Had a new client in late last week. He had been hit by a State Farm insured in a car accident. He has a mild brain injury and suffered orthopedic injuries.

Know why he called a lawyer?

He tells me that’s it is because, just after his accident, he was contacted by a State Farm adjuster who told him that ‘its lots better just to deal with me [the adjuster] directly, that way we can just cut out the lawyer’s fee altogether.

Client was smart enough to smell a rat. He had not even thought that he might need a lawyer till the claims rep told him to avoid seeing one!

You may be able to settle you case without a lawyer. Its usually not very smart (I was going to write “it’s usually pretty dumb”) to settle you case without at least speaking to a lawyer and becoming as educated as you can about the claims process.

Is the insurance company outright lying to you (such as “if you don’t send us your form we are closing your file and you won’t be able to claim anything”) or are they “forgetting” to tell you things you may be entitled to [an insurance company will never tell you that Virginia law says that you may be entitle to punitive damages if the person who hit you was drunk.]

Do yourself a favor. If you’ve been hurt in Virginia while in a car accident, at the very least  read The Ultimate Guide to Virginia Car Accident Cases. 

This is a tragic situation which will cause the court to take another look at Virginia’s low cap on medical malpractice damages. (See, Why Most Malpractice Victims Never Recover a Dime.)

Less than three years ago, Susan Anne Catherine Torres’ birth made medical history after she was delivered by a mother who was brain-dead and kept on life support in order to sustain the pregnancy.

Now a medical malpractice suit that was filed against one of the mother’s doctors has raised legal questions regarding the degree to which the obligations and liabilities of a doctor in treating a pregnant woman also extend to the unborn child.

Jason Torres, Susan Anne’s father and Susan Michelle Torres’ husband, filed suit a year ago in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria. He seeks damages of $15 million against Walter Dixon, the emergency-room physician who treated Susan Michelle at Inova Alexandria Hospital in 2005.

The suit alleges that not only is Dixon responsible for the death of the mother, he is also responsible for the baby’s death. The child died five weeks after birth due to complications from premature delivery.

Torres alleges that the symptoms indicating a more serious problem were dismissed by the doctor as “morning sickness.” The symptoms included memory lapses in which Susan Michelle was unable to recognize her husband sitting right beside her, which a nurse witnessed. According to Torres’ attorney, bleeding on the brain would have been revealed through further tests.

The same day Susan Michelle was discharged, she fell into a coma from a brain hemorrhage caused by melanoma and never regained consciousness. She was around 14 weeks pregnant at the time. She was kept on life support for three months and Susan Anne Catherine Torres was born 13 weeks prematurely. Susan Michelle was removed from life support and died the next day.

On April 14, Virginia state police reported three deaths due to personal injuries received in car accidents on the state’s roads.

On April 12, 23-year-old Lawrenceville resident Latoya Hardy died at the scene of a Brunswick County crash. According to police, she was driving her car north on Route 603 when it ran off the right side of the road and she over corrected, causing it to go off the left side of the road into a ditch. The vehicle then overturned and ejected her. According to police, she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt.

Police also reported the death of 27-year-old Palmyra resident James Poole on April 11 at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville after a Fluvanna County crash on April 6.

According to police, Poole was driving his car east on Route 6 when it crossed the center line and struck a westbound SUV. Police said he was wearing his seatbelt.

On April 7, 62-year-old Sperryville James Johnson died at Fairfax Inova Hospital after a Rappahannock County crash on April 2. Johnson was traveling west on U.S. 211 when his car ran off the left side of the road, overturning several times, according to state police. Police say he was wearing his seatbelt.

Those three fatalities brought the total number of road deaths in Virginia in 2008 to 218, compared to 242 at the same time in 2007.

This is a question that we get several times a month. Someone will have ordered our free book on Virginia Car Accidents read it but hire another lawyer. Sometimes they read it after hiring another lawyer.

Then they want to switch lawyers.

We have a strict criteria. We will not accept any case where you have already hired another lawyer to represent you.

Why?

1. We like to do things “our way.” In the past, when we did accept these sort of cases, we usually had to clean up a mess.

2. It’s a headache. Usually the lawyer you are firing wants to charge you some sort of a “lien” for her time. That’s fair, but its a headache. People were expecting that we would reduce our fee to account for the money to be paid the fired lawyer.

3. We don’t need to. Each day we field inquiries from many people who want to read our books, find out more about us, or hire us. We like to get cases when they are ‘fresh.’ Taking over someone else’s case is just not something that we need to do.

What’s the exception? We do accept cases that have been referred by other lawyers. The other lawyer may have done some work collecting records, etc, or that lawyer may be from out of state. The exception to this rule is that we don’t accept any cases last minute. If the reason for the referral is that the lawyer can’t settle the case and is panicking all of a sudden because Virginia’s 2-year statute of limitations is upon them, we don’t get involved.

I’ve developed a quick, six question survey on consumer attitudes about lawyer advertising.

Click here if you’d like to help us look at the question of lawyer advertising. 

Question: I visited a Virginia personal injury attorney near Tyson’s Corner for a free consultation recently about my car accident case. I had not seen a doctor as the accident only happened recently.

