Saw this in the Daily News today. There are several lessons about personal injury lawsuits in it:
- There were genuine and serious injuries that disabled the Fed Ex man who slipped and fell on a wet office floor. Read carefully what these injuries were to get an idea of what are considered serious injuries in these kinds of cases.
- The wet floor had become wet because the man whose office it was had his personal cleaning lady wipe it — in typical filthy-rich-man fashion, he had not been satisfied with the floor as cleaned by the building’s professional cleaning crew.
- The building’s cleaning crew knew how and when to clean a floor, and probably knew about putting out “danger: wet floor” signs when they mopped it. Because professional building cleaning crews know the protocols. And almost certainly do not wash the floors at 9 in the morning, when people were coming in to work.
- The man whose floor it was is rich. That is, to a plaintiff’s personal injury lawyer, he had “deep pockets.” That is, he could pay.
- And the case was settled.
I’m trying to figure out how to say that a large settlement does not necessarily indicate a smart, hard-working lawyer. It just means that it was a very good case, and all personal injury lawyers salivate for cases like this.
The last paragraph of the article, by John Marzulli, is startling.