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21st Century Ambulance Chasers: We Bring Our Own Ambulance
We dropped off Xerox at school yesterday afternoon so that he could catch the team bus for his lacrosse away game and then the wife and I were going to grab a sandwich and then head for the stadium in time to take in both the JV and Varsity squads. As our car approached an intersection, the car in front of us signaled to make a left turn into a business and I slowed down accordingly. That’s when I glanced into the rearview mirror and saw a silver Honda bearing down on us like an offering from Little Rocket Man.
If I had not reacted as quickly as I did we would have ended up as the cream in a steel and plastic Oreo, but a quick turn of the steering wheel forced our car to the side of the vehicle in front of us when the inevitable sickening crunch came with the accompanying sickening jolt. Luckily, everyone was wearing their seat belts and the Honda took the brunt of the damage when compared to our Ford SUV. (USA! USA! USA!)
A policeman was there in less than a minute and as accidents go it was fairly routine. We almost felt sorry for Mr. Honda Boy. Just a lad of 16 and a sophomore at my kid’s school, he was on his way to work at Bad Mexican Takeout Franchise and was probably running a little late. The anguished look on his face as he called his mom brought back memories of my own youth. He’d walk away, talk on the phone, come back and look at his car … yep, still smashed. Looked at me, looked at the car, looked at the fireplug of an officer that was writing him up, looked back at his car … yep, still smashed. Been there. Done that.
Both the wife and I were a little sore this morning. At our ages being hit by a car feels, well … like we got hit by a car. Our Ford is still drivable so the wife went to work and no sooner did she get out of the house when my phone rang.
“Hi, is this EJ?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“This is Pamela, from Vulture Medical Clinic. I’m calling as a follow up to your accident last night…”
“Wha…”
“You’re entitled to a free medical exam with one of our nurse practitioners to make sure you didn’t suffer any injuries in last night’s incident. This is completely free and it’s important that you document anything that may have happened. And if you do have some issues we can refer you to a personal injury lawyer to make sure that the other party’s insurance company pays for your pain and suffering…”
Of course, we never got into the details of exactly who was picking up the bill for my “free” exam, but it seems there is some lawyer or law firm who has decided to open their own medical practice as well as their own legal office. Something tells me the nurse practitioner would have no problem locating pain in my neck, my back, or my ankles – even if it didn’t exist.
I’m half tempted to make an appointment. First for the novelty of saying I went to one of the first Bernie Sanders “free” Medical Care Centers, and second, just to see how much loot the lawyers poured into this thing. Is it just a two-room office or did they go whole hog and buy the x-ray machine, too?
I’ve already spent the morning talking to competing insurance companies and there will be an app download and picture taking later in the afternoon. Tonight, I plan on talking to my own lawyers, the firm of Epstein & Yoo, and see what’s really going to go down.
Addendum: FedEx just dropped off my “personal injury checklist package” from another law firm.
Published in Law
Report those gonifs to the state Medical Board.
I have had people show up in the ER saying “my lawyer told me to get X-rays”.
My (usually) unspoken comment is “then he needs to go to medical school so he can order them”.
One wanted everything x rayed.
I just flat out told her I was not going to irradiate her whole body.
My skin crawls when I get one of those patients because the med mal threat just radiates from them.
The only thing takes care of their pain is a nice big “Green Poultice” ( a thick wad of hundred dollar bills applied to the supposedly injured area).
Or 60mg Oxycontin.
First of all, my sympathies to you and yours for being involved in an auto accident. And congrts on yr quick thinking as otherwise, well, otherwise – who knows?
I certainly won’t suggest that you go to Vulture Medical Clinic, and applaud you for yr stance on that.
However being hit from behind can involve a lifetime of consequences. Some of the repercussions may start today or tomorrow – some could start in a week or two. So it is best to establish a medical record of some sort that at least shows the medical world you are concerned about your potential bodily harm.
I was involved in an auto accident in 1978, and it was about two weeks later that I started needing to sleep 18 hours a day. And it was about the same time that I thought that maybe the slight pain I felt in my neck and back would always be with me.
It is now 2019, and my neck and back are finally better. But this is only because I no longer commute anywhere and don’t keep re-injuring the tender areas of my body with the repeatedly slams and dunks onto potholes and road construction bumps. At the time, a lot of relatives told me not to settle for the $ 3,000 bucks that the other guy’s insurance policy people offered me. I wish I had listened to them, because given a lifetime of achey-break-y back problems and pain, that 3K bucks was just not enough.
