Delay is pernicious. For many lawyers, it is a bit of a sign of success. You are too busy to get to even your most important cases because there are fires to be fought on other cases. My clients don’t care that I am successful or that I am over busy or that I am working on someone else’s case. …
Patient Steals Operating Device from Operating Room
So, this is lawyer humor for when surgeons unintentionally leave surgical material behind in patients and stitch the patient up and send them home. Neither the patient nor the doctor realize that a sponge, clamp or other item was left inside the patient until the patient starts having pain in the area. Sometimes, the pain will not appear for months …
Judge Alito Gets Schooled By Sen. Markwayne Mullin
So, following hard on the heels of Judge Alito’s decision that Roe v. Wade was no good, our friends on the bench in the deep south just decided that fertilized embryos were also people. None other than esteemed meathead Sen. Markwayne Mullin, Republican of Oklahoma, quickly piped up that he and his wife had used IVF to have children and …
EXPERT WITNESSES / LAWYER WRITING
Every case of mine needs at least one expert witness because my client and I are not allowed to say that an arm was fractured or a herniated disc herniated without a doctor saying it. Them’s the rules. So, I spend a decent amount of time and effort reading the experts’ reports both from my side and the opposing side. …
WHAT MY CLIENTS GO THROUGH
I write a lot about the business of personal injury law. Today, I am going to write a little bit about things I don’t often write about and that is what my clients go through before and during their cases. Here are two examples: Sally is a new grandmother and very excited about her new role and spending time with …
Go/No GO
Deciding whether to file suit on a case is often just a business judgment on my end. Based on having done this for 20 year plus, is this a case that is worth putting into suit? Recently, I have had the difficult conversation with clients in two cases that simply did not make sense to put into suit. What does …
TRIAL NOTICES
When a case is getting close to trial, the Courts will let us know by sending out a trial notice. When I was a younger defense lawyer with an oversize volume of cases, this would start a panic at the office as we struggled to make sure everything was ready for Court. As a plaintiff’s lawyer, while trial notices are …
No Free Bites
Dog bite cases trouble insurance companies because it is very hard to question the dog about his motives. I say his because I have never had a female dog bite a person. I’m sure it happens all the time, but not in my case files. Dogs can do a lot of damage or a little damage depending on the dog …
COURT TRANSCRIPT
In the next week or so, I will be posting the three day bench trial transcript of a recent slip and fall trial I had. It should be on my website. This is a slip and fall case which occurred at a TSA checkpoint at PHL resulting in my client fracturing her knee and requiring surgery. Since both TSA …
The Client’s View of Value vs. The Lawyer’s View: Ne’er the twain shall meet?
Clients with strong cases know that they will get paid full value eventually. However, the majority of cases are ones that require some negotiation. Most cases have value or I would not take them, but we do take the plaintiff as we find them. So, a lot of clients who claim back pain from a car accident have prior back …