Classless Lawyers

[BFritz21]

My lawyer that handled my civil case, his wife is my mom's cousin, so he's family, which means I can't be mad at him, but I'm pissed at the way things have gone down.

First of all, we had a clause in our insurance that, if someone in our family was injured by an uninsured driver, we could file suit against ourselves, which we did and obviously won. Every attorney we talked to said that they would never take a cut of that because he didn't do anything besides for negotiate a price, which wouldn't take much effort, but he took $200,000 of it. Shitty.

Then, the cemetery and the driver's parents filed a motion to have the cases against them dropped, which was stupid because all of the evidence was stacked against them, but this judge, who never should have been in on our case in the first place because his son was a friend of mine, I had even been in his house, I started over his son in football, and he saw all three of us the day of the wreck, apparently has a history of ruling against people if he's rushed. Knowing that, my lawyer rushes him after the judge goes months without ruling on it (which he was just waiting for us to do so he'd have an excuse to rule against us, and it was obvious because it was the worst ruling in history and I can prove why if anyone really questions me), so the judge rule against us and let's the driver's parents out of the case.

We say "that's fine. Let them go because the cemetery is where the money's at anyways." He doesn't listen and files an appeal, which takes months and gets denied. During that time, the cemetery's lawyer dies, but it turns out he wanted to settle, and not for anything cheap, either. The cemetery hires a new firm and this lawyer wants to go to trial.

The new lawyer is horrible and has no case but somehow the jury rules in his favor for something he didn't even argue. My lawyer messed up again.

After all this, I find out who the judge was and I ask my lawyer if he divulged about how close he was to the situation. My lawyer responds very emotional saying how a jury ruled against us and blah, blah, blah, which was true in trial, but not in this judge's ruling. I call him out on it and he doesn't answer.

Tonight, I walked a third of a mile as part of this event of the Flying Pig on Saturday and everyone is posting support and liking it, whatever. So he posts a thing about how he'd like to walk with me sometime, so I'm a little confused but I agree, so we're going back-and-forth in the comments just with friendly chatter, but then he mentions how the reason he wants to talk to me is so I can help him with a client with a TBI.

I agreed to help but I'm pissed. He littered an awesome event so he could make me feel like he was being genuine when he was really just trying to use me. I would have even been fine to do it if he had just private messaged me or even text me to set something up, but to do it in my public message like that when he was just trying to get something for himself is shady as hell.

Do I have a right to be mad about the last part if nothing else?

There's not many lawyers in the world with even an ounce of class.

[BFritz21]

Forgot to mention that the first lawyer that ended up dying would meet with our friends, who were teenagers, and tell them that the cemetery's caretaker was depressed and was going to lose his job so that they all would conveniently "forget" the parties back there where the caretaker even bought us kegs.

[xxlt]

Yeah, dude, family or not you are entitled to competent representation by your lawyer.

I mean, if your mom's cousin married a plumber and he charged you $300 to fix your toilet and it wasn't working and you had a leaking toilet and water and poo and pee all over your bathroom floor would you say, "Well, I can't be mad at family. I just have to live with this mess..." ? I hope not. So, if you hire someone to do a job and they do it poorly, you are entitled to be pissed off and do something about it.

Now, every person who loses a case or doesn't win as big as they want to didn't necessarily have a bad lawyer. But, it sure sounds like there was some shady stuff here: asking people to lie about the caretaker, taking a fee that every other lawyer said was not a fee they would charge, etc.

There are some lawyers who would never admit another lawyer messed up, but others who will admit it. I think it is worth your time to talk to another attorney (or two) and ask them if they think your case was handled properly. If it was not, you may be entitled to recover fees you paid to your lawyer if he screwed up and if he really screwed up he might be sanctioned by the bar association. Now, he is family, so you would have to ask, "Is it right to let a lousy lawyer keep screwing clients because he is family or is it right to stand up and protect other people from getting screwed like I did?" And, you might be entitled to have your new and competent counsel re-open the civil case(s) and get the outcome(s) you should have.

Good luck.

[xxlt]

Oh, and since there was a lot of publicity about your accident I don't think it would be too hard to find out who the lawyer(s) were but if you don't want to say that is fine. I just wondered if you could say - who was the first guy who died and who was the second guy? It sounds like they both made some mistakes, and like I said, if your counsel messed up you could be entitled to get a new case/trial.

[Au165]

Maybe, your case isn't as iron clad as you think it is. Just a crazy thought.

