Once mostly referred to as 'ambulance chasers' the term 'slip and
fall' lawyers now seems be preferred. The business model works well,
because there are a lot more people falling in convenient (depending
on perspective) places and the statistics favor more successful
lawsuits, even if each case delivers a smaller award.
A person falling in a grocery store or bank lobby is much easier to
process. A victim of an automobile accident requires much more work.
And most businesses will quickly settle a small claim - a few
hundred thousand compared to millions and eventually reduced in
settlement - but will fight a million-dollar case and the expenditure
in collecting evidence and witnesses is much more, and there is
always the possibility of failure even in an apparently airtight case.
You don't pay unless we win is a common tagline. Because they
won't take the case unless winning is a near certainty. The few who
refuse to settle and successfully defend themselves are acceptable
losses.
I tried the big ones first. Made copies of about ten pounds of
hospital records and sent it with the foregoing narrative. They
'regretfully' informed me that they would not be able to help.
"Not that you don't have a good case, but if isn't something we are
able to do. "
Despite their very nice website with details of cases of medical
malpractice and the millions of dollars in awards.
I tried another one, the one that professes to be 'for the people'.
After contacting them in the usual manner through their website, this
one replete with accounts of their record of delivering justice for
the 'little people' I got hourly phone calls until I returned one and
described the situation. That was the end of that. Maybe being one
of the little people isn't enough.
There is some lawyer with a radio talk show, his website has a list
of lawyers who specialize in personal injury. A handful of them had
a contact form that actually worked - I was able to leave my contact
information and a description of the case - but never received a
reply. On most of them everything I entered was rejected as
'possible spam' and that was that.
An acquaintance who is a lawyer (he does defense work so is at least
nominally one of the good guys) explained it thus:
Your situation would require actual work and some financial investment
if only in paying their staff. It would pay off big but it's easier
to take the nearly guaranteed payoffs for may be a couple hundred
thousand, enough of those add up to millions, billions even for the
big guys.
You give them a case where a high school cheerleader is in a car
that gets rear-ended by a drunk - a rich or well-insured one obviously -
leaving her a paraplegic and the star quarterback dead for extra points,
pardon the expression, that may require some investment but will absolutely
pay off big.