your holier than though attitude is gross. Just discussing a recent event from a legal perspective. Get over yourself. I have nothing to gain from it, not even remotely close to me geographically. I'm just noting that the facts are terrible for the defendants and likely would involve punitive damages.
I wouldn’t say anyone was salivating about it. We’re just discussing the legal possibilities surrounding a thing that happened, what people will be looking for/doing, etc. I mean when I saw the footage one of my first thoughts after getting over the likely loss of life was “some people are going to make a lot of fucking money off of whoever fucked that up.” Like it’s literally our job to have a brain that works this way.
There will never be pockets deep enough. It’s hard to imagine a cause where this shouldn’t end up with criminal liability.
That case will take three to five years to work up and will cost a significant amount to litigate. If Florida law is anything like Texas law, there will be dozens of legal outs for most of the Defendants based on the age of the structure, grandfathered building codes etc. No thanks.
I suspect there are a few firms with enough cash on hand that they can take the risk in order to: (1) get a just result for the victims; and (2) possibly get a lottery ticket win on fees.
I’m in it, and I get it. But, it is pretty awful to those who aren’t. Best case scenario. There are going to be a lot of entities in bankruptcy.
schedule a doctor depo for 4:30 today--i'm already pissed about that dude calls 2 minutes ago and cancels 90 minutes before the depo he cashed checks for $4,500 too. i'm about to go nuclear
called him and just said i hope he feels better he said he hadn't cashed the checks so i guess its all good we had to work for 3 months to get this scheduled
Federal judge just granted my motion regarding defendant’s ESI search and called the defendant’s response disingenuous. He gave them 10 days to provide responses. All while giving us a gigantic discovery extension of… oh we have 6 days after they provide responses to complete discovery.
Speaking of federal court, if they toss me on Motion to Dismiss or Motion for Summary Judgment on all those briefs I filed Monday, I'm going to have to appeal to the 5th Circuit because I think I'm on the right side of the law and I have $40k into it
if they had removed this case from anywhere other than dekalb county I wouldn’t be upset. But the guy who had the case before me forgot to sue the fucking manager and now I have to fight for the $6mm instead of them just giving it to me. the judge has set them up for sanctions with this order though. It’s just a lot of extra work in a short period of time.
case in point: just called a lady to go over a settlement with her. i thought it was a husband and wife because one of them had a weird name. asked if her husband was around and she said that she had the weird name and the other person in the wreck was her mother. oops
Had a client give me a 1 star review on google and in the review said she was suing me. That was posted at 11:52PM Friday night. Great way to wake up on Saturday morning I sent her settlement check by certified mail in March and she didn't sign for it or go to the post office and get it and she had the tracking info on it. And she never called me or emailed me to say she never got it. And she has my cell! I used to text her during her claim. Then today she said she was going to take the review down she just did that to get me to fix the problem
Won an appeal last week and reversed a grant of summary judgment for the other side. They pretty much tracked exactly what I said in my brief, even copying and pasting once or twice. Horrible injuries with a $1mm policy at stake, too, so it was a big win.
Pretty wild facts in that one. I thought for certain he was going to have been blown up when reading it.
Yeah, they're certainly unusual. This case is how I learned how backwoods and corrupt the timber business is.
I know exactly which one you're talking about. I normally skim, but after the first few paragraphs I had to see how the facts section ended at least. That's one you know isn't going to go well when it starts talking him hot wiring his work vehicle using a foot long piece of exposed wire.
And they threw in that he had a lighter in his hand, which I guess was a red herring. When I saw that, I was like “oh shit, boy’s about to blow this thing up!”
Yeah, when that didn't cause it to blow, I just assumed that I don't completely understand the process of hot wiring.
Man I hope Zoom mediations are the norm going forward, especially for cases that don't have a chance for nuclear exposure. Rather than sitting in a room with an adjuster who doesn't want to be there any more than I do, we can just sit muted on Zoom, get other stuff done, but still be on call for mediation and talk to the mediator as necessary. For seven-figure/death cases, in-person attendance makes sense. But that's only a handful of cases.
I'm all for zoom, but I feel like the in-person mediations can be more persuasive to the plaintiff. I've heard the same from several good mediators, too.
Judges down here in South Florida are trying to clear dockets by ordering cases to non-binding arbitration and mediation, often with the same person acting as mediator and arbitrator. It’s fucked up because they do the mediation part first and ask for a confidential mediation statement in advance. If the case doesn’t settle, you arbitrate either that same day or very shortly thereafter as if the arbitrator can magically erase what he heard at mediation. On the defense I never win these non-binding arbitrations because they know that if I object to the result it functions like a proposal for settlement should the plaintiff beat the award by 25% at trial. Most recently, I had one where during the mediation I got into a shouting match with plaintiffs’ counsel because he was a complete dick to me and my client. Later on the client dropped a bunch of F bombs during a private caucus with the mediator and basically told him to fuck off. Needless to say, I wasn’t optimistic about my chances at arbitration. Fast forward a few months and we have the arbitration with the same guy. Lo and behold, he gives me a defense verdict and wrote a scathing finding of fact section ripping the plaintiff’s case and expert.
That sounds like an incredibly stupid way to resolve things. Why not order everything to non-binding arbitration first, and then mediation?
Absolutely. Just did that with a multi-Plaintiff case. I took my most difficult Plaintiffs in person so that they could hear from the mediator themselves face to face. Made a huge difference.
Any of you Houston guys know the firm Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner? I received a certified envelope from them today, but it is addressed to some other guy. Figured might be worth shouting out since we have so many Houston boys
For anyone who hasn’t listened to me on calling on old geico cases 1. two clients, denied liability because of ~$500 in property damage. They just offered us $60k limits 2. an uninsured claim with $300 in property damage and client with fibromyalgia. They just offered $80,000 call now
update: the defense lawyer has now asked for an extension to give me the emails because "I sent him the search terms faster than he thought I would"
Wow my case where the lady trips over the exposed cables at the hotel got tossed on a MSJ. Gonna have to do an appeal now. I feel pretty good about getting it reversed.