and settlements go down because it skews the business model. It was an asbestos strategy for years for nonmalignant cases. You had some dockets with nonmalignant claims running 50-1 to cancers. Force all of the minimal injury cases to trial and turn the volume as a defense strategy by stressing the ability of plaintiffs to try them all. Treat the real cases much differently.
Allstate doesnt care who the plaintiff lawyer is. Went to lunch pre pandemic with a guy who popped them for like $300k on a case he would’ve settled for like $40 and they still aren’t making him any reasonable offers
All of ours don’t get sent to in house anymore because we are actually going to go to trial versus some folks who file and then just settle
it doesn't make any sense but the adjuster is running the show and if they get it in their heads that it's only worth 2500, they will go to trial. They see "legal costs" as a different pile of money from "settlement funds". They don't mind spending 50k in legal costs if it saves them 10k from "settlement funds"
In florida, virtually everything in a city with a staff counsel office goes to staff counsel unless its an obvious excess situation (death/crippling injury) or the limits have been tendered and rejected. Dunno why they would be picking and choosing to send out cases in texas.
100% But they’re also starting to pay a bunch of defense lawyers flat fees per case to everyone in here who does PI insurance defense y’all need to start saving for a rainy day. MVAs are down SIGNIFICANTLY. And a bunch of dunbass plaintiff lawyers live way above their means and are going to start settling pre lit for 60-70% of a case value just to get cash.
Have MSJ oral arguments over Zoom this morning, first time putting on a suit since early March. My suit shirt is tucked into my gym shorts.
I think there's going to be a 2-3 year lag until we see it, but I agree that it's coming. Out West a bunch of the SOL are 3 years instead of 2, so I'm seeing a lot of 2017-18 accidents being filed recently. 2022-23 will be a weird year, would expect lawsuits to go down a lot.
I saw the first Covid-19 premises liability case filed this week. Plaintiff claims they were exposed in a restaurant which was not enforcing capacity, distancing, or mask directives issued by the state board of health and by the city. Under state law, an injury arising from the failure of a premises owner to follow building codes is negligent per se. Plaintiff is arguing that the Covid-19 requirements are health code regulations entitled to the same presumption.
I’m not sure. I don’t defend the underling claims. Seems like they need to prove the virus was there, either that an employee tested positive or other customers did. If they find an employee who was positive at the place, seems like a viable theory to me.
would think it would be heavily plaintiff dependent. A plaintiff who generally abided by social distancing measures and this was the only place where they removed their mask in public might be able to prove it. But that kind of plaintiff seems unlikely to be someone who would eat at an overcrowded restaurant.
If they prove that both the virus and themselves were on premises, along with injury from a Covid infection, I think it goes to trial on causation. If violation of Covid health regulations by the restaurant is negligence per se, summary judgment is out and again the jury determines causation. Typically, assumption of risk is not a valid defense to a safety code violation. If an establishment goes over capacity for occupants and has a fire, the owner does not get to argue plaintiffs assumed that risk. If a restaurant was over restricted Covid capacity with more than 50% dine in, it should be the same result. Even an open and obvious defense is tough to win if you factor 2-3 days that a virus can be viable on premises. A plaintiff could be there at 15% capacity when all employees are wearing masks and still catch it from something that occurred yesterday.
Take cases in which plaintiffs have real and substantial injuries, then figure it out. There are a dozen ways to get past summary judgment, but a sympathic plaintiff with lung damage is the real concern for jury.
He's in Alabama, which is a contributory negligence state. That case would be a definite turndown here. Then there's also this: http://www.alabamapublichealth.gov/legal/assets/soe-covid19-liability-protection-050820.pdf
You'd have to get an infectious disease doctor to say more likely than not you got it from said restaurant. Then defense would bring in 3 infectious disease doctors to say you couldve gotten it from a billion other places. If you're in a conservative county it would be tough. If the restaurant wasn't following any of the policies then jury could pop them even if the causal link is debatable. If you can get an infectious disease doc to give you causation then you'll at least get past MSJ and make a jury issue of it.
Sure, but I’d think that would still factor into the analysis at some point, right? I mean ultimately when you won’t settle a clear liability case where the demand is very reasonable, it would seem to me that money is getting wasted from one of those pots.
Don’t know the situation, but most of good ones won’t take a case unless it’s death or permanent injury. If you’ve got that, Marsh, Rickard and Bryan would be my first stop, Belt and Bruner do good work on med mal cases too.
Not really. Defense costs are pretty consistent and predictable on the macro level for insurance carriers. They aren’t really analyzed on a “per file” basis. Once it gets to litigation, there’s a defense cost. It’s not really correlated to the indemnity reserves. A fatality case doesn’t necessarily cost that much more to defend than a soft-tissue injury.
Lol doc is offering opinions on medical records that aren’t in his report and aren’t mentioned by defendants in their disclosures that they gave to him also offered input on what the bills should be without reviewing the bills I don’t even know if I need to be here this guy is going to get struck
Oh my god he owns an mri facility and admitted to having different fee schedules for different insurance companies
Man, colonel_forbin , I didn't realize what a great deal y'all had on BC/BS insurance up there. I'm joining your bar association.
The owning his own MRI facility is good fodder for cross, but they all have different fee schedules for different payors.
I think you can. Medicare sets a maximum fee schedule, but there is nothing stopping you from making your retail charges less than that (or more if you don't accept medicare).
Yay! I can contribute to this thread. In Texas Ins Code 552.003 makes it a crime to charge different rates for the same service, only if they are charging the higher rate because they know that specific insurance will pay more based on the higher charge. In practice, its not really relevant because nobody works off % of billed charges anymore and its all contractually negotiated on each CPT code. As long as you charge over the contracted reimbursement amount, you are going to get the same payment. So if you charge $2,000 or $2,500 per CPT 70553, BC/BS is still only going to pay their contracted rate (for me it would be ~$300). But in general, you want to have a single fee schedule that covers the highest contracted rate per CPT code (we charge 3x medicare allowable on all procedures) and then have a time of service discount for cash pay patients.
yep. Read a transcript this morning from our trial lawyer list serve of the plaintiff lawyer crossing the defense medical examiner. Plaintiff lawyer did a good job of showing financial bias. Sounds like it was a good underlying case though. Substantial wreck, substantial injuries including burst fracture in spine, uninsured motorist coverage etc. The UM carrier was identified as an insurance company IIRC. Defense had like 6 lawyers and plaintiff had 2. Hancock County , and really anywhere on the coast , is a tough venue, so that's a great verdict.
Had a sheriff deputy contact me for a workers comp case earlier today. Got hit head on by some dude on meth. Needs two knee surgeries and fucked up his nose. Had to have surgery on his nose and his nose is still crooked. Back and neck injury as well. Just assumed he already had a lawyer for the MVA case but somehow he didn't. Signing him up for the personal injury case as well. I'm guessing the Sheriff Department has a really nice UM policy with stacking. I bet there is $1M in coverage. This could be a huge case.
Based on the verdict reporter, the insurance companies were not identified. They just participated in the defense of the tortfeasor.
I got my verdict reporter two days ago with this case covered. I need to go read it. I didn't know he got their billing expert struck. That is awesome. I wonder if it was on the grounds of collateral source or what.
Had my first in-person hearing since COVID today in a small federal courthouse. Felt awesome to practice standing up again.