wes tegg may disagree, but when I have an unlikeable client I only put them on the stand to do what absolutely must be done and cut everything else out. Probably 15-30 minutes max. Thinks like, in my state you need to get them to testify they got the medical tx and bills due to the incident. That creates a prima facie case for reasonable/necessary/related. And I get them to describe the incident a bit. Maybe authenticate lost wages. Other than that , get them in and out. I get everything else in terms of general damages out of b/a witnesses. I disagree with Tegg to the extent that I think you can insulate an unlikeable client by limiting their testimony. I know they will try to drag the unlikeableness out of them on cross but there are ways to limit that as well. I do think there's a scenario where the client is just truly terrible , and no matter what you do their terribleness gets exposed to the jury, and even the b/a witnesses can't save you. But if you have no b/a witnesses and your client is unlikable, I don't see a way to win. Unless the defendant's conduct is just truly heinous.
If your client is really unlikeable, your best route to success is addressing the ways that they are unlikeable in voir dire, then narrowing the issue to the jury as much as you can. Emphasize that their job is to decide the value of what was taken away from your client and to not let any of the other noise presented by the defense get in the way of that. Use blinders or “tunnel vision” as an analogy. Get them to commit that they won’t let sympathy or personal dislike for the defendant affect that decision. And, just the same, they won’t let sympathy or dislike for the plaintiff affect it.
Amazingly, everyone is free to do a trial preservation depo for my before and after witness so disaster averted
and now she called up here bitching because she didn't know that the expense of this would be deducted from her settlement as well as the like 1k we've loaned her. i love my job
Got a new Fred Loya case today. Came up with a new game plan knowing that they’ll blow a stowers like 95%+ of the time. Get them to ~30-35k in bills, send a stowers for limits, they blow it, and then send the people back to treatment to rack up as much bills as they want/can and then go try a blown stowers case with 250k in bills
Lyft just blew a stowers demand by offering $250k for my client who has to spend 45 minutes/day for the rest of her life in the pump in this picture and has to wear compression socks every day. She’s 37 she has a lymphedema in her leg that can’t be cured. if we try this case this pump will be sitting on my table the entire time. this is going to be fun!
It’s fun to send demands to Lyft/uber lawyers only offering to release the driver for the limits or telling them you’ll release the driver and Lyft for more
They’ve made it borderline impossible to get last MSJ in Texas on rideshare cases luckily on this one their driver has 3 moving violations over the last three years and Lyft isn’t supposed to let people on their platform if that’s the case. Oopsies!
How does stowers demand work in TX? If they don’t offer limits and you get an excess verdict then they can be subject to a bad faith claim?
There’s no third party bad faith in Texas basically the dumbed down version is this: if you make an offer to settle within their policy limits that a reasonable insurer would accept and they don’t accept then they’re liable for an excess verdict
Not a big fan of finding out that we are #2 on the docket for Wednesday and we will just find out tomorrow at some point whether we are going or not. Only need to arrange 5 people to be there
Trial settled after jury selection for 425 Little 8x policy limits settlement to start the week off right
Awesome! I may get my first beyond policy limit car wreck case settlement, too. Only a paltry 3x, though. I did not think it actually happened in practice but Gallant Knight convinced me otherwise.
Taking a defendant doctor’s depo tomorrow in what appears to be about as close as it gets to a clear liability case (absent a retained surgical product or wrong site surgery). Can’t wait to see how he tries to defend his care.
was a pretty big clown show on their part. blew a time limit demand on a 50 policy that had 22k in meds, mri findings and a surgical rec Retained counsel blew every deadline They hired maybe the worst cme doctor I’ve ever seen in my life (didn’t review the post crash mri report or films, declined to actually exam plaintiff “for fear of exacerbating his symptoms”, doubled down and said reviewing the films wouldn’t have changed his opinion) Got their biomechanical struck If our client wasnt a 10x felon who repeatedly failed to remember things in his depo, we could have really put a hurting on em
We are getting ready to put a hurt on loya client has a mtbi and he’s getting a bunch of injections and a surgery letter. We are going to send them his first 40k of meds, they’re going to blow stowers, and then a month or two later they’ll get a new demand with like 300k meds and a surgery letter
it really seems like there could be a whole industry based around exploiting fred loya until it finally explodes.
sounds like my best negligent security case right now so far they haven’t come up with an answer for “if someone commits a robbery on the property should they be removed from the property”
Having a blast creating a google sheet for Vinetegrate with all the changes we want for FileVine after looking at the proposed template.
