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 Posted on January 31, 2023 in Ask Andy Podcast

My Podcast, Ask Andy, will relaunch in the coming weeks. Here’s a sample of things to come.

In this podcast, I discuss how contingency fee cases work, how personal injury lawyers are paid, what costs and expenses there are and how they affect or reduce the money in your pocket. I also discuss the risk a lawyer takes in personal injury cases.

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 Posted on January 31, 2023 in In the News

Tua Tagovailoa Stretchered Off Field With Head Injury, Hands Clenched.

If you were watching the Dolphins game recently and saw Tua Tuagvailoa hit, you saw something that doctors call the fencing response. To my untrained eye, it certainly looked strange and concerning and my first thought was that he had a dislocated finger or fingers. Sadly, this response of flexed and rigid fingers with arm posturing is a sign of a mid-brain injury. The doctor who apparently discovered CTE in athletes suggested that Tua should stop playing football for his own health.

Basically, in my practice, concussions are a routine injury following car accidents. They cross the spectrum from mild to severe. Most doctors and the medical literature will tell you that most concussions resolve after a few months. Mild concussions will have you feeling headaches, ringing in your ears, feeling like you are in a cave compared to your normal functioning, sensitivity to light and loud noise and an inability to function with modern technology like phones, computers etc. More serious concussions can result in something called convergence disorder, in which your eyes don’t focus together resulting in serious problems reading, which is a major component of our daily lives. Vertigo is a similarly debilitating result of concussions from trauma. I have had clients whose lives are irreparably changed by these conditions and their settlements reflect their disabilities.

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 Posted on January 19, 2023 in For Lawyers

What are they doing and why? Morgan and Morgan/Lundy/Top Dog law: Why do people go the route of the big advertising law firms? I think it is fairly simple. They don’t know lawyers, don’t have someone to turn to who knows a good lawyer, or they are new to the legal system. Top Dog has a new billboard on the Schuylkill Expressway. It seems sort of clownish for the 1980’s era cell phone and the guy works out of his house in delco as far as I can tell. But, he seems to be a great marketer. What are you getting? Who knows. How about Morgan? I love John Morgan. He wrote a great book for Personal Injury lawyers called “You can’t teach hungry.” Amusingly, no editing was done on the book as it is filled with typos etc. But, that is what you are getting. The advertisers are counting on a high volume of calls, resulting in a yield of 10% or so of actual cases, and then someone has to manage the volume of crappy cases that they took. There is not a lot of careful selection going on is my guess. I am contacted every month or so by clients who are unhappy that their case, which they believe has merit, is being handled by a paralegal, that they cannot talk to a lawyer, or are being pressured to take what they think is a crappy settlement. I usually turn them back to their lawyers.

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 Posted on January 19, 2023 in Case Matters

I am deep into this Netflix series that is sort of a 1920’s British Sopranos/Breaking Bad mashup. It is great if you like that sort of thing. How does that affect what we are doing here at Neuwirth Law or in personal injury land generally?

I am largely unknown to most defense lawyers and insurers. I take millions in settlement dollars from them, but they really have no idea who I am or what I am up to. The Blinders are struggling to make their name outside of their home base in Birmingham in a tough period of time following World War One. Thomas Shelby, played by Tom Hardy, has a really hard edge to him, but recognizes that those who did not fight in the war like him and his brothers, are not scarred like he is. He doesn’t want to fight, but is more than able to when necessary.

For me, I try not to be a thug about things in my practice. But, it is critically important to quickly size up a situation and decide if we are going to have a fight or not. The Blinders always have guns available and razor blades tucked away for a fight. For me, I don’t really care one whit about the defendant on the other side, meaning the person who injured my client. They do not figure into my calculus until we are on the verge of trial. The more important variable is the insurer and my experience with them. Since the pandemic, I have seen more and more insurers, who are simply unable to perform their basic function of timely evaluating a claim and making an offer. We don’t expect them to make fair offers pre-suit, but I expect them to make an offer. A lot are failing to do that. So, we end up filing suit on cases and their lawyers are going to be having some tough calls with their claim reps about why the case wasn’t fully evaluated more promptly.

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 Posted on January 15, 2023 in Case Matters

Do you think you would rather have 1) a medical malpractice case where the doctor admits he missed something, but the miss has limited or hard to figure damages or 2) a slip and fall case resulting in the doctor admitting he missed something, but the miss has limited or hard to figure damages?

Several new cases of mine have this interesting twist.  The legal rule of thumb is that a defendant’s negligent act makes her responsible for all negligence that flows from the original act.  So, if you did not salt your sidewalk and Andre falls, you are responsible. Furthermore, if Andre falls and a doctor messes up his surgery and he needs a second surgery you are still responsible for the malpractice.  Why? Because it was foreseeable that if someone were hurt by your negligence, surgery and hence errors in surgery may result.  Recently, two people came to me with this same scenario. They were complaining that they were the victims of medical malpractice following a fall and a botched first surgery. While they both appeared to have been the victims of less than stellar doctoring, medical malpractice cases are very tough to pursue because the physician is entitled to wide latitude in the use of their judgment. The slip and fall cases are far easier to pursue and the slip and fall defendant is just as responsible for the injuries as the doctor is. Plus, you don’t have to fight over whether the doctor breached the standard of care, which is always a tough fight. Double plus, if the doctor’s error resulted in some minor damage, but it was quickly repaired by a better doctor, then while you have a malpractice claim, it will never be worth it to pursue the case into court. There, the slip and fall case is your friend.

