Lawyer thread

Capital Murder defense is court appointed, so pay isn’t great. I only do it because seeing capital litigation in practice turned me from an ardent death penalty person to a very skeptical one. I try to do one a year.

 

Been answered but yes. It is much easier for me to get reasonable settlement authority if I have a detailed demand with justification for it. If I just get "$250,000" the adjuster is more likely to give me something that's not reasonable because the justification has not been provided and the adjuster sees it as plaintiff counsel just making up a number. Also, be reasonable with your numbers. I received a demand from OC with a letter from an ortho spine surgeon signing off on the cost of the 2 level laminectomy he was recommending would be $120,000. I just laughed and threw it in filing.

 

Alabama. I don’t live and breathe criminal defense, but I do enough of it that the judges are good. I don’t claim to be the smartest, but I’ll work a file.

I didn’t start to defend them until I had seen some of it in practice and seen the quality of representation that some of these guys get.

Don’t have any on death row just yet thankfully.

 

I really enjoy that I've limited my practice areas to strictly workers comp and personal injury. The only problem is that being a small firm competing against billboard firms with 50x the ad budget, it can be tough to get the cases. Having said that, I've got 59 PI cases of which 45 are MVAs and 50 comp cases so pretty good volume.

 

Yep. I’ve got one going to trial in January. Don’t expect State to seek death though.

 

was v humbling to learn last night that everyone else's cases are worth $50k minimum

 

That's not it. Just sounds like in TX the insurance companies for some weird reason mediate minimum limits cases. I think TX is in the minority on that one.

 

just got off the phone with def lawyer who asked about mediating a case where my client has 25k in meds, they've offered 14k and we havne't moved off 30k limits

 

I left that to work for the State and I can’t believe how much less stress I have.

 

anyone in here ever mediated cases? just got finished with another one and the guy we used is booked until December at $700 a pop per party and does one in the morning and one in the afternoon every day

 

I don’t have the time to go through the process of becoming a mediator, but it is definitely part of my retirement plan

 

i think it's just a matter of staying busy. if you have 10 slots a week and can fill 8 of them on average, you are going to make a ton of dough with zero stress

 

Wondering what any personal injury people think of this. Got a friend who had an alleged fender bender in a gas station parking lot. His car shows no visible damage, nothing that couldnt have been a highway rock or something like that. The other guy has some visible issues with his bumper where he alleges he was hit but also in other places and is missing a front bumper entirely to give you a picture of the car. Unfortunately, my friend had let his insurance lapse without realizing it. The other guy does not appear to have insurance but apparently claimed injuries on the form that the cop gave them both to send to the state. My friend has the only video of the incident, which does not show any impact but only his car rolling forward and quickly breaking as they are otherwise both obscured by a gas pump.

Any thoughts on if an attorney would be interested in pursuing a case like? Buddy doesn't really have any assets worth anything. Anything he should do in particular?

 

if there isn't any insurance by the person who hit your friend and if he doesn't have any insurance himself it's going to be difficult to get someone to take this case. especially with the small property damage.

 

Are you asking whether an attorney would represent your buddy or the other guy?

 

Oh sorry, wasn't clear. He's worried about the other guy trying to make crazy injury claims for him and the person with him in the car. He had written that both were injured on the state form. I just wondered if it would be worth a lawyer's time to try to sue my friend.

 

if your friend didn't have insurance and my potential client didn't have insurance we wouldn't take the case

 

Thanks. yeah, it was hard for me to imagine who would think that was worth their time. He's not sure the guy doesn't have insurance, he said he just seemed very adamant that the incident happened farther from the road than it did. The car didn't belong to him apparently, the registration was expired and the guy has a long criminal history so I'm not sure what was going on there.

 

Case settled, no October trial. 8 years without a trial.

Now I can camp and climb this weekend.

 

2 trials next week. Just selecting jury on one, selecting jury and helping try the other.

 

That’s wild

Spoke with in house Allstate guy at a depo earlier this month

He started there in May and was already at double digit trials for the year and said he mostly likely had one on Monday and one on Thursday the next week

 

I still think that is weird. Things just sound so much different in TX. There are no insurance guys here trying that many cases a year.

