Re: Why are you doing this?

Re: Why are you doing this?

I DON"T trust him and his party at ALL! If you are going to be involved, then PLEASE do not be so naive as to believe that they are doing this for the common good! BIG money, influence & power are at stake here.

My sister lives in CA and has been an attorney in that state for over 20 years.  She is very ethical and cares about the clients she takes on.  Please read the following and decide for yourself just how "noble" Gove Schwarzenegger's motives are.

"I fear that my professional future is in serious jeopardy.  Gov. Schwartzenegger seems to be drunk with power and is raising money by the boatfuls to call a special election in November for the purposes of re-districting California and to ask the voters to weigh in on a number of other, business-friendly proposals.  The pharmaceutical industry has committed $10 million to putting three initiatives on the ballot, one of which proposes to cap all contingency fees at 20% - after costs are deducted.  At 20%, it will be very, very difficult for lawyers to make a living - overhead expenses in our type of practice is generally about 40-50% of gross income and I don't think that includes "case costs"- the money invested in cases that you hope to recover if you are successful.  

    The practical effect of this can best be demonstrated by an example.  If you are injured by a negligent driver and your attorney spends $25,000 in costs on your case, then tries it and wins $100,000, he would be paid $15,000 ([$100,000 - $25,000] x 20%) or about 60% of what he invested in your case.  In order to put all personal injury lawyers out of business for good, the insurance industry would just have to push virtually all cases to trial, substantially increasing the cost to lawyers, something it's been doing far more in the past decade anyway.  Even if it loses the case, it will have accomplished its goal.  It is a brilliant strategy and one, I fear in this climate, likely to succeed.

    I've seen the strategy and it is devastating.  In Florida, the voters overwhelmingly passed draconian limits on attorneys' fees in med mal cases, even though the plaintiffs' bar spent several millions of dollars countering the movement.  It took seeing only one commercial to understand why they were successful.  Picture a sympathetic black woman sitting in a wheelchair.  She was hurt by a negligent doctor, she says, and a jury awarded her $1 million for her injuries, but her lawyer took more than half.  "If this law had been passed, my lawyer still would have gotten $150,000," she says looking into the camera.  "That seems like a lot of money to me for one case."  

    Bingo.  Most people, especially those in red states, would think that $150,000 IS a lot of money for one case and don't lawyers have dozens of cases?  If they get more than $500,000 for each one, no wonder they are rich.  They are taking advantage of the people they say they want to help.  They should still be able to live well if they are earning just $150,000 per case.

    Of course, what they don't think about is the fact that million dollar cases are not the norm, they are still pretty unusual, especially in states with limits on damages in certain kinds of cases.  What they don't consider is the fact that the lawyer probably had more than $100,000 of his own money invested into the case, which he would have lost if the jury did not find in favor of the client.  That last month, the lawyer lost a similar case in trial; that insurance companies are forcing more and more cases to trial where these same people, now sitting as jurors, are disinclined to be sympathetic to his client's cause.

    I'm just sick at heart.  I've seen this and lived with it in my med mal cases for my entire career.  I'm turning down cases today that involve the death of children or retired persons, unless the case is very simple,
straight-forward and will involve just one expert, so I can hope to keep my pre-trial costs below $25,000.  

These are what we call 250 cases because the most you can recover is $250,000 since there are no economic damages associated with the death.  (One of the things MICRA did was abolish the "collateral source" rule in which a jury is not told whether medical bills were paid by insurance or not.  So jurors are told that virtually all or most of the medical bills in these cases were, in fact, paid for by insurance or Medicare or Medicaid.  As a result, they generally do not award those as damages.)"

PLEASE consider yourselves as WATCHDOGS in this process instead of partners!