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 Posted on January 04, 2023 in Uncategorized

As we swirl around the sun again another time, we hope all your 2023 verdicts go your way, and may Judges laugh at all your jokes.

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 Posted on January 04, 2023 in For Lawyers

I like to think that preparing my client for defense cross examination at a deposition is important. I have sort of a standard set of instructions I give my clients about depositions and then work on the key facts of the case. I like to think in terms of themes to the case that can be regurgitated in a sentence and encapsulate the case. This takes a bit of work with the client and some back and forth practice. The critical part of every case is searching for statements made by my client, whether they remember them or not. Did you tell your physical therapist you felt great? Did you tell the police officer that you were switching lanes? Did you tell the ER doc that you were out drinking? The good, the bad, and the ugly should come out in prep so that I don’t have to say much in the deposition itself. I do not like to have to ask my clients questions at their depositions. I know that there is a school of thought that says that you should have your client at least audition or recount how this incident has altered their lives or destroyed who they were before the incident, but I feel like it opens too many doors for a semi-conscious defense lawyer to attack. This is especially true if the defense lawyer has missed key points in their questioning.

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 Posted on January 04, 2023 in Case Matters

So, summer has come to a close and now the real work of litigation kicks into high gear. Anything that was put off for summer reasons, whether good or bad, is now on the front burner. A lot of work was put off till after Labor Day and now we are going to be in the middle of a lot of depositions, pre-trial conferences and generally productive lawyer work through Thanksgiving.

There is a weird but interesting phenomenon that affects personal injury law at this time of year. Insurers like to close what cases they can before the close of the calendar year. So, a case that may not have a lot of value, at least has some urgency as the end of the year approaches. But, it’s not even time for the pumpkin spiced latte you say! Well, actually, if you want to have your case settled by early December and get paid out before Christmas, so you can buy presents, then your lawyer has to have started the demand and settlement negotiation sooner than later. Why?

Well, cases are generally settled in the following manner. First, my client has to finish treating or come very close to back to normal. As a lawyer and client, you don’t want to have surgery after your case has settled, just because you were rushing to get a settlement. Surgery increases the value of the case, so we wait to make sure all the high value treatment is complete, and we know about how you are doing and are sure that you are back to where you were before the crash or know your current baseline.  If you have a herniated disc from a crash, that likely can be treated but will not get unherniated. As long as we know that you are done with injections and not having surgery, we can settle your case. So, thirty to forty-five days after you are done treating, we usually have your medical records proving that your treatment is done. Then, we will email in a demand letter outlining our claims and my opinion on the value of your case and we allow 30 days to begin settlement discussions. Then, most discussions take about two weeks to resolve if they are going to be productive. Then, a release is sent within a week after a verbal settlement and payment is required to be made by the Defendant within twenty days after receipt of a signed release.  The City of Philadelphia has 90 days to pay, but 20 is the required period.  So, you can see that if you want your case settled by early December, then your lawyer better be typing demand letters in September.

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 Posted on December 20, 2022 in Best of

From all of Us to all of YOU,

May 2023 be the best year yet, and may your holidays be festive, fun, and most importantly–SAFE!

Warmest Regards for the Season,

Neuwirth Law Group

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 Posted on November 29, 2022 in Medical Malpractice

So, Teladoc is a company / platform that has you meet with a doctor on line for various purposes. I am getting ready to travel abroad and am fairly healthy. So, for me, this is a great use of my time, the doctor’s time etc. But, Teladoc and urgent care situations in general present a real risk of inadvertently promoting medical malpractice. The reason is that there is a lot of information that a doctor gleans from in person visits. And, I mean a doctor, not a physician assistant (PA) or a nurse practitioner (CRNP or NP). I strongly encourage you to see an MD once a year now that we are done with the whole masking experience. An in person visit allows the doc to see how you breathe, walk, inspect your bumps and bruises, see how your skin carries blood to your extremities, and a thousand other things that can signal you are healthy or not. I have worked on cases where someone went to urgent care, was misdiagnosed and died at home. I expect that these are not isolated events. I have not worked on Teladoc or remote doctoring cases, but it is just a matter of time for those to work through the system. Interestingly, radiologists have worked from home for years without too much trouble. However, your radiologist never interacts with the patient. The film studies are performed by a technician and read remotely and the results then conveyed to your doctor. While there are still plenty of medical malpractice cases against radiologists, they are rarely related to the remote aspect of their work. That is not the case with internal medicine doctors. Unfortunately, insurers have tried to reduce the level of expertise that you as a patient receive in an effort to reduce costs. “Physician Extender” is the polite moniker for the PA or NP that you see, but the truth is you are accepting a poorer level of care. Most likely you may even call your PA or NP “doctor” without realizing that they are not trained as a doctor. It is a sad state of affairs. Yes, it is hard to get to see a doctor and Teladoc makes that easier. But, there are a lot of unusual things that are hard and you would prefer a trained person see you in person rather than over a video feed. I promise.

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