Originally Posted by
Mission146
In general terms, do you guys think that maybe, "Ambulance chasers," take more shit than they really deserve? If you have someone who is injured as a result of accident or negligence, then they probably often have a lot going on with trying to recover and will often have plenty of financial problems in the meantime.
I don't know if any of you guys have ever filed anything in court, but there's no question that there is a place for those kind of attorneys if the injured is going to have any great chance of success. I don't even think it's a matter of not being able to prove their case, but more along the lines of not wanting to get their case tossed on some sort of procedural grounds, and also the injured party isn't really going to have much of an idea of what is or is not a reasonable settlement amount.
I represented the hotel I used to manage on a few things in small claims court and I can say that there's really a lot of procedural stuff you have to look into if you're even going to do that right. I can't speak for other states, but in the state of this hotel, any person can act as the representative for the business in small claims, but I believe there would have to be an attorney if it was of an amount to be a common pleas court case.
Florida appears to be a hotbed of these guys with 50% of the commercials on the morning news (yea I’m old) from personal injury lawyers including many National firms with offices here. They all show claims of $750,000, $1.5M wins and other victories in bold with some people shouting how they got them the money.
However in the fine print it shows what the client actually received. On a $500,000 victory the client actually received $211,000 after attorney fees and costs. So less than 50% of the award.
We can argue the “good” these people do for “victims” but the reality is they only take the cases they feel they can win, and win big on from people that in most cases can’t afford a lawyer so they give up more than half the money. And in the end everyone of us pays for it in the form of higher insurance rates and cost of goods.
Not saying there is isn’t some people out there that got screwed over in an accident but these guys have the shitty reputation they do for a reason. And the name “ambulance chasers” didn’t come out of thin air.
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