October 2nd, 2008

Personal Injury Lawyers Rattled by Insurance Woes

There is an article out today at LawyersUSA (Insurance industry woes rattle personal injury lawyers) in which I am quoted a bit. I had written previously about how the problems on Wall Street might affect the personal injury bar. (See, Wall Street Meltdown and Personal Injury Law.)

But in addition to the problems of insurance companies going belly-up, causing delays or worse in cases getting resolved (and forcing lawyers to carry the expenses even longer than they otherwise would), another problem also exists. The tightening credit market will likely effect the ability of personal injury lawyers to fund cases. If lawyers can’t get a line of credit from the bank — not because the attorney isn’t creditworthy but due to panic and fear in general — it means that they have to get funding from lawyer funding companies that charge outrageous interest rates.

But where to those lawyer funding companies get the money from, even if you agree to pay the high interest rates?

Hard times are ahead for the personal injury bar if the lawyers don’t have their financing already lined up for their cases. And even if they do, people will now have to worry if that financing contracts or disappears altogether.

 

September 24th, 2008

Bush: Bad Companies Should Be Allowed To Fail

Hypocrisy again. Addressing the nation just a few minutes ago, George Bush claimed this as a long held belief:

I believe that companies that make bad decisions should be allowed to go out of business.

He made this claim as part of an argument to modify his position on allowing failure, because some financial institutions are basically too big to go under. But contrary to his argument, this wasn’t a change at all. In fact, asserting it was a change seems more like a flat out falsehood.

You see, each time his administration stepped forward for tort “reform” over the years, it was to do exactly the opposite: To protect companies from their negligence or bad decisions. Artificial one-size-fits-all caps on damages, for example. Administrative agencies trying to preempt state tort law, as another example. Trying to curtail punitive damages for the worst of the worst, as a third.

Tonight’s speech, of course, will be analyzed by others regarding the financial crisis we are in, the amounts that should be allocated to rescue giant financial institutions, the powers that should be granted, etc. I doubt that few will dwell on this one sentence that jumped out at me while he spoke.

But Bush’s claim that he believes companies that make mistakes should be allowed to fail is just not true. He has protected them in the past. Today’s bail out proposal may be a deviation from his alleged political philosophy, but it doesn’t deviate from his past conduct. And at least one person noticed.

 

September 23rd, 2008

Linkworthy


Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. And that’s a good thing. Two weekends ago I ran in the 210 mile Reach the Beach Relay in New Hampshire. This past weekend I threw a suprise party for my wife (that was a huge surprise, when she found out three days in advance). And next weekend I am organizing the inaugural running of the Paine to Pain 1/2 Marathon trail race here in Westchester.

In playing blog catch-up, these are some of the things that caught my eye with interest:

Scott Greenfield doesn’t mind the huge federal bail out of Wall Street, but he wants something in return;

An intentional running down of pedestrians is an accident for insurance purposes, rules a New York appellate court (No-Fault Paradise);

Kevin Underhill summarizes the legislation giving the Treasury $700B to spend as they choose with no oversight;

David Newdorf says litigation is like running a marathon, at law.com. My question: How did this guy get inside my head and how do I get rid of him?

TortsProf has the 9/19/08 edition of the Personal Injury Law Round-Up;

Blawg Review #178 comes up from down under, which follows, naturally, Blawg Review #177 (in case you weren’t around, like me, and want to see what folks were talking about last week).

 

September 22nd, 2008

"Metrolink Train Attoneys" Appear (And What If It Happened in New York?)

The Los Angeles Metrolink train accident that killed 25 people and injured over 100 others seems to have brought out the worst in a few attorneys, with ads and website popping up to advertise for victims. As reported by Kevin O’Keefe, even YouTube ads have been popping up.

It was exactly this type of disaster in New York that led to new ethics rules. In 2003, the Staten Island Ferry crashed, killing 10 people. And while victims were still being pulled from the wreckage, some lawyers had already contacted the Staten Island Advance in order to place ads for the next day’s papers. Thus was born New York’s new attorney advertising rules (some of which are being constitutionally challenged).

Regardless of whether any one particular rule is constitutional or not, one thing is clear: That those lawyers that leap after cases in such a fashion do a great disservice to the profession. The few who do this make the rest look bad.

Those seeking counsel for such an incident — indeed for any kind of incident — should avoid such people at all costs. They have merely shown that they have advertising moxie to get noticed, and bad taste in what they have done.