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 02:53 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: First of all, we had a clause in our insurance that, if someone in our family was injured by an uninsured driver, we could file suit against ourselves, which we did and obviously won.  Every attorney we talked to said that they would never take a cut of that because he didn't do anything besides for negotiate a price, which wouldn't take much effort, but he took $200,000 of it.  Shitty.

Contingency fees are the most common type payment in these cases, and the payment agreement has to be set in advance.  

How much did these other attorneys say they would have charged to do what your lawyer did?

And sometimes "negotiating a price" is all of the work involved.  Even when you go to trial most of the time the work is not proving "who was at fault", but instead proving "how much are the damages".

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 02:53 AM)BFritz21 Wrote:  has a history of ruling against people if he's rushed.  Knowing that, my lawyer rushes him after the judge goes months without ruling on it (which he was just waiting for us to do so he'd have an excuse to rule against us, and it was obvious because it was the worst ruling in history and I can prove why if anyone really questions me), so the judge rule against us and let's the driver's parents out of the case.

So the judge had already decided to rule aginst you, but he could not do it until your lawyer rushed him so that he would "have an excuse"?

This is pure delusion.  First, if the judge was going to rule against you he would not have to wait for your lawyer to rush him.  Second, "being rushed" is not any type of excuse.

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 02:53 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: The new lawyer is horrible and has no case but somehow the jury rules in his favor for something he didn't even argue.  My lawyer messed up again.

So how is your lawyer to blame for a jury ruling in favor of the other side?

How do you know what the jury based their decision on?

And even if the other side never argued this point (which makes me wonder where the jury came up with the idea) was the decision correct?

[fredtoast]

And I am still confused how there was a settlement for damages before any of this went to trial. Generally when there is a settlement nothing goes to trial.

If your lawyer took a chunk of the settlement for just "negotiating a price" then whet did he charge for the trial and all of that litigation?

[CKwi88]

There are certainly bad lawyers. I've seen and worked with a few.

But for every bad lawyer I've seen at least five pro se parties that think they know the law and how to practice it better than those who went to school for it.


Spoiler alert: They don't.

[Benton]

No you don't have a right to be mad.

He should get paid for working. You mention the amount, but not what percentage of the settlement. If its half, yeah that's crappy. If its standard, then no.

As far as the rest, it sounds like something is off. But at the end of the day, a lawyer is just there to assist you. Either someone miscommunicated with him, or someone should have fired him earlier for going against their wishes.

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 02:53 AM)BFritz21 Wrote:  so the judge rule against us and let's the driver's parents out of the case.

We say "that's fine.  Let them go because the cemetery is where the money's at anyways."

My lawyer responds very emotional saying how a jury ruled against us and blah, blah, blah, which was true in trial, but not in this judge's ruling.  I call him out on it and he doesn't answer.

Now I am really confused.

If your family said it was fine when the judge ruled against you then what did you have to call him out on about the judge ruling against you?  How can you "call him out" on something you were fine with?

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 02:53 AM)BFritz21 Wrote: it was the worst ruling in history and I can prove why if anyone really questions me

I am questioning you, and the only way you can prove it is by providing the style of the case so that I can look at what the court of appeals said.

You can't "prove" anything by just giving your one side of the argument.  If that was how it worked then everyone who ever lost a case could "prove" that they were cheated.

[Au165]

....basically everything Fred said.

[Bengalzona]

Hmmm....

A Brad thread with six replies from Fred already....

Be careful how you respond to each other, gentlemen:


Keep the discourse civil and non-personal.

[Sabretooth]

Many people avoid doing business with family .....

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 12:05 PM)Sabretooth Wrote: Many people avoid doing business with family .....

This is almost always the best advice, for the exact same reason for what happened here with Brad.

But on the other hand when you are talking about a case worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a family member might be offended if he was not given a chance to handle the case.

One of my good friends was in the real estate business.  There were hard feelings when his brother sold his half-million dollar home using another agent.

[BFritz21]

(04-28-2016, 07:41 AM)xxlt Wrote: Yeah, dude, family or not you are entitled to competent representation by your lawyer.

I mean, if your mom's cousin married a plumber and he charged you $300 to fix your toilet and it wasn't working and you had a leaking toilet and water and poo and pee all over your bathroom floor would you say, "Well, I can't be mad at family. I just have to live with this mess..." ? I hope not. So, if you hire someone to do a job and they do it poorly, you are entitled to be pissed off and do something about it.

