Blogs

Are You A Fraud?

A potential client came into our office recently. He had told us over the phone about a very serious crash - a truck had hit him at a high rate of speed, crossed over many lanes of traffic and had finally come to rest against a barrier on the other side of the roadway. He described being at the hospital and undergoing many radiographic scans to determine his multiple injuries. As always, we asked him to bring photographs of his car (and his injuries if he had them), the police accident report, insurance information and whatever medical bills and records he had. He arrived in our office with pictures of his car that showed scant damage to a part of his car that did not in any way match his story.

It took about ten seconds and two questions for us to conclude that he was lying. Our question to him ("Do you really want to submit this claim to an insurance company?") resulted in his picking up his pictures and notes and leaving the office.

Lying -- to your lawyer, the insurance company, the doctor, the judge -- is the kiss of death to a personal injury claim. Exaggerating injuries and events is included in lying. It does no good. You will be found out. We work hard to get at the truth of every case we handle and we do not hesitate to fire clients when we find out they have lied to us.

Lawyers know how to deal with the truth, but we refuse to be on the side of people who do not tell us or their doctor or their insurance company the truth. If you have a legitimate case that is worth pursuing, there is no reason to lie about what happened or your injuries. No case is perfect. Let your lawyer have the truth so he or she can to make the best of the real facts.

Ambulance Chasers

Texas just passed a law that is designed to protect people from personal injury lawyers (and chiropractors) who contact injured people and tell them they may need to go to a chiropractor (even if they're not injured) and to hire a lawyer to help them get compensation for their injury.

I HATE reading stories like this.  Why?  Not because I'm a trial lawyer, and this story paints me with a really black and smelly brush, but because I'm a trial lawyer who doesn't lie to get clients and I still get painted with the black and smelly brush.  (In Virginia, lawyers are already prohibited from making direct contact with a person who has been injured.) 

We at Weiner, Rohrstaff & Spivey only represent people who have been seriously injured because of someone else's carlessness.  In fact, we will fire a client if we find out he or she has lied to us.

Near the end of the article there is important information:  The Texas Trial Lawyers Association joined in the effort to get the bill passed.  I spoke to an attorney in Texas who helped to get the law passed.  He said that unscrupulous lawyers and doctors were descending on injured people like locusts.  (Well, okay, that reference to locusts is mine.)  It had become a real problem, so the Texas TLA helped get a law passed that will make such high-pressure tactics a criminal offense.

I am currently president of the Virginia Trial Lawyers Association, and I am proud that another trial lawyers association stood up to do the right thing for the clients of trial lawyers who work every day for their clents.  I hate that there are crooked trial lawyers who take advantage of the injured who do not know their rights and who take advantage of the system.  They hurt their clients and other trial lawyers who are honest.  I work hard to be sure that people know that I am not an ambulance chaser.

In fact, I want to hear from anyone who was solicited by a trial lawyer while they were laid up in a hospital bed and were heavily medicated.  That's just wrong.