Personal injury attorneys offer personal touch
Special Report: Personal Injury & Disability
By: Michael Petro
Mar 23, 2015
Harry Forrest finds that being involved in the practice of personal injury really is, well, personal. He has seen clients walk through the door of Gross Shuman Brizdle & Gilfillan who started with another firm but decided to go elsewhere when they felt they weren’t getting enough attention or, worse, were turned away.
Law firms practicing personal injury law aren’t just those seen on TV or on billboards.
Forrest said Gross Shuman, for example, isn’t one of the highest-volume personal injury practices compared to others in the region, but the firm is OK with that. It’s more important to the firm to put people ahead of numbers, he added.
While motor vehicle accidents are the bread-and-butter of personal injury firms, he sees a variety of slip-and-fall, construction and medical malpractice cases. He said the firm is particularly selective with slip-and-fall cases and medical malpractice because it is difficult to establish liability in such cases.
“I don’t handle 100 clients at a time. I don’t do it and I don’t want to do it. I want to be able to return my clients’ calls every day,” Forrest said. “If they need me somewhere, either I’m there or my paralegal is there. In my opinion, it’s impossible to service hundreds of clients at a time.”
He advises the injured to interview an attorney at the outset of a potential case, saying there’s pressure out there to call immediately and make a decision.
“I agree that it’s important to get a consultation and that people understand their rights and responsibilities, but also it’s of critical importance to get the right attorney that’s going to have that personal attention for them in their case and not just a quick sign-up and get in cue with countless other clients,” Forrest said.
James Scime, senior partner in personal injury at Lipsitz Green Scime Cambria, said his Buffalo firm mostly handles construction accidents as well as product liability, which can be fascinating. As technology changes, the cases teach him something new and different, he said, from engineering principles and how they are applied through modern technology to things related to economics, medicine and science. Scime said through his work, he has made contact with some of the greatest minds around the country.
“Sometimes I’m dealing with a serious spinal injury and the next time I might be talking about a subtle nerve injury that can be quite debilitating. I could also be dealing with a brain injury or a medical malpractice case or an explosion or an airplane crash,” Scime said. “You’re learning all the time. … It’s changing all the time, and that’s one of the nice byproducts of the kind of work we do in this area.”
Like Gross Shuman, Lipsitz Green tends to be selective in the type of cases it takes on. First and foremost, the case must have merit, Scime said.
“We don’t shy away from difficult cases but we want to know that the cases are right and we can honestly get some justice in a situation,” said Scime, a former prosecutor in the Erie County District Attorney’s office.
Many people fail to understand what a significant injury can do to a person’s life and the impact it has on their family, he said.
“If it’s the result of someone’s carelessness or a defective product, that’s what we do,” Scime said. “We try to take a bad situation and make it better for a person.”
HoganWillig accepts about 10 personal injury cases a month, primarily in the area of nursing home or medical practice negligence, said Corey Hogan, managing partner.
Injuries caused by negligence change the lives of his clients in many ways. One client, he recalled, was a young woman who was in an accident while driving her brother to school. The boy was killed and she suffered significant brain injuries. According to Hogan, the woman thought the accident was her fault, assuming that losing control of her car caused the head-on collision.
After years of litigation, however, New York state was ultimately found to be responsible. Allegedly, a worker who was supposed to put salt on the road in bad weather had overslept, tired from his second job.
The ruling provided damages for the woman, who once dreamed of attending medical school, and her family.
“The money has allowed her and her family the ability to have an existence much different than it otherwise would have and she also now understands that she was not responsible for the death of her 15-year-old brother,” Hogan said. “That is not unusual. It’s not people coming in with a lost fingernail and they’re trying to get a million dollars.”
Scime said that once liability is established, the focus turns to determining what harm has been done and how to adequately compensate someone for having their life turned upside down.
Financial awards involve projections such as the person’s life expectancy, Scime said, especially if it is a permanent disability.
Experts are called in to offer opinions on life care plans and the economic impact. Scime said that can translate into “whopping amounts.”
“Try to price hydrocodone four times a day every day for the next 20 years and then project the cost of medical inflation,” he said. “And that’s before you even talk about any therapies that a person may need, and projecting what that cost may be 10 to 20 years from now.”
The most serious cases typically settle near the end of negotiations, right before trial.
Scime said there comes a time when everyone involved examines the range of possible results and analyzes the risk of going forward. That’s what happened when he represented a client in a lawsuit resulting from the Flight 3407 crash in 2009 in Clarence. The case he handled was on the verge of trial before a settlement was reached.
Forrest, meanwhile, said nearly half of his legal practice is long-term disability cases through the employer or a private insurance company. For example, he handled a personal injury case that was the result of a construction accident and then took on the long-term disability end of it for the client.
The client’s insurance company denied that he was disabled under the policy guidelines.
Forrest refuted that and eventually won the case.
Long-term disability is an interesting spin-off from personal injury, and one that Gross Shuman has been developing, he said.
Forrest handles other cases that start with an injury and move to disability. He said he also gets referrals for people with an injury or illness who are unable to work for long periods of time. Most of the disability cases center on the person’s occupation, as well as the illness or injury that prevents them from working.
“A lot of times, it boils down to: Do they meet the definition of disability under that particular policy? It varies somewhat,” Forrest said. “It’s a big difference between if you’re a construction worker and have an injury or if you’re an office worker with an injury or illness.”
Those referrals, he said, have been a significant boost to his practice. In fact, Forrest said they have become a prime source of future clients.
According to Forrest, clients who receive the “personal touch” from him and his firm spread the word to friends, family and co-workers about how they were treated, and that often leads to new business.
Misconceptions about personal injury claims
You’ve seen the commercials. Personal injury law firms with their catchy slogans and easy-to-remember phone numbers pushing potential clients to contact them immediately. They promise results, results, results but lost in their message is the fact that the process can take quite some time.
While no-fault benefits must be filed within 30 days for drivers injured in an accident, some personal injury cases resulting from a car or truck accident can’t be filed for six months. The injury must fall under an element of the “serious injury” threshold for a lawsuit to be filed before that time.
“I think some people get very surprised when we have to apply the serious injury threshold for them,” said Tully Rinckey’s Daniel Persing, a partner in the Albany office. “It’s dissevering to them because most of these people wind up having a soft-tissue injury and you’ve got to wait the period that the statute requires.”
He added: “I think most people who get hurt in a motor vehicle accident think, ‘Sue right away,’ but you can’t.”
If an injured person can’t perform normal daily activities, once they meet the serious-injury threshold or experience an economic loss greater than $50,000, which comes with no-fault, then a lawsuit can commence.
“If they have a soft-tissue injury, we’ll tell them we’ll follow them along the way but can’t do anything for six months until we’re sure that you’ve met one of the elements in the serious injury threshold,” Persing said. “It’s shepherding them through that initial process to make sure they can go ahead and sue.”
Sometimes people don’t even realize they have a break or fracture. If additional tests indicate that, the firm can move forward with the lawsuit. Those types of injuries fall under one of the nine elements in the serious injury threshold.
Motorcyclists injured in an accident aren’t covered under no-fault, which Persing said can be frustrating for them. However, they can sue immediately and aren’t subject to the limitation of the serious injury threshold.
“People have to realize it depends on what you’re driving,” he said. “Motorcyclists get very upset when they find out they’re not a covered person. Yeah, you can sue right away, but unfortunately you can’t do anything about how you’re presently hurting.”
His advice to someone hurt in an accident Contact an attorney right away to find out the benefit to which they are entitled. However, he warned, be prepared to wait.
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