What I Learned from Personal Injury Attorneys

What do you call 1,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start.

I’m a rule follower. I always have been. When I was a teenager, I followed my parents' rules (most of the time). When I got older and realized my mom knew I wanted to go on a sleepover to break curfew, I acknowledged defeat and never asked again. In college I discovered that teaching junior high math was not my calling (getting a D in a 5-hour Calculus class will do that for you) so I turned to what I knew – rules.

One of my college electives was Introduction to Probation and Parole and I loved it. Criminal Justice soon became my major, although I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it. In my senior year I took an internship with a small personal injury law firm and began work as an investigator/paralegal. After graduation my boss helped me get a job with one of the top personal injury firms in Kansas City, Missouri.

Do you remember the Hyatt Regency catwalk collapse? This firm had many clients from the disaster. One client was considered the most injured survivor of this tragedy. I was only 13 years old when the catwalk collapsed, but when I took this job, I had the opportunity to see many of the court documents and exhibits.

While working at the firm, I worked on many cases. Most of them were simple automobile accidents or worker’s compensation claims that settled out of court. This firm’s reputation allowed them to get settlements where other attorney’s could not. One of the biggest cases I personally worked on was an automobile accident. The injured woman and her 9 year old son were forced off the interstate, across the grass medium and into the opposite flow of traffic. The car hit another vehicle head-on, flipped upside down, and landed in the grass medium. The woman’s two older children were in a vehicle in front of her and witnessed the accident. When we got the case, the woman was in a persistent vegetative state because health insurance ran out and she was moved from a rehabilitation center to a nursing home. She was around 40 years old. The case went to trial and the jury awarded her and her family $45 million. It was the largest verdict at the time.

Attorneys have a reputation of being arrogant and self-centered. If you take a moment to check my previous employer’s bio, you will see he ranks at the top. He calls himself Lantzlot and built his Camelot! I enjoyed my work at the firm because I knew we were helping people. Sure, the attorneys were getting rich in the process, but they did help.

I admit personal injury work can be a slimy business. However, it’s not just the attorney’s that make it so. Many individuals try to make a quick buck off a little accident. I actually got this call one day: A woman wanted to sue her husband’s doctor. The day of her husband’s surgery his doctor had a terrible headache and was driven to work by his wife. He performed the surgery without complication. During his rounds, the doctor dropped dead in front of this man and his wife. Apparently his headache was caused by an aneurysm that had ruptured. The woman, although sympathetic to the doctor’s family, wanted to sue him for emotional stress because he operated that day and could have hurt her husband. I can give you countless similar examples.

In my experience, the people that are truly injured and need help do not want to sue. Many have permanent injuries they will live with for the rest of their lives. No amount of money could take away their pain and suffering. Consider the two cases above: One woman is a quadriplegic and the other could no longer recognize or hold her children.

Personally, I’ll take my health.

[This is my contribution to Middle Zone Musings group writing project “What I Learned from the Law”]