Filevine people: Did yall just use the template for PI and incorporate all the phases? I plan to change the phases around. I'm about 70% happy with the way they have the phases set up.
Our digital marketing folks agreed to a deal where if they don't deliver a $2300 cost per MVA case signed up in year 2 , its free every month they don't hit that benchmark. Can't wait to see how they try to crawfish out of that contract.
Any AL folks interested? This is a prisoner rights /civil rights/ case with potential high settlement value if you can link the TBI to negligence or civil rights violations. .PC’s son was in Mobile County Metro Jail for about two weeks – PC said that she received a call on 11/22/23 from detective, he asked her if she was aware that her son had been released from Mobile Metro Jail, PC said that she was not aware. The detective informed her that her son was at USA hospital in the trauma department for a head injury. PC said that she went to see him and was informed that he has brain damage. The jail is not disclosing any information to PC, detective told PC that the injury was self-induced and told her that there is a video but that he cannot show her. PC said that her son has seen several doctors now and they are all telling her that there is no way the injury was self-induced. PC said that the only thing her son can tell her is that he was in a holding cell with one other man, he doesn’t remember anything past that. As of right now PC said that her son has a lot of medical issues going on, all of the medical bills are falling onto her.
That’s going to be a really tough case. The metro jail is run by the sheriff, so you have state immunity and not qualified immunity.
It’s absolute immunity for the Sheriff and deputies, unless they’re acting fraudulently or (sometimes) in violation of the law.
It’s horrible law, but the Sheriff is a Constitutional officer as immune from suit as the State itself. His deputies are, too.
lmao so i think my step sister is common law married to her loser boyfriend. theyre both like 30 and do 'life coaching' shit. he teaches like breathing exercises or something and she does somatic coaching. no fucking idea. he wakes up every morning and does a cold plunge in my dads pool and then meditates for an hour and she does ??? she claims her accountant told her that it would be cheaper if they file their tax return as married and that texas is a common law state so they can do that. my dad got a letter from the irs addressed to them while they were out of town and asked them if they wanted him to see what the deal was and they were like sure. he sees that it's a joint tax return and is like ..... she was like oh yeah we decided to file jointly and get common law married the day before all this came out apparently my step mother had a long talk with my step sister about how her boyfriend is a loser and she needs to consider breaking up with him anyway eat arbys
Love dealing with the legal issues that CPAs seem to continually create by labeling lots of things as "tax advice" when those things are really legal advice.
she was floored when my dad told her that he's pretty sure that if they break up they'll need to file for divorce
For official capacity claims. The suit would allege individual capacity claims and you’d be dealing with the qualified immunity argument.
my parents had to testify in our neighbors divorce because they would represent themselves as married and send like Christmas cards as Mr and Mrs….so she moved for divorce as common law married. That turned out be a very expensive mistake on his part.
i take it all back. we just got assigned to trial a week from tomorrow. That's the most heads up i've had in my entire career by a lot.
fuck me nevermind i take this back! OC emailed to confirm and she said oh actually you're still on standby and not confirmed.
Their line and scope is extremely broad, and they’re even protected against willful conduct. If they’re clocked in, you’re pretty well fucked.
We have a 1983 case where a witness provided an affidavit that she saw the sheriff deputies fire into a vehicle that was doing nothing illegal and just driving down the road , they shot him like 50 times. They originally went to his house because someone said he had made "terrorist threats." He is a crazy guy that lived in Lucedale MS out in the woods. Sheriff deputies went to his house and something went down, no shots were fired. I think the guy had a gun that he waved around. He got in his car and left. They chased him down and just annihilated him. And a witness that was driving down the road saw it all. I don't know how they get out of this. According to the eye witness the decedent was not firing at them, was just driving down the road away from them, doing nothing wrong. Sheriff deputy catches up with him and opens fire and kills him. 1983 isn't my wheelhouse but I may help my partner with this.
Kagan can be a squish so 7-2 ain’t out of the question. Qualified immunity is the best evidence nice that originalist and textualist judges are full of shit.
Thank goodness Alabama no longer has common law marriage. Number of people who thought they could get "common law divorced" was hilarious.