Oooo. Ya got some of those?
Actually I shun acetaminophen. My mother had severe arthritis and her doctor prescribed fentanyl patches towards the end of her life and it got so that we kept them at our house until the next dosage was called for.
So Many Lawyers, Too few rational Adults.
Remember Kids, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch (TANSTAFL), it all comes out your collective cost to live in this country, and creates an epistemological fear to live in a society that is one lawsuit from breaking you.
It never occurred to me ambulance chasers would use the internet. Thanks for the heads-up.
I’m here for you, Stad. I’ll drag you kicking and screaming if I have to.
A Nissan driven by a “just got out of jail and no license and it isn’t my car” male slammed into the back of my Toyota Tundra at a stoplight about 15 years ago. Tore the heck out of the car. Didn’t do too much to my truck. For a month afterward, I would receive flyers in the mail from every personal injury lawyer within 3 states. Made me mad. I called my state representative to ask “what in the world?” He said they comb through the accident reports daily looking for anybody that would go for their crap. That made me even more mad.
Exactly this.
If you are feeling achy already, I’d get looked at and get it documented. Chances are, it’s a Soft Tissue Injury which no one does much about but can linger for years. Having had a car accident (or three) when I was young, I’m acutely aware of how long these injuries can take to heal.
We finally received resolution this week from being on the other side of the ambulance chaser act. My wife rear-ended someone in Jan 2015 in Los Angeles. She said the other guy seemed okay and his truck wasn’t that damaged, while her CR-V was totaled. We had to move in July because of my job. I think it was sometime in January last year we received a summons that we were being sued. He’d waited to sue and it had taken them a while to find us at our new address. My wife was sued as the driver and I was sued as the owner of the vehicle and, to paraphrase, irresponsibly allowed an incompetent driver to operate my vehicle.
Fortunately, our insurance company would represent us. I looked the lawyer representing the other side and his web site actually said that he was a slip and fall lawyer. I thought that was a derogatory term people made up in addition to ambulance chaser, not something lawyers would admit to. Our court date got moved three times, with early next month being the next scheduled date. This week we received notice that the other side agreed to accept the payout within our coverage limit and the case was closed. I’m sure that the driver received numerous calls like the one you and others have mentioned and he finally said yes to someone. Our involvement wasn’t much, but it stunk having that cloud over our heads.
Interesting.
Jeezo man! What state are you living in that allows that? It’s a good way to get disbarred in Texas.
But I guess it still happens. For instance, the Texas Family Code has a provision that applies only to counties with populations over a certain number of people (which means Houston and only Houston) that limits access to family court records because of the excessive “zeal” lawyers there have had for chasing clients after a petition has been filed for divorce.
When I was in KC for the meetup there a while back there was a billboard for Brad Bradford, surgeon and lawyer. It was probably him.
Fortunately I can list the number of Oxycontin RXs I’ve written with the fingers on one hand. And those were to patients with terminal illness. Not appropriate for an ED doc to prescribe except in rare cases.
I’m not exaggerating when I say that each time my stepson had a brush with the law, Mr. She (same first and last name) would receive dozens of solicitations from attorneys looking to “defend” him. They were not shy about listing his alleged transgressions (DUI, drugs, petty larceny, harassment, assault, etc.) and listing ways to defend against them that only the attorney/firm writing that particular letter was able to accomplish. I did complain at one point about it, but the response was that the arrests/reports were a matter of public record, and nothing could be done. I finally got a special trash can just for the purpose, put it in the driveway so I didn’t have to have the stuff in the house, threw all mail of that sort into it, and when it filled up, burned the lot.
To get your name that fast sounds like someone at the local PD is being slipped some cash to offer up the names of people involved in accidents considered more than fender-benders, or it’s a HIPPA violation, if anyone with your local EMS checked you out at the scene, took your name, and then leaked it to the vulture tort lawyer, even if there was no medical transport.
(We had an accident Wednesday a block from my house that sounded similar — young Domino’s Pizza delivery driver in a Kia nailed and lost the battle with a Chevy Silverado pickup. One taken to the hospital, which now has a law office right across the street, because of all the potential for liability claims against deep pocket companies here in the West Texas oilfield area.)