Now, every person who loses a case or doesn't win as big as they want to didn't necessarily have a bad lawyer. But, it sure sounds like there was some shady stuff here: asking people to lie about the caretaker, taking a fee that every other lawyer said was not a fee they would charge, etc.

There are some lawyers who would never admit another lawyer messed up, but others who will admit it. I think it is worth your time to talk to another attorney (or two) and ask them if they think your case was handled properly. If it was not, you may be entitled to recover fees you paid to your lawyer if he screwed up and if he really screwed up he might be sanctioned by the bar association. Now, he is family, so you would have to ask, "Is it right to let a lousy lawyer keep screwing clients because he is family or is it right to stand up and protect other people from getting screwed like I did?" And, you might be entitled to have your new and competent counsel re-open the civil case(s) and get the outcome(s) you should have.

Good luck.

The lawyer asking people to lie was the cemetery's lawyer, not ours.

(04-28-2016, 07:44 AM)xxlt Wrote: Oh, and since there was a lot of publicity about your accident I don't think it would be too hard to find out who the lawyer(s) were but if you don't want to say that is fine. I just wondered if you could say - who was the first guy who died and who was the second guy? It sounds like they both made some mistakes, and like I said, if your counsel messed up you could be entitled to get a new case/trial.

First guy for them was named Denny (Dennis, I guess) VonSomething (I think, but it's been so long that I'm not even sure anymore) and I'm not even sure who the second guy was.

(04-28-2016, 09:47 AM)Au165 Wrote: Maybe, your case isn't as iron clad as you think it is. Just a crazy thought.

Trust me, it was.  

(04-28-2016, 10:55 AM)Benton Wrote: No you don't have a right to be mad.

He should get paid for working. You mention the amount, but not what percentage of the settlement. If its half, yeah that's crappy. If its standard, then no.

As far as the rest, it sounds like something is off. But at the end of the day, a lawyer is just there to assist you. Either someone miscommunicated with him, or someone should have fired him earlier for going against their wishes.

He didn't do any work for that, though!  He just found the clause in our insurance!

(04-28-2016, 11:27 AM)Au165 Wrote: ....basically everything Fred said.

The other attorneys said that they wouldn't even charge a percentage because it was ours anyways, just negotiating a price, which I'm not even sure how much needed to be done.

Look into it and see that this judge, Gregory Bartlett, has a history of it.  He needed an excuse so it wouldn't raise any red flags.  Case-in-point: his reasoning for saying the driver's parents weren't at fault were because they "couldn't foresee that the driver would drink and drive in the cemetery," even though he had drank before in the cemetery and driven with his father, because another teen's parents couldn't foresee that he would have brought a gun to school and killed a bunch of classmates.  You want to talk about delusional?  Explain how those two situations are related.

I know what the jury based the ruling on because they told the judge after the trial.  The ruling was incorrect because it was that we could have wrecked anywhere, when we only wrecked in the cemetery because he was speeding, which he only did because there were no other cars, traffic laws, or chances of being caught because cops weren't allowed back there, and not to mention that nowhere else would have had streets as narrow, dark, or windy as the cemetery, not to mention nothing like a headstone that we could clip.  The cemetery was also only a hundred yards from his neighborhood on a straight highway, so no chance or wrecking there, either.  Thanks, call me out more.

I called out my lawyer after the trial.

See above as to why I just proved it.  You can't compare two completely unrelated events just because you'd like to make the outcome the same.  Please, argue that.

(04-28-2016, 11:28 AM)Bengalzona Wrote: Hmmm....

A Brad thread with six replies from Fred already....

Be careful how you respond to each other, gentlemen:


Keep the discourse civil and non-personal.

I'm not even responding to him, but the fact that you even have to say that before I responded speaks volumes to how he responded, yet I'd still be the one punished.

[fredtoast]

(04-28-2016, 12:29 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: Look into it and see that this judge, Gregory Bartlett, has a history of it.  He needed an excuse so it wouldn't raise any red flags. 

If a judge claimed he ruled against a plaintiff because the plaintiff rushed him that would not only raise a red flag it would get him tossed off the bench.

[Au165]

No chance of wrecking outside the cemetery? People wreck every day on straight roads. What you just said isn't an acceptable argument and the jury obviously agreed. Are you saying you guys contended that the cemetery was libel because while trespassing, you guys sped down winding dark roads and wrecked? Was that your argument? If so, the jury got it right.

Were your parents charged with child negligence? By your logic the fact they didn't know you were at a party with drunk friends who eventually would almost kill you meets the standard for neglect.