Congrats on your new role as a commercial lines insurance adjs --- I mean lawyer. But seriously, a lot will depend on your specific clients. Dealing with Swift, WalMart, big national carriers is a lot different from dealing with local transportation companies. Good luck dude
Be prepared to make just enough to not quit or, alternatively, congrats on going to the plaintiffs’ side in 3-5 years.
Have case I’m working up with another lawyer; four year old had a locker fall on him at daycare. Massive scar circumventing his forehead that cannot even be attempted to be revised until he’s 18. Anyway, we’ve deposed four witnesses from the daycare who were generally very sensitive and apologetic and generally good witnesses, though they totally gave us liability. Today we deposed a teacher who was not his regular teacher but who was in charge of him that day and sent him unattended and unsupervised to a set of lockers when the accident happened. She totally melted down, testified it was his (the four year olds) fault, he should have known better, etc. I’ve seen some bad shit in my time doing defense work, but she was the worst witness I’ve ever seen. After today I’m thinking we’re going to try this case if the offer is not at least 75% of available insurance.
demanding 75% of available coverage-that’s interesting, I’ve never thought of demands based on % of coverage
I’m curious who you’re going to work for. Feel free to PM. It has been 6 years since I was there but I had cases with most of those guys.
Best of luck to them getting a claims bill but the lead lawyer is a friend of mine. Really fun guy, all he does is try cases now.
Are there any personal injury lawyers on the board? If so who so I can shoot them a P.M or they could message me that would be great. TIA
Had 2 spanish speaking potential clients walk in last Wed when I was in a depo that had been in a horrendous wreck on the interstate. When asked how they got referred to us they said "Jose". Whoever you are Jose, I appreciate it.
Representing a litany of hispanic speaking clients at this point actually. A decent amount of workers' comp construction workers. A lot of times they get paid under the table by some sketchy outfit with no comp insurance and get screwed. Nothing I can do there. Sometimes I can get the general contractor on the hook. Have a case now where the guy is working for some sketchy dude (subcontractor) building a house but the general contractor was developing this whole neighborhood. The roof collapsed on this guy and he fell off the roof. He broke his femoral head and had to have it nailed. No one ever even attempted to start a comp claim for this poor dude. Got him a $17,500 settlement. Better than nothing.
Comp lawyers : have you ever seen a comp insurer pay back a health insurance plan because the health insurance plan paid for medical bills that comp should have paid for?
I have not, and our worker's compensation codes say that a health insurance plan doesn't get reimbursement for medical expenses from the comp carrier. That doesn't apply to rights of reimbursement to Medicare and Medicaid though due to federal law preemption.
Had a settlement once where the carrier denied a claim that they should have paid. Got a court order saying they were responsible for it. Patient had already paid tons of money out of pocket to multiple facilities. Carrier had to pay the facility and the facility had to refund her. Undoing that cobweb and getting her refunded was a nightmare.
Only time I’ve dealt with it my client was self insured for both so it was out of one pocket to the other. It’s an administrative nightmare especially when you start dealing with the comp fee schedule. or I’ve added language that says claimant responsible for any healthcare lien and included the bills paid in my settlement amount.
So a few months back, I got a judge to hold an unscrupulous individual in contempt during a nasty civil matter. Judge finds douche in contempt, and orders him to pay my client's attorneys fees of approximately $10,000 spent pursuing the contempt motion. However, Judge just tells him to pay what he can every month. Dude pays like $250 a month, going to take over 3 years. Underlying case settles, dude makes two or three more payments directly to client, but goes dark. Since the underlying case has been dismissed, wondering what to do...move for contempt again for not paying or, perhaps, asking the Court to reduce the unpaid fee award to judgment, let me go execute on his stuff. Thoughts?
THis happens all the time: contempt judgment is entered, the person still doesn't do what the judge ordered. I'd file another contempt motion, I think asking for it to be a lump sum is a good idea, and keep asking for more attorney fees. Could ask for him to be thrown in jail until he pays a purge amount.
Wife’s company just stuck an employment agreement in front of her that includes restrictive covenants. Wife’s company is also a client of the firm or was at one point. Reckon I need to brush off the rules of professional conduct before talking with the firm’s conflict committee. Any other suggestions are welcome.
Law school hypo: if an attorney’s spouse is presented with a contract the attorney knows is unenforceable, and the other party to the contract is a client of the attorney’s firm, can the attorney instruct its spouse to sign the unenforceable agreement?
how much time should we give defense counsel to reissue a check that was stolen in transit from wherever farmers issues checks to our office? we never received the check. everyone acknowledges the check was altered and fraudulently cashed by a third party (who is a multiple time felon). because my associate had been waiting for 6.5 months and i finally got involved and i am in the process of officially losing my shit. the only reason i can think of for farmers to not reissue the check is that if they think 1) someone from our office got the check and then gave it to someone to cash; or 2) their position is that if they money is not recovered that they don't owe us the settlement proceeds.
Currently in a Zoom mediation for what can best be described as a mini-MDL. Something like 25 different plaintiffs in separate cases that have been consolidated for discovery. It's been a complete administrative shit show just trying to get parties into their correct breakout rooms.
you have a patient client that will wait that long after a settlement without losing their shit. I have clients that would've fired me, fired the next lawyer, etc during that 6 month span if they still hadn't received their money
she is beginning to get unpatient. was $15k settlement so no one is getting a ton of $ but still annoying as f. def lawyer was like ok file it but we can't get sanctioned if we're making a good faith effort to resolve this. was like ok if you say so but i'm going to want to see what yall have done because it seems like jack shit.