 

Here it makes no sense to try a case that is worth less than $25k. If your guy has ~$10k in meds and the jury gives him $10k in pain and suffering then you have a $20k verdict. It will cost you somewhere between $5-10k to try the case. I guess you could go to trial without a doc's testimony(it is possible in MS), but I doubt you get a satisfactory verdict. A doc's depo is going to cost you at least $3500 in addition to the videographer and court reporter fee but which time you're at near $5k for that one deposition. If you have a 40% fee /$8,000 fee plus the $10k you spent to try the case, you're at $2k for your client on the net recovery. Even if you split your fee with your client they aren't walking with much. They will offer you enough in MS on such a case that it is economically impractical and backwards to try the case. Your client almost always walks with more from a settlement in the sub $25k cases.

That is why we aren't trying a billion of those cases around here.

 

Yep

I mean what choice do I have when I have a client with $60k in medical bills, Allstate had a $30k policy and they offer $5,200

And on first party uninsured or underinsured cases they aren’t offering more then $5,000 ever. Your client would basically have to die for them to offer more than $5k

I also have two surgery cases with uncontested liability and high meds and State Farm hasn’t offered a single cent on either. Sucks to have two cases worth ~450k and State Farm just telling me to fuck myself

 

The first party cases are really fucking my client

If I try a case I’m taking my full 40% and 100% of my fees and if my client gets $2k on a $30k policy then that sucks for them they should make a complaint to the Texas dept of insurance

 

We should start an insurance company

 

Nah. A litigation loan company is where it’s at

 

That is just crazy. None of that would happen here. TX sounds like an awful place to practice law as a plaintiff in the MVA game.

 

Eh I’m doing ok

The volume here vs Mississippi and Alabama probably makes up for it

But yeah Allstate makes you try 90% of cases

There are multiple lawyers here who won’t take Allstate cases. Which is exactly what they want

 

Absolutely painful. Many times their attorneys fees will be a multiplier if the settlement or verdict. Have seen them pay twice as much in fees as the cost to tear down and rebuild a home. Rumor has it that they are softening their litigation stance and trying to have a little more reasonable approach to settling cases.

 

Haven’t showed it on this one. It’s painful dealing with, but great from our perspective. We may settle for more than the house is even worth, and not even a great value.

 

Jeez, that sounds miserable. You have no choice.

My last State Farm case was a UIM only. I answered one set of paper discovery. They paid the 75k limits without me even tendering a demand. Just volunteered it.

 

:|

 

Have a case right now where adverse driver crossed the center line hit my clients head on. He was killed. They ended up in the hospital with multiple surgeries. He had $25k policy limits and there is very limited UM available. Sucks. Total coverage available for both of them combined is only $100k.

 

Start picking a jury tomorrow on a 10-day med mal trial. Then have a week break before going back to start a 4-week med mal trial in front of the same judge.

 

My office is falling apart from mismanagement and a contract dispute that is freezing my scheduled promotion indefinitely with no back pay for when it's resolved is leading me to likely switching to the civil side. Been in contact with a firm who I have connections with and sent them my resume today.

 

Client at least did have a fractured wrist. That was basically extent of injuries though.

 

That’s a $5k Allstate case in houston

 

We have a fraud claim, and I think it’s viable, but that’s not why they’ll pay that.

Horton basically extorts their subs. If they have to try this case they will be on hook for something around $500,000 in legal fees. I’ve never seen anything like it.

 

Does anyone have a copy of a subcontractor agreement I could use as a form? Construction contract a general would give a sub.

 

There was a jury trial a few months ago a few counties up where a box truck knocked a lady into a ditch and she had thoracic compression fracture . Verdict was for $625k. Lady had 44k in past medicals. Plaintiffs experts put future meds at $700k. They had all their experts testify live including 2 IME docs. Plaintiff asked for $1.5M. Defense "top ask" was $440k (I'm guessing they presented different ranges and the top range was $440k). I wonder what the pre trial offer was. Obviously the verdict was much closer to Defense's top ask than Plaintiff's ask. Do you consider that more of a defense win than a win for the plaintiff? If there top ask was $440k then I'm guessing they offered something under that pre trial. Maybe like $350k. In that case this would be a win for the plaintiff although they probably incurred at least $50k in extra cost for all that live testimony. Thoughts?

 

Yep, as soon as they get served with the lawsuit, they file a third party complaint against every sub that did any of the work.

 

An Allstate lawyers response to my associate asking about a hearing date:

Ashli,


I have 14 trial settings between the week of October 7th and 14th, but if I am not in trial somewhere I will be there. If I am in trial, I guess I will just need to trust you.



Regards,


David

 

Oh, and tell your friend to grow the fuck up and get insurance.