Also I have a case where my client is insured by progressive and the adverse driver was insured by progressive. Progressive assigned the same adjuster to both claims. I.e. my client's adjuster is also the adjuster for the at fault party. They are calling it a "dual loss." Never heard of that. Isn't that a conflict of interest? Is it bad faith?
Not sure how it works where you are but in Florida the landowner has a non-delegable duty. They can contract that duty to a third party but remain responsible. They can third party in that contractor if they want to or pursue an indemnification claim later. Also, Florida is pretty liberal with pleadings so if the issue had been litigated the courts will say there isn’t any prejudice.
Some federal courts in , for instance, Virginia, have allowed grocery stores to claim they delegated duty to maintain and inspect to a 3rd party, and thus granted motion to dismiss. But I think this is the exception not the rule. And it is very dependent on the contract language between the premises owner and independent contractor too.
Got a new case yesterday, spoke with the adjuster this morning to go over basic facts, damages, authority. She says we have $35K on it, would be great if you can get it done at that. Pick up the phone and call Plaintiff's lawyer, cut thru the b/s, he calls the client and it settles for $35K -- less than 24 hours after receiving the file. My partner is on "vacation" this week, but has been monitoring emails all week. After the settlement email, he writes me, "we haven't even gotten the claims file yet, you need to slow down and evaluate, we could've saved the client some money." translated, "I know you got our client the exact result they wanted, but we weren't able to bill anything on this file."
Everyone has to eat. I appreciate it when things work out this easily but I don't mind working up a file either. So long as when it comes to pay time they have it evaluated correctly. I had a minor defendant I called and told I wanted 50k from him. We went back and forth several times and he finally said "can we do 43k so I look good for the client?" Pretty stupid.
Former Progressive Employee here: yes, that’s absolutely against company policy and this was viewed as bad faith in all the training classes I went to as a new hire, along with when I was a rep and as Team Leader. This was covered yearly in our State Legal training classes. In fact, what typically happens is 1 rep handles party A’s file in the local office and another rep in another state with different leadership handles party B’s claim. Progressive then locks both claims to where only the rep assigned to the claim and the TL have access so no other party can access claim notes/injury information, etc.
I want to see how long she will let this go on for. My client heard the adjuster saying that my client was just trying to get money (adjuster thought she had my client on hold). Client claims the adjuster has been super rude to her.
Got a new trucking case a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, suit was filed soon after we got the file. Didn't have time to try to settle pre-suit. I reach out to the insured company and its driver (our clients) to ask if they've been served. Had a long call with the insured truck driver, who vented about the accident and the "faking" plaintiff. I listened to his BS for 15 minutes and then told him to call me if he got served. Circled back this week with both. No service on the company yet. Call the insured driver Wednesday. Right to voicemail twice in a row. Call back today, he answers. Before I can get a word in, he says, IF YOU KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU WILL LOSE MY NUMBER AND NEVER CALL ME BACK AGAIN. He hangs up before I can speak. Gonna be a fun one. He still works for the insured company, so hopefully they can talk sense into him.
this is not uncommon. As a plaintiff lawyer I've dealt with several truck drivers that have been like this per the defense lawyer. Freaked the fuck out about service and were dicks.
Definitely don’t think it is rare. Was honestly just hilarious to me after he hung up without letting me say anything.
Annoy meh. Client would have inevitably dinged your hours for wasting a bunch of time when you had the authority to settle the whole time. Your partner reminds me of my old one. No matter what never happy. Get the fuck out and switch to the other side
I’ve told the wife to start looking for a new job because she may get fired after they see the redline I send back in response
If any of yall practice or have experience in family/divorce law can you shoot me a PM? I'm in TN but just have a pretty general question so I would think state might not matter too much.
Meh, I get that law firms are a business and need to make money in order to survive. And I'm farrrr from an idealist. But is our job to achieve the best possible result for our client, or to "work up" a file so the mid-level adjuster, desk adjuster, paralegal, millions of middle-men involved in insurance defense "eat?"
Filed a 35 page memo in opposition to summary judgment and a 32 page memo in opposition to motion to dismiss today. Worked on them all weekend. You get 14 days to answer once they file here. I'm spent.
