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25 Legal Med. Q. 1 (2001)
Handling a Personal Injury Case from Start to Finish

handle is hein.journals/medquar16 and id is 3 raw text is: Handling A Personal Injury Case From Start To Finish Andrew D Myers Personal injury law is not for the weak hearted. Nor is it for the anyone who walks in the door practitioner. Personal injury work is a rewarding and profitable practice area for the attorney who makes a conscious decision to select such work as one class of cases that will be handled aggressively and with constant attention. You are not paranoid. The insurance companies really are out to get plaintiffs at every level. Un- daunted by congressional defeat of national no fault legislation, the insurance companies once filed a new bill on the same day that another appeared doomed to fail., Some insurance companies have adopted inter- nal policies with the stated goal to discourage low impact auto claims by making it virtually financially impossible for a claimant in such a case to obtain rep- resentation.2 One insurance company with such a policy was found guilty in US District Court in Vir- ginia for ethics violations after sending brochures to claimants discouraging them from hiring attorneys.3 Insurance companies are more likely than ever be- fore to spy on personal injury claimants, and in one documented case conducted 190 hours of surveillance, recording actions of the plaintiff for 19 days and vid- eotaping a good portion of her activities.4 Attorneys need not give up in disgust. Despite the abuse, a Superior Court jury awarded the spied- upon plaintiff in the above-mentioned case $180,000. Thoughtful personal injury attorneys who throw the stone straight and with calculation have a better shot at slaying Goliath. Screen Cases. Accepting any case that walks in the door will clog any law office with interminable mounds of paperwork as claims adjusters and de- fense attorneys aggressively kick away at bad cases. There will be less time and energy to focus on better cases. Be selective. Of course, the attorney cannot reject every case, waiting for a client with perfect liability and tremendous damages. There is a workable middle ground. There are factors to consider in determin- ing whether to accept a case. The potential client with a number of prior ac- cidents is a candidate for screening. On the other Andrew D Myers is a 1989 graduate of Suffolk Law School and practices civil litigation with a concentration on personal injury law and small business representation. His office is located in North Andover, Massachusetts and his email ad- dress is legalauthority@aol.com. hand, an injured person with a good work record, or a background as a stay-at-home child caregiver will be more attractive. A potential client that pre- sents well holds more promise. A claims adjuster who meets with your client to take a statement must be sold that this is a truly likeable and believable person. If you do not settle, the client will have to win over a judge and/or jury. A second set of factors to review when con- sidering a new case involves a close analysis of liability. For example, in all auto claims, the client will need to draw a clear diagram. As a bare mini- mum, the client must be able to give a credible ex- planation of what happened and how it happened. If the attorney does not understand how the acci- dent happened the first time through, chances are a jury will have similar trouble. The attorney should not have to dig around for the truth. Slip And Fall Cases. Slip and fall cases must be viewed with the same skepticism that the insur- ance company and jury will have. The injured plain- tiff must show that the defendant property owner breached its duty because it should have noticed whatever hazard caused the fall, and then should have taken reasonable steps to eliminate the dan- ger.5 The problem is that, if the premises owner should have noticed the defect, whether a grape on the floor or a piece of broken cement in the sidewalk, shouldn't the plaintiff have noticed it too? Challenges posed in such cases must be ad- dressed with a liability theory that starts the day the client first walks in the door. The uneven ce- ment is not obvious to a patron unfamiliar with the terrain because the two-inch gap in the cement is hidden by shadows or washed out by bright lights. The customer is not aware that a defective freezer unit is dripping water across the floor. Only the owner, who is there every day, could know about, and be held legally responsible, for such hazards. Question the client's observations. Queries in- clude the color of the floor, the material it was made of, the type of shoes being worn, the lighting, weather, and whether the area was crowded.6 The more of these questions a new client can answer, the better advocate they will be. The fewer of these questions they can answer, and the more they try to change the subject when you are asking, the less likelihood the case is viable. LEGAL MEDICAL QUARTERLY/Volume 25 Parts I & 2 2001/1

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