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Personal injury lawyer for wrongful death and dog bite in San Francisco |
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I SETTLED MY OWN CASE AND PAID NO ATTORNEY FEES!
I just thought I'd let you know that I didn't hire a lawyer for my 17
year old son's injury case, and settled it for a Half a Million
Dollars. A drunk who was driving a moving van hit him, rendering him a
paraplegic. The drunk even got convicted of a felony DUI for this. I
submitted the $100,000 in medical bills to the adjuster with a demand
for a million, and settled for $500,000. So sorry you lawyers didn't
get your hooks into his money!
I’m so sorry that your bias against hiring a wrongful death attorney
cost your son so much. It's too late for you, but I'll list ten
reasons why this was a BIG mistake, so that other people might make a
better choice.
1. Average jury verdicts for this type of case in California
are much higher than that.
2. Did you know before settling this case that your HMO or
health insurer had a legal lien against your son's settlement? How
much did you have to pay the health insurer or HMO to reimburse them
for the medical bills they paid? Probably the full $100,000. A skilled
attorney could probably have structured it so they got less or even
nothing.
3. A serious case like this is almost always assigned to a more
senior insurance claims adjuster. What are the odds that the drunk's
claims adjuster hasn't picked up any skill or tricks in 30 years of
protecting his employer's purse? How did your claims experience
compare?
4. Based on your last sentence, I would assume that you also
shared with the drunk's insurance adjuster your feelings about
attorneys. This would have been music to his ears. No doubt he agreed
and even told you that you didn't need a lawyer, but what he likely
wrote down in your file was "Will never hire a lawyer." Perhaps you
thought that conversation created some "bond" with the adjuster that
would benefit you. Consider this: did he probably discourage hiring an
attorney to benefit you or the company that pays his salary and
promotes him?
5. My guess is that you picked $1,000,000 as your first demand
because this was the policy limit. An experienced attorney would have
gotten the firm's balance sheet and made demands against their assets
as well as their insurance, since the driver was most likely on the
job and the company is responsible for his negligence over and above
the insurance limits.
6. It is likely that the insurance adjuster threw some claimed
"exclusion" from insurance coverage at you, claiming that probably no
insurance is applicable for your accident. He may even have mailed you
a clipped excerpt from the policy taken out of context to back it up.
An experienced attorney might have laughed at this, but a layman would
probably lower his demand in the belief that if they pressed this
"exclusion", you'd get nothing. Common ploy.
7. It's unlikely you saved any money by not paying attorney
fees. If an attorney would have gotten over a million for this claim,
even with a 25% contingency fee, you'd have netted roughly $750,000
instead of the $400,000 you probably got after medical liens.
8. You only mentioned sending the adjuster the medical bills.
You probably did not hire an economist to project your son's income
losses through age of retirement; nor a medical expert to estimate
future cost of medical care, nor the cost of special equipment for the
rest of his life, nor a psychiatrist to write a report on the
emotional impact. This can be expensive, but some or all of this may
be well worth the investment. Most people having suffered a tragedy
like this do not have tens of thousands to spend on such claim
development. An attorney advances these expenses as part of the
service for which he earns his fee. No doubt the adjuster pointed out
the uncertainty of your son's future losses to bargain you down, but
I’ll wager he did NOT suggest how to remedy this defect.
9. The adjuster's job is not to cradle you in his "good hands".
His job is to dispose of your claim for as little money as possible.
10. I'll bet you didn't know that by law, you were entitled to
collect all your attorney fees from the drunk to pay for the cost of
suing him. For this reason, you probably gained nothing by not hiring
an attorney.
These ten points are the tip of the ice berg. There is virtually no
death or very serious injury case that should be handled without an
experienced attorney's help.
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