Brian: What does the typical thing that we need to do when somebody gets into a car accident from the very minute that it happens, uh, to when they walk in the lawyer’s office as to what it is you need in order to represent them. So starting at the accident and the police are out there and then let’s go forward from there.
Justin: Yeah, I mean that’s, it’s common occurrence accidents happen and a lot of the things we hear, and I’m sure you hear it a lot too, is you know, I didn’t, you know, I’m not sure if I’m injured at the scene of the accident. You got a lot of adrenaline so you don’t know. But if you, if you are, go to the hospital, don’t be a hero. I mean the, the ambulance ride, you got insurance, you got auto insurance so it’s covered. So don’t worry about the cost. That’s the thing that I hear so much as you know, I didn’t, I didn’t go get help cause you know, my, I don’t have good health insurance and I don’t think it’s going to cover it. Well, you know what, your, your health insurance doesn’t cover it. Your auto insurance does. So if you do get in an accident and you think you are hurt, go get help. That’s cool. That’s, that’s step one. I mean, I always go to the hospital, get checked out and go from there. And if you’re, you’re not getting resolved and you’re not feeling better and you need help around your house, you’re, you’re missing work. Then you come in, you see us, and when we walk you through the process, cause I guarantee you the one thing I can tell you what every case is, the insurance company is not going to tell you what your benefits are. They’re not going to say under, under the no fault you’re entitled to help around Your House. You’re help you get help with your personal body. If you’re really injured, uh, you can get wage loss benefits. They’re, they’re not gonna offer that up to you. So they don’t offer that up until we get involved in and demand it for you.
New Speaker: So now, Justin, a number of my clients, not all of them, but many of them will come in. They’ll say, hey, um, the minute I got into this car accident, I’m standing on the side of the road waiting for the ambulance to come by and I get this call from this place called a accident lawyers or an accident, uh, resource center. can you tell us about that? What’s up? What’s that all about?
New Speaker: Yes, stay away from it. Because it’s solicitation, attorneys, medical people, professionals, anyone. No one can contact you after an accident. It happens all the time and it shouldn’t happen. And hopefully that’s one of the things that the attorney general has been addressing is her fraud unit. And that’s why she was objecting to this as well because it would completely eliminate this new fraud taskforce that she has developed. So that’s why a attorney general Nessel was opposed to this legislation as well because it would wipe all of that out and it would allow for fraud to continue. No one wants fraud. It’s going to happen. But with this, hopefully with this task force, you break down and you get rid of people like that who are calling accident victims cause that’s not how it’s supposed to work.
New Speaker: You know, that’s interesting you bring up that, uh, that subject of the fraud unit that attorney general Nessel is putting together. Normally when we hear about insurance fraud, we always think of the people trying to make a claim against the insurance company that are getting investigated for submitting a fraudulent claim. I know that you’ve seen a number of cases where insurance companies actually are committing fraud in, in an effort to try to avoid having to pay claims.
New Speaker: Yeah. I mean it goes both ways. It’s not, it’s not a one way street, that’s for sure. And you know, it, it’s some of the people, sometimes it’s unscrupulous, uh, providers as well. There’s people out there who are trying to benefit off the system and that that’s what anything, Brian, I mean, you see all over the country, there’s, there’s met these huge medicaid frauds down in, in Florida. I think there’s a huge one. There was one in Michigan recently as well.
New Speaker: Yep. That’s right. You know, and they shut a bunch of these guys down and they should be shut down, you know, because everybody’s gaming the system. And that is one of the factors. And I say, and I stress only one of the factors that’s increasing insurance rates. The other factor is what I consider to be insurance fraud, where the insurance companies are artificially increasing the costs, uh, based upon their, um, false fantastical estimates of what they’re going to need in the catastrophic claims unit.
New Speaker: Yeah, that’s been a huge debate. And I think we, we talked about it probably about a month ago. I think we discussed it when they talked about that the numbers going up. It’s a, it’s a system that they won’t let us look at. We don’t know how much money is in there and all that. All we know is they want more.
New Speaker: That’s right. Just more and more and more and more like, like a child, you know, give him a cookie. They want another cookie. That’s it. And they didn’t go, they don’t keep anything back. So, um, the other thing was gonna mention to you is, uh, how do you work with a client in terms of, um, the fee agreement and you know, being retained to represent somebody on an injury case and that sort of thing.
New Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, every contingency it, they’re all contingent fee cases needed. You’re doing them. I do them. It’s you don’t, you, you don’t pay me a dime out of your pocket. We only get paid if we win the case and we take a, a contingent fee out of there and if anyone’s charging you anything but that for a personal injury case, get out of there and call somebody else. Cause that’s not the way it’s supposed to work.
New Speaker: I’ve actually heard people charging a certain amount of money up front for an investigation and then they charge a contingent fee. But that’s ridiculous. That’s absolutely absurd.
Speaker 1: You can’t do that. You can’t charge for initial. Well you can charge for initial consultations. We don’t, but um, some people do and that’s not the way it’s supposed to work. We don’t know if we can help you until we sit down and we go through your case. And if we think it’s good, then uh, we’ll take it on. But the best thing to do is to just call us at 855-LAWSHOW, because we’ll be able to give you some advice as to whether or not you have a case and what kind of case you have. And if we can’t handle it, which is very rare, we know exactly who handles it and we’ll get you that right person. So, uh, if you have a legal question, just call us right now at 855-LAWSHOW we’d like to hear from somebody who has been the victim of an injury.