I would like to share with you just a few examples of the types of cases in which I have been involved . . .

. . . and to alert you to the challenges that may lie ahead.

(To protect client confidentiality, real names are not used).

Take for example, Mary, broadsided by an uninsured driver.

Mary is a hard-working mother of two small children. Mary was driving home from work one night when a reckless driver ran the light at a busy intersection and broadsided her car.

They took Mary immediately to the nearest hospital. She developed severe headaches, dizziness, and numbness in her hands and legs. She underwent several costly medical scans of her head and body.

The person who hit her skipped town and the insurance company wanted to settle with her for practically nothing. She asked a good friend if she knew of any lawyers. Her friend sent her to a lawyer she once used for a closing on her house. She said that he really knew his stuff. This attorney told her to take what her insurance company was offering because the person who hit her skipped town and had no insurance.

Mary was desperate when she came to our office. We did some checking up. We put in a claim for Mary and we hired a private investigator to find the guilty party. We let the insurance company know that we were involved as Mary's lawyer, and made claim to settle through her uninsured motor vehicle protection that Mary had on her own policy.

Another client, Joe, was 26 years old and living his dream.

Joe's dream was to become a millionaire in real estate. Joe had always loved working with his hands and building things. After high school, Joe worked full-time for a construction company.

Also, Joe started his own business. He borrowed from friends and bought a house. Joe got a reduced price because the house was in need of repair - exactly the kind of work that Joe could do himself. Joe renovated the house, working in the evenings and on weekends. He installed new walls, windows, decks and porches, and landscaping. When he was done, Joe had increased the value of his house by $30,000. Joe rented the house, and got a loan on the property that he used to buy another. Joe repeated this with five houses over the next four years.

He was on his way to making his dream come true.

Joe's dream turned into a nightmare when he hurt his back in an auto accident. Joe was driving carefully behind a large truck. The truck had a large tarpaulin covering gravel it was carrying. The cover came loose and flapped onto the windshield of a car traveling the other way. The driver lost control, crossed the center line, and ran head-on into Joe.

Joe was unable to work for a year. He never fully recovered from the back injury, and his doctor told him he could no longer do construction work. Joe was desperate. He had always relied on his strong, healthy back, and the accident had taken this from him.

Joe hired a lawyer someone in his family knew. Months went by with no results. Joe's lawyer had no answers for Joe's questions. Joe was falling behind on the loan payments on his houses. Through no fault of his own Joe was now facing financial ruin.

Joe was understandably distraught when he called me. I got right on the case. My investigation revealed the cause of the accident. A cable holding the tarp in place had broken. The engineers I hired discovered that the cable broke because the trucking company had failed to maintain it properly. We also found that they had purchased the tarp system from another company. The manufacturer of the tarp system had failed to design the system with safeguards to prevent the very kind of accident that occurred.

We made claim for Joe against both the trucking company and tarp manufacturer. They attempted to avoid their responsibility to Joe by pointing fingers at each other, and to attack Joe, the innocent victim. They said Joe was exaggerating his back injuries, and hired private detectives to follow Joe around with video cameras.

Well, we sued for Joe and made these companies answer to Joe in court. The jury accepted our contentions and returned a substantial verdict to Joe that included payment of his past and future medical bills, loss of earnings, and pain and suffering for the rest of his life.

The best news for Joe was that the jury verdict included hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow him to hire workers to do the renovation work on his houses that he can no longer do. Joe's back in business and again living his dream.

Another recent client was an innocent passenger in a car.

Another client was also injured in a car crash. There was not a lot of damage to her car.

She suffered neck and back injuries after being rear ended. She went to the emergency room who confirmed her injuries . . . and told her to follow up with her family doctor and to stay out of work for one week.

An insurance adjuster came to her house a few days later with a check book, and tried to get her to accept $300. He was pushy, and told her she would never get more because they did not damage her car much and no one would believe she was hurt.

Fortunately, she resisted. Her family doctor recommended therapy for a few weeks.

We sued for her and obtained a trial verdict for more than ten times the amount the adjuster originally offered her.

Another client was a county utility worker.

He sustained a severe head injury, headaches, memory loss, and a neck injury, when a large air-release valve blew off while he was removing it. He had done everything possible to reduce the pressure in the system, but they did not design or build the system with adequate pressure reducing mechanisms.

We sued the designer and builder of the system for creating a dangerous condition that caused injury. We recovered an acceptable settlement for my client.

He was carefully walking on the sidewalk when he fell at the wheelchair curb ramp, braking bones in his knee. He had to undergo several expensive surgeries that were never successful in returning full motion to his knee.

My experts determined that the curb-cut violated several construction and safety codes because its sides were to steep, and this is what caused my clients' fall.

I successfully litigated and resolved the case in favor of my client.

It was a pleasant spring day and she was going to visit her son. She suffered a broken wrist when she suddenly tripped over a piece of pipe sticking out from the city sidewalk and fell on her outstretched arm.

We showed that the city was negligent in failing to inspect or discover the hazard, and in failing to warn pedestrians of the danger.

We sued the city and made a favorable recovery for her.

He did not feel any pain following the accident so he did not go to the hospital. Later he began having severe neck pain and headaches. Since he never went to the hospital following the accident, Pete thought that he could not make a claim for the pain he was now experiencing.

Eventually, the pain just became too much for Pete. He finally went to his family doctor. The doctor referred him for expensive testing, that found that he had suffered a serious spinal injury. His doctor sent Pete to a specialist for an operation to repair his neck. The operation cost thousands of dollars, and Pete missed work for three months while he was recovering. Even with the surgery, Pete's neck will never be the same.

The insurance company refused to make things right. They told him that they would only pay a small portion of his medical bills, plus a few hundred dollars for his pain and suffering. The insurance company went by the damage to his car, which was minor. Yet Pete had suffered herniated discs to his neck.

Pete was at his wit's end when he came to see me, ready to sign his rights away so he could at least get "something." The insurance company refused to accept that they seriously injured him from a "low impact" injury.

Fortunately for Pete, he came to see me before signing his rights away to the insurance company or hiring an inexperienced lawyer who knew nothing about "low impact" injuries.

He could have easily taken this quick (and inadequate) settlement.

I took the pressure off Pete when we took the insurance company to court to force them to live up to their legal "obligations." I gathered Pete's medical records and wage loss information together and negotiated a fair settlement. It took some time, but it was acceptable to Pete and me.

(NOTICE: PAST RESULTS ACHIEVED IS NOT A GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS. EACH CASE IS UNIQUE AND REFERENCE MUST BE MADE TO THE SPECIFIC LEGAL AND FACTUAL CIRCUMSTANCES PRESENTED.)