04-28-2016, 07:41 AM
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.
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.
JOHN ROBERTS: From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly so that you will come to know the value of justice... I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either.
