I have another shooting case where the defense lawyer is from a firm who does primarily high volume auto work, with the occasional offbrand slip and fall. I have no idea how he ended up with this one, but it’s going to be a wild ride. he is in his late 50’s. He does not have a computer in his office. His paralegal prints emails for him. His client is entirely paperless. He used the same objection on 52 of my 66 document requests and produced one email. I am confident that he is wholly unprepared for the impending e-discovery onslaught.
I’d never touch that, but I do have a cross examination bit where I get real inquisitive about the things they used to do before the accident because they always lie in their depos about how active they were before.
Plaintiff is 5’4” 320 pounds triple prestige on CoD, but also ran marathons prior to the accident. Now all they can do is stay at home and hit that 4th prestige
I’m kind of looking forward to trying this slip and fall a cone like 15 feet away and my lady slips on a wet mat near the freezers. There is legit mold and loose tiles next to where she fell. Looking forward to deposing the store manager next week
Yesterday I received 2 sets of the most gruesome injury photos from PCs . One was a MVA where the car rolled and the guy's foot got de gloved. The other the lady was allergic to an adhesive which the hospital knew and had arm bands on her for it and it was marked in her chart. She has abdominal surgery and they use steri strips and adhesive all over her adbomen. She has horrible reaction and has these huge red welts all over her torso that are now turning purple. Idk what got into Monday but I was along for the ride.
Had a deposition today involving full autopsy photographs of a 5-month-old. Burn victims are a very close second
I took in one of the very few plastic surgery cases where I could find insurance. The lady got infected with a flesh-eating bacteria following a Brazilian butt-lift and I don't think I've ever seen more horrific pictures in my life. They had to debride all of the fat and tissue from her ass all the way down to the bone.
Jesus. Sometimes I’m jealous of the things you litigators get to do (e.g., travel, billing for travel, etc.). Not today.
Slip and fall outside my office in an active construction zone. Clear liability on the construction company. Decent injuries. Which one of my TMB brethren want it? Lol
Plaintiff guys, what do y'all do when you've filed suit and find out there's no insurance--policy was inactive. Obviously is now UM only. I'm about to settle with the UM. Sitting here trying to figure out what to do with tortfeasor.
I went to a truck accident scene once where they initially thought it was multiple fatalities because the guy was dismembered. You could smell blood. It was the worst I’ve seen.
I've had two: Motorcycle vs semi head-on. There was a lot of blood, but also not much left. Pedestrian jaywalking, super high on meth, struck by our semi that was going too fast. Decapitated. There was surveillance footage from a nearby building and you saw her head fly off.
Jeez... That is awful. We did a capital murder when I first started practicing law. Body was found floating in the water weeks later. Couldn't even determine cause or manner of death the body was in such bad shape. We had another capital murder where guy beat another guy to death with pipe. Blood and pieces of brain everywhere in living room. He was so distraught, he got in guy's fridge and made a sandwich.
Oh we are doing weird/sad shit we have seen. Went to a vehicle inspection where you could still see the half open 6 pack of Modelo the guy had next to him when he crashed head on into a small mazda killing himself and the mother of a 2 year old in the mazda. The mazda still had the daughter's umbrella in the backseat (the daughter wasn't in the car, but it still made it hit home that this guy took away a mom from her family) In the storage closet of my firm 3 jobs ago was a flight manual from a plane crash that still had burned skin and hair fused to it due to the extreme heat from the crash.
We had a guy fall through a painted over skylight onto his head and died. They put all his PPE in a bag and gave it to us. Worst smell I've ever smelled in my life. Completely foul.
I spent the day on the roof of an apartment building today. Totally unrelated to what we were doing, but we found a 9mm bullet lodged into the TPO roof.
Had one years ago where a sponge was left in a lady’s abdominal cavity after surgery. When I say sponge, it really looks more like a rag. Anyway, it manages to plaster itself to her large intestine and then over the next several months it eroded through until it got inside of her colon. Really bizarre. She went to the hospital one day with abdominal pain and they did a colonoscopy where they removed this foul rag that was covered in pus and shit. It was sent to pathology for storage. I had to go down to the hospital during the investigation to get a picture of this thing and when the pathologist pulled it out of the Tupperware the other attorney in the room very nearly threw up from the smell.
Was driving to court in a rural county once and came up on single vehicle accident. I was about 3rd car on scene. Driver was ejected and is dying on side of road. After about 5 minutes we see a little foot sticking out from under car. 3 year old baby. Sickening. About two days later get an email from a large plaintiff’s firm wanting to review situation for possible products case.
You continue to work for justice and make sure that the public is safe by holding responsible parties accountable. Having a plaintiffs’ practice isn’t about money at all.