This lawyer had a huge wall of business cards of doctors, physical therapists and chiropractors on his conference room table. He told me he could set me up on referral and I wouldn’t need to pay anything up front to visit one of these health care professionals, the money would come out of my settlement later.

What do you think about this idea?

Response:

Beware of any lawyer who has a stable of chiropractors, doctors or therapists to refer you to. This is a recipe for disaster.

Local Fairfax judges call this “service” the kiss of death to a claim. (One long-time attorney was disbarred because he referred clients to a chiropractor and then told his clients to lie about the referral when asked in deposition.) He got caught big time.

The problem with a lawyer to doctor referral is that jurors are highly suspicious of lawyers and doctors who have a referral relationship. While the client may not know how many of that lawyer’s clients have been referred in the last 12 months to a particular doctor, you can bet that the insurance company knows it or will find out about it. How credible do you think that doctor’s testimony will be when the jury finds out that he treated 50 patients from the same lawyer last year?

Are there exceptions to this rule? Yes, there are.

You may have a very special need for a doctor with a special expertise. It is perfectly legitimate for the attorney to make that suggestion/recommendation. If every client, though, is getting referred to the same chiropractor or the same orthopedist, then that is a huge problem. (So beware of the attorney who has a stack of doctor/chiropractor cards in his office. You need to ask the right questions and fully understand the business relationship, if any, between that attorney and the doctor.)

I spoke to a nice lady earlier this week who was the victim of a drunk driver and has suffered some pretty significant orthopedic injuries.  Already her medical bills exceed $50,000.00.  The defendant has minimal insurance and the potential client has underinsured motorist coverage to only $50,000.00.  Of course the employer’s health benefit plan wants to get all of its money back. 

The overwhelming likelihood is that his lady will recover nothing for her injuries.  Of course this is “not fair” but it is entirely preventable.  She had a choice and could have bought uninsured motorist coverage up to $1,000,000.00.  This type of coverage is cheap and in fact it’s one of the best deals on the market.  For probably another $100.00 to $200.00 a year in insurance premiums she would have been fully protected against this dirt bag who hit her.  Instead her health benefit plan will be repaid, she will continue to suffer and she will likely see little or nothing out of this case for her pain and suffering and any out-of-pocket expenses she incurs. 

Life is a series of choices.

My friend, Mischelle Davis, has written the ultimate “peel back the curtains and have a look at what’s really going on” at those websites promising to find you the perfectly matched personal injury attorney for your case.

The Truth About Attorney Finder Websites and DirectoriesThe Truth About Attorney Finder Websites and Directories

Mishelle is the client relations manager at the Seattle, Washington Davis Law Group.

International Paper Co. has agreed to a payment of $5.2 million as a settlement for a personal injury suit related to the use of a cell phone while driving by one of their employees.

The complaint, filed in 2006, says that Vanessa McGrogan, an employee of International Paper, was using her cell phone, supplied by the company, as she was driving west on Interstate 15 near Dublin, Georgia when she rear-ended the vehicle of Debra Ford. Ford’s vehicle was pushed into the ditch along the right side of the road, causing it to overturn which resulted in the driver’s side hitting and then sliding along the roadway. Ford’s arm was trapped between the door and the asphalt.

Due to medical complications, Ford’s arm was eventually required to be amputated almost up to the shoulder.

According to Katherine McArthur, Ford’s attorney, Georgia has a statute which says that drivers are not to do things that are distracting. She explained that the statute means that reasonable use of a cell phone is acceptable. However, she said that McGrogan’s cell phone use was not acceptable due to her cruise control being set at 77 miles per hour in a 70 mph zone.

McArthur said that the combination of those two factors allowed the issue of intentional negligence to be raised against McGrogan and International Paper in order to seek punitive damages.

McArthur said that there was a “huge impact” on the final settlement about from the use of a cell phone by McGrogan, even though there was never any determination of the timing of the cell phone use.

This is tragic. The year is not getting off to a good start on Virginia’s highways. In some cases, folks would certainly have survived had  they been wearing their seatbelts. (I can still remember the TV commercials, from the early 60’s “Buckle up for safety, buckle up for safety, always buckle up.”

Here are some recent press releases about Virginia car accidents from the Virginia State Police.

According to state police, five people in Virginia died within a three day span from personal injuries they received from accidents on the state’s roads.

According to Virginia State Police, on Saturday, February 2 a 28-year-old man from Bridgewater died in Rockingham County after his car struck a bridge and overturned in a creek. He was not wearing a seatbelt.

On the same day, a 30-year-old man from Pearisburg died in Giles County after he ran off the road at state Route 200, overcorrected, and then rolled the vehicle. He was not wearing a seatbelt and was ejected from the vehicle, the police said.

On Friday, February 1, a 43-year-old man from Dillwyn died in Buckingham County after his pickup truck struck a bridge after hitting a patch of ice, according to state police. They said that even though he was wearing his seat belt, he was ejected from the vehicle. Not sure how that  happened if he really was wearing a seatbelt.)

Also on Friday, a 65-year-old man from Covington died in Botetourt County after his SUV ran off the road and over an embankment, state police said.

On Thursday, January 31, a 36-year-old man suffered fatal personal injuries in Campbell County after he pulled in front of another vehicle. Police said he died three hours afterwards at Lynchburg General Hospital.

In the year 2008 so far, 55 people have died on the highways of Virginia.