Sometimes the best way to handle a legal problem is to just go about doing what you can do and let the rest take care of itself.
This is especially so when dealing with an obnoxious Insurance Company on the other side.
Please let me tell you about a legal case I am still in the middle of.
The case is a slip and fall injury type in which my client had to have surgery for her hip.
An elderly client.
The insurance company for the defendant is not from the Pittsburgh area. Or even from the surrounding areas in Western Pennsylvania.
The problem is their approach to the case.
Pittsburgh wrongful death, medical malpractice, car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernie Tully believes it’s fair to say they are taking a scorched earth, take no prisoners approach to the case.
What do I mean by that?
They will not grant any professional courtesies in the case.
If your answers to interrogatories are due on May 15 and you are one day late with them, they actually instruct their attorneys to go in and file a motion for sanctions in Court.
Even though they realize they have absolutely no chance of getting them.
Same thing goes for scheduling clients deposition. If they schedule my client’s deposition for July 12 and my client has a prior commitment like a paid vacation their approach is that’s too bad.
Let the client reschedule their vacation.
Again, even though there is no judge on the planet earth who would make a person reschedule their vacation in order to attend the deposition.
They have already said in fact that they will not make an offer on the case and will try the case to verdict.
So what do you do as the victim’s attorney in that situation?
There’s probably no easy answer to it.
But wrongful death, medical malpractice, car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernard Tully thinks there’s a way to approach it.
The way I intend to approach it is to just move forward with the case in a professional manner.
Their scorched earth approach might work in places like New York but it’s going to go over like stinky feet in front of a Judge from Allegheny County Pa.
Once the case judge sees what’s going on, the Court is likely to be a tad upset with the way this particular insurance company is handling the whole matter.
A judge can make insurance companies life big time miserable.
Like sanctioning them thousands of $$ and making them pay a hefty fine for obnoxious behavior.
Like requiring the Insurance Companies claims adjuster to fly into Pittsburgh and stay overnight for a 10 minute status conference in which nothing is decided.
Something about what goes around comes around.
Judges were attorneys before they got on the bench.
It’s likely that they had at least one case like this themselves while they were attorneys.
It’s also likely they are going to remember what it was like to have to deal with this kind of situation.
And I really don’t even think the insurance company knows it yet.
Strange thing about it is the attorney for the insurance company is a real nice guy.
He is just doing what he is told to do by the scorched earth people.
I’ll let you know how it turns out.
But I gotta say I like where we are at legally at this point.
Thanks for reading.
Bernie the Attorney.