Just answered a lawsuit 2 weeks ago. Basic MVA. Our guy is fully at fault. Plaintiff seems a bit sketchy and may have some prior meds worth digging into. One of the last notes in the claim file said Plaintiff was going to undergo a shoulder surgery. Claim file did not have any medical treatment or billing records. No calculation of past medical expenses. No report from a doctor detailing why he needed surgery. Initial disclosures are due on 3/15. They served a statutory offer of settlement yesterday, with the statute giving us 14 days to respond. Serving this before disclosing any medical records/billing seems like real bullshit.
Just made a big change. I have spent 10 years at firms with anywhere between 2-10 attorneys. Started at a large (100+ attorney) regional firm this week. My prior experience was mostly on the plaintiff side. This is somewhat of a complete 180 for me. The money/benefits/etc., and just the backing and support staff made it impossible for me to say no. It has been great so far. Can anyone who works in a similar size firm/situation give me any inside info? Happy to chat over DM as well. Thanks dudes.
It's going to be defense work but all over the place. I have a ton of prior experience in various areas (I was my last firm's real estate guy; 1983 claims; police defense; plaintiff personal injury; civil rights/discrimination claims; criminal defense; employment law; some med mal) so literally everything under the sun for the most part.
Develop a niche that other partners with a client base can market or make them aware they can market your existing niche experience to their clients.
The largest defense firm I worked at was about 35 lawyers at its peak. Your biggest and most difficult adjustment will be the transition to hourly billing. It takes some time to get the hang of, especially when figuring out how to bill things so they get paid and not cut by the client. It also adds a significant administrative element to your practice that you didn't have on the plaintiff side. Despite 22 years of defense work, I never developed much discipline with billing and would wind up spending weekends at the office just re-creating my time and not doing legit legal work. If you master the art of billing and are disciplined with it, it won't be too bad. Especially if your defense practice is very busy. You'll just be much more reactive than proactive and will find yourslef filing bullshit motions contantly just to have something to bill.
After about 1.5 years, I’ve stopped getting periodic comments from the partners about artful billing. I suppose I’ve figured that part out. Can be a real pain to go back and rewrite or code your billing just to avoid scrutiny from auditors
Settled a MVA involving a Coca Cola truck almost 3 weeks ago and they still haven't sent the check. My guy calls multiple times a day and on weekends wanting to know where his check is Counsel opposite has been pretty much ghosting me this week on an update
I need a really good investigator pretty much full time, but don’t trust them to develop the relationship I feel like I can with the witnesses in negligent security cases. Delegation how does it work
And this is how a defense lawyer in Houston lost his State Farm book. They were so pissed they transferred all his cases that weren’t imminently set for trial to a new firm too
Cant believe that got him clipped. The defense lawyers where I am treat depositions as an all day billing bonanza with absolutely zero regard as to whether or not they are asking relevant questions. I had a plaintiff depo go for 8.5 hours on a race discrimination lawsuit. He was an hourly worker at a medium sized business.
He filed motions to strike treating doctor testimony on like 100 cases and won that motion exactly 0 times
Make friends with some transactional/corporate guys and gals around your age. Litigation-adjacent questions inevitably arise in the transactional world.
Nah, the statue says you have 14 days to respond. If you reject the offer and they recover a higher number at trial, the rejecting part must pay costs and fees. I mean, I’ve put in a call to opposing counsel to explain my position to him, but I’m sure he was aware I didn’t have any records when he sent over the statutory offer. Not sure what the thinking is.
The thinking is to jam you on a low offer of settlement and hang the threat of fees and costs over your head for the rest of the case. If your courts award hourly fees on contingency cases, it adds up really quickly. In Florida you could turn a 25k verdict into 3-4x that with an early offer of judgment when you’re talking about a judge awarding hours for essentially the entirety of litigation at $400 per hour.
We don't have anything like that here. But would be legit to get fees. Does that ever actually happen in practice and get upheld on appeal?
yes all the time. In georgia they very rarely appeal it. Florida people appeal it all the time. Not usually the rates, just nit picking the proposal itself.
Not sure in your state, but in Florida there is a requirement that the proposal for settlement be made in good faith. An otherwise technically valid proposal can be invalidated if you show that it wasn’t made in good faith at the time it was filed. That’s why on the plaintiff side you want to give the defense as much rope as possible and let them hang themselves.
you would be shocked at how many florida litigators aren't aware of this. So many defense lawyers send out the PFS before depos and discovery have been done.
why would you have to wait on discovery and depositions? sure you want them to have enough information to evaluate the case from the plaintiff’s side but most likely there’s already a presuit demand. I’ve even sent records along with my proposal. But it’s ultimately not on me to make them do their job. If that were the case, Allstate in-house in georgia would never get popped on an offer of settlement because they forget to depose the plaintiff half the time.