South Carolina Trial Law Blog

I received a call from an advertising company. Normally, these are a rip-off. Even if you are a fan of advertising, for the same price that they charge, you can do two to three times more advertising on your own, than you can with these firms assistance.

The company was doing a national advertising buy and then parcelling out the pieces and parts to various markets. I do know that national advertising is much cheaper than buying local advertising, so I was willing to at least listen to the pitch, but with a hefty dose of skepticism.

First thing I want to know about any of these advertising / marketing schemes is what is their minimum contract length. If they want to lock you into a year of expensive advertising, but are not going to give any guarantees, or let you out of the contract if you’re not getting results, it means to me that they don’t really believe in their contract.

I met a vendor at the Southern Trial Lawyer’s Convention, who was doing internet based advertising (more on that later), but he said he was more than willing to do a 3 month sign up and a month to month contract. That’s someone that’s confident in their product.

The approximate price for the advertising on the call was $2,500 a month, which is about $30,000 a year. The first thing they wanted to do was set up an appointment for a 45 minute sales pitch. Wow. I can’t think of nearly anything that I would want to listen to for 45 minutes and an advertising sales pitch certainly wouldn’t be near the top of the list. Just show me the numbers and I can make a decision in less than two minutes.

The next thing is that I wanted to know was how much they stood by their product (which was not very much). Guaranteed year contract for $30,000. According to them, they had ‘guarantee’ that you would get double your money out of their advertising. I asked them ‘Okay. So what happens if after three months, I don’t get much of a response, can I cancel?’ No. ‘So how would I get double my money back, if I’m not getting much of a response?’  Well….we would just keep advertising longer until you got ‘your money’s worth’ out of it.

Then the guy on the phone took me to task for having a negative attitude and that this was never going to work, if I started off with a negative attitude and that I needed to be more positive about it. It was quite a lecture.

Let me get this straight. They want me to pay them $30,000 a year and I’m not even allowed to ask questions about their program? I’m not supposed to ask questions about what happens for the $30,000 that they want me to spend? That’s when the conversation ended rather abruptly.

If you have a permanent soft tissue case that does not lead to a surgical solution, that means there is no cure for your client.

He has a lifelong problem that can’t be fixed. At least with a surgery, it can be fixed. With the non-surgical, there is no fix.

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A quick comment about rates insurance companies pay and how much uninsured people pay. I recently helped a friend out with a few doctor’s bills. I don’t do this for a living, but did it to help a friend. The bulk of it was two Emergency Room visits about two months apart. She had insurance on the second visit, but was uninsured for the first visit.

She had charges of $2,617. Insurance paid $370 and there was a contractual adjustment of $2,047.00. That left her a balance of $200 to pay.

She had charges of $4,719.76. The hospital agreed to reduce it to $3,020.65.

Of course, if she got the same deal that the insurance company got and paid both her portion and the insurance portion, it would come out to owing the hospital only $1,027.96 .

We were able to work a significant reduction for her. But it’s crazy that this goes on.

I have a case that came in not too long ago. Single car wreck. 11:30 p.m., the car’s right tire goes off the edge of the road and the driver over corrects, swerving back and forth trying to get control of the car. The car eventually hits a concrete culvert and flips 3–4 times, finally coming to a rest upside down in a cornfield.

My client is the passenger. He was buckled in and looking for the driver. He came to and was able to drag himself out of the car. Frantically looking for the driver, he finally found him 30–40 feet away from the car in a twisted mass. Dead.

The driver was a friend of his. Someone quite a bit younger, that he had been living with for three months, working with and mentoring in his trade. Dead.

My guy had the initial ER bills, four weeks off work and minimal follow up to that point, because he couldn’t afford the doctor’s bills. I called the insurance company. They had the state minimum policy limits of $25,000 with an additional $25,000 for UIM.

I figured that this was more than enough to get to the $50,000 and called them to check on their feelings. “Oh no…..that’s not nearly enough.” Not enough to get to the $50,000? “No……Not enough to get to the $25,000.”

But this is a very serious fatality case. It was his roommate, friend and co-worker. “Your guy didn’t die. We consider this a soft tissue case and nothing more”.

Wow. It’s breathtaking.

The insurance company is of course Allstate.

The minimum auto policy limits of $25,000 went into effect on January 1, 2007. But on existing policies, the new limits take effect on their renewal date, which is every six months from the date of the original policy.

That means that depending on the renewal date, you can’t be 100% of having $25,000 minimum limits until July 1, 2007. The statutes and cites are after the jump. Continue Reading Posted inQuestions SC Lawyers Want Answered, SC Specific |Comments (0) |Permalink

I have been experiencing a distubring lack of response to my settlement demands in workers compensation cases. More often than not I believe it’s because the insurance company hasn’t given the attorney authority to settle the case and they are reluctant to call back with nothing. I’ve put together a standard form letter with suggested responses for the defense attorney and have received a positive response and more information about my cases. The form letter is below the fold. Continue Reading Posted inPractice Management |Comments (0) |Permalink

I sent a demand package to an insurance company on a car wreck case with about $26,000 in bills for medical treatment and two herniated disks. The adjuster wanted us to get information on prior medical treatment because of the severity of the claim, they felt there had to be some pre-existing condition. We complied because that was information that we would need to gather if there was a lawsuit anyways. When that didn’t turn up anything, the denied any payment.

The reason? Not enough damage to the car and they didn’t believe that my client could have herniated two disks from that amount of collision.

When I talked to my client his response “Well Dave, there wasn’t too much damage to my car. I was driving a Nissan Titan. The guy who hit me, his car was totalled. It was a crumpled mess that had to be towed away from the scene”.

Of course, the car that was totalled belonged to the adjuster’s insured, so she was well aware of that, but any reason to deny a case.

In a recent conversation:

Question: Does anyone have any information on expert _______?

Answer: You are in trouble.  ______ is formidable.  I have used the expert myself on several occasions.  The expert is well qualified, very articulate, makes a very good witness, quick on his/her feet, and is married to a judge. Good luck.

Ouch. Just goes to show that both sides can have good witnesses.

I went to their seminare in Atlanta 2 weeks ago. Great, great stuff. Unfortunately, the book was still at the printers and won’t be out for another week or so.

They conducted a lot of focus groups and studies based on Clotaire Rapaille’s work. Here is Rapaille’s home page. The basic concept is that we have the modern functioning brain that helps us with decision making and functioning in our current environment. Underneath that is our lizard brain. The reptilian brain.

The reptilian brain works on basic survival mode. Does anything threaten our survival or make us safe? Very basic instincts. Like the fight or flight syndrome. When a sudden danger appears, the body is pumped full of adrenaline and either stands ground to fight, or gets out of the situation.

By studying Rapaille’s work and applying it to the legal field, they’ve used the same arguments as before, but frame them slightly differently in an attempt to appeal to the basic lizard brain inside us all. It sounds very powerful. It takes the biggest tort reformers that were against us the most and turns them into our strongest allies. Wow. I’d love to see it in action. I have a trial next week and will apply some of the principles and we’ll see how it goes.

They are still working out the best way to present the information. I think the best solution is a one day seminar presenting all of the information followed by a 2 day seminar a few weeks later showing how to apply the theory to all aspects of your trial. It’s very good stuff and I can’t recommend it highly enough. If you do plaintiff’s work, you really need to check this out. The Book is here. The Seminar is here. The next seminar is in June in Dallas. While putting the link in, I just found out the Dallas seminar is full. You owe it to your clients and yourself to check out the next one.