Legal Service

1. Lawsuits seek to compensate you for your injuries.

a. They compensate you for:

i. Your lost wages, and your future lost wages,

ii. Your medical expenses, both past and future, and

iii. Your pain and the suffering it caused in the past, and for the future

2. Lawsuits do not directly seek to harm anyone’s reputation.

3. A doctor who is sued will not lose their medical license if the lawsuit is successful.

4. A lawsuit attempts to compensate the injured victim, and at the same time, try to ensure that the same type of bad treatment is not repeated in another patient.

5. “A lawsuit is not a lottery.”

a. This phrase is often used by defense attorneys during jury selection to remind jurors that their job is not simply to allow the injured victim to ‘hit it big’ and award huge amounts of unjustified money.

b. A more realistic approach to a lawsuit is for reasonable, full and fair compensation to allow you to recover all of your past and future expenses, and all of your past and future pain and suffering compensation.

6. You don’t have to pay any money upfront to an attorney to handle your case. There is no ‘hourly fee’.

a. Medical Malpractice and injury cases are generally handled on contingency.

b. That means that the attorney fee depends upon you winning your case. If you lose, the attorney loses as well, and receives no fee.

c. The expenses that the attorney pays to prosecute your case are technically supposed to be repaid by the client in the event the case is lost. However, as a personal matter, I have never asked a client to reimburse me for my expenses if I lose a case. It just doesn’t make sense to do so, and in my personal opinion, it’s bad business. However, some attorneys do require this, so make sure you ask first before you make your decision.

7. Not every attorney has the same experience.

a. Ask your attorney how many years they’ve been in practice,

b. Ask the attorney what percentage of medical malpractice or accident cases he handles compared to other types of cases,

c. Ask whether he/she tries cases in the Supreme Court (it’s the trial level court for New York,

d. Ask whether he’s ever lost a case;

i. If he tries cases, and claims he’s never lost a case…I’d suggest either that the attorney is not being accurate, or simply only accepts clear-cut cases that he cannot lose- that’s extremely rare.

ii. The majority of trial attorneys will have lost a case from time to time. Unfortunately, it’s the nature of the beast.

e. Ask whether the attorney you meet with will be the one handling your case on a day to day basis. If not, who will be your attorney? Whom will you call with questions? How quickly will the attorney call me back? How often can you expect to receive correspondence from the attorney about the status of your case?

8. A lawsuit takes time to come to a conclusion.

a. The average time is 2-3 years from start to finish.

9. How often do I have to come into the attorney’s office during this time?

a. Once to meet the attorney in an initial meeting,

b. Once to sign documents that start your lawsuit (often this can be done by mail),

c. Once to have your deposition (where you are asked questions by the other side’s attorney),

d. At least once to prepare you for trial, and sometimes two or three additional times to prepare you.

10. As in life, there are no guarantees to winning. However, with good experienced counsel and thorough preparation, you stand a much better chance of being fully informed about your prospects and achieving a good result.

In some cases, insurance companies may offer a settlement before trial. Sometimes, in an effort to resolve the case, as an incentive they will offer an amount of money that is acceptable to the injured victim. But, in some instances, the insurance company wants an assurance that the terms of the settlement are not revealed.

They do this for two reasons. Neither one of which is out of the goodness of their heart. The first reason is that they don’t want publicity associated with a settlement. Publicity about an insurance company paying money to an injured victim is never good for them especially since they earn their money by KEEPING their money, not giving it away.

Second, is that other attorneys with similar cases will never learn that the insurance company paid out a certain amount is a specific type of case. So, when the next lawyer tries to negotiate a case with the insurance company, he or she won’t be able to say “You paid ‘x’ dollars on the Jones case, so therefore you have to pay at least that amount on this case.”

Sometimes, the only way an insurance company will offer such a settlement is on the condition that the terms of the agreement be confidential. Otherwise, there might be no settlement, and the case would proceed to trial.

A client might be willing to agree to this restriction if it were in their best interests. Some clients want to publicize the damage and injuries they suffered as well as any compensation they received for their injuries. In that instance a confidential settlement agreement would not be advisable.