Venue made this case. I’ve just had a dry spell in new accident cases coming in lately. So I needed a pick me up.
My favorite part was that one of the Defendants filed an Accountability Act claim against me. Cashing his check will be sweet.
Have a jury trial in a premises case in like 20 days. Did my 2nd focus group on the case yesterday. The offer is $150k. Focus group though the case was worth from $50k-$225k with most coming back right around $150k. Client doesn't want to take the $150k.
It's a really bad displaced hip fracture with $85k in medicals. I'm going to focus group it again and not tell them the amount of medical bills and see if they come back with bigger numbers. I think the meds might be anchoring me down.
hotel replaces floors in all of the rooms from carpet to vinyl. they have to remove the metal threshold in connecting rooms as part of that process. the threshold covers cable tv and data cables. they forgot to recover the threshold in the room my client stayed in. fast forward like 6 months and my client and her family were staying in connecting rooms. for most of the stay , the family left the interior connecting door closed so no one had an opportunity to see the exposed cables.. right before they left someone opened it to get between the rooms. my client walked through the door and her foot got caught in exposed cables. fell , displaced hip fracture, they were worried that she wouldn't get blood supply to the hip and would develop avascular necrosis so they had to do immediate hip replacement surgery then she had to do like 40 PT visits. Treating ortho said MMI was one year post incident.
yah the focus groups have put most of the blame on the hotel. I'm expecting 25% comparative fault on our lady.
I have a friend that does them via zoom and lets me have one hour so I pay him $200 for an hour. So I've done 2 of them for this case, 2 hrs of time, $400. I'm going to start just doing them myself soon but this is pretty convenient for now. We do them once a month. I just do one case during that one hour block. Never 2. I focus group any of my cases that are going to trial and I focus group any of my bigger damages cases.
How old is your client? Do you have testimony of the likelihood of failure and need for a replacement? She might have been at MMI a year later but that doesn't mean she's done with it.
treating doc doesn't think she's going to need another replacement. She was 58 y.o. when it happened. He doesn't think she needs any future medical treatment. She recovered really well given how bad this injury is. She's a hard worker. That's part of our theme. She wanted to get better and worked really hard to get better. She's just a little slower now. She's a house keeper and she can't clean houses as quickly. We didn't make a wage loss claim because she gets paid cash.
if you have a bunch of decently old geico cases in lit call and ask if any of them have been reviewed by a special team. i just got a call from a lady who looked at 8 of our cases and i settled 3 and she is going to try to do 2 more tomorrow after she reviews them
also i've settled like 8 cases today just by looking in our system and pulling up recent offers and picking up the phone. used to know every single case i had and now that i don't shit like that happens since my staff doesnt really gaf about getting $ in the door
I just sat through a deposition of a dude wearing a Rolex and driving a Mercedes who didn’t put his insurance carrier on notice when one employee backed a truck into another one three years ago. I represent the UIM carrier and got brought in by amendment a couple of weeks ago. Defendant’s lawyer had previously told me they didn’t have any insurance, but he just testified that he had both commercial vehicle and a CGL policy. I told his lawyer that he needs to call the agent as soon as we get out and then probably his own malpractice carrier.
Starnes. I told him at the very beginning that he wasn’t the target, and that if he wouldn’t fight, it wouldn’t hurt as bad. But whatever. This isn’t Shelby County my friend. Toto, we’re not in Kansas anymore.
That condo that collapsed in Miami killing 1 person and 99 ppl are missing: if there were deep pockets, would be a hell of a lawsuit. Sounds like they knew there were problems with the foundation and the earth beneath the condo.
The victims have deep pockets and the owner of the building certainly has deep pockets. It’s going to be one hell of a lawsuit
I know it is. But it’s stuff like this my old firm does. Catastrophe losses. I know for a fact they’ve already mobilized and that’s with a high likelihood they have friends in the building.
it's not gross. it is our profession. discussing the legal ramifications of an event doesn't mean that our hearts can't go out to the victims.
what's gross would be knowing that a building has problems and doing nothing and then having it collapse and kill or seriously injure tons of people.
salivating over the prospect of deep pockets is, indeed, gross. That’s quite the straw man. And it’s also indicative of why the post was gross; the legal/regulatory issues exist regardless of the ability to recover from any tortfeasors.