The Legal System sucks...
Blah... where to begin?
Well as I mentioned in a previous post, I had the Arbitration this past Tuesday for my lawsuit against the guy who hit my car about 2 years ago. Things did not go as well as I had planned.
It didn't go COMPLETELY bad, but it wasn't great either. To make a long story short- Two years ago on Easter Sunday, I was stopped at a red light and some idiot hit my car from behind then drove away before I could get his info, although me and my mom did get the Licence plate as the car drove away. And as many of you know, due to this accident I now have like 2 herniated discs in my back plus muscle spasms. It's a permanent injury that will affect me for the rest of my life. I'm not supposed to lift heavy objects (even semi-heavy objects can be bad), I'm not supposed to go on rollercoasters (which sucks b/c I used to go to Six Flags ALL the time), it hurts a lot when I try to shovel snow in the winter, and I can't stand or sit for too long a period of time without my back bothering me. Oh and also, I can't workout as much as I used to. Running bothers my back due to impact, so I had to cut that down, along with some other exercises, so due to that, within the past two years I've gained more weight than I would have wanted to (which I have since been trying to lose, but it's kind of hard since I'm limited in what I can do). And finally, I have pain (ranging from minimal to moderate) almost every single morning when I wake up, and need my back cracked and massaged constantly.
So you would think that with all those problems, I would have a pretty good case right?
Well according to my lawyer, apparently not. But that was not totally my fault. Turns out both me (and my lawyer whether he'd admit it to anyone or not) made some mistakes. Although for me, I can't be blamed as much b/c I didn't know better and the lawyer should have told me what to do. Basically, after the accident, I did not go to the hospital. I didn't feel I needed to. It bothered, but it did not hurt too bad immediately. I DID contact doctors the next day and got X-Rays and stuff right away though. But the real pain came about 3 weeks after the accident when one day while I was getting out of my car, my back just completely went out on me, and I could barely stand up. And it had me walking around like an old man for about a week. At that point, I missed 3 days of work at Yankee stadium (due to all the walking and lifting I usually would have to do), but I didn't miss any work from Fordham, mostly b/c that is a sit down job, and plus, I had only gotten the job about a month prior to the accident and didn't want to start taking days off so soon.
But apparently, those facts were bad for my case. Since I didnt go to the hospital or miss any work from my full time job, it would look to the judge like the injury was not serious. Add to that the fact, that I had been going to physical therapy from about April-July of that year (about 3 months) but then stopped going b/c my no-fault insurance stopped paying for it, and I couldn't afford to do it on my own. I later found out (about 8 months later in fact), that I could put it on a "lean basis" on my new insurance I got when I started working at Fordham, so I went back and am still going as of this time. But once again, my lawyer pointed out to me that that fact looked bad, b/c it looks like I went to physical therapy only for a bit, then stopped (which could look to people, like the judge for instance, that the injury wasn't that serious), and only went back about 8 months later, b/c I had the deposition coming up (which WAS part of the reason, but also, my back really did bother and I wanted to go back, but I didn't know that I could, which was kind of the lawyer's bad for not telling me how to do that right away).
That plus the deposition itself didn't go very well. But that I blame mostly on my lawyer. First off, my ACTUAL lawyer was not present. I got some other dude from the law firm. Then we only went over stuff in the 'Bill of Particulars" for about 30-40 minutes before the Deposition began. Thing is, I STILL had no idea what kind of questions to expect from the opposing lawyer. The ONLY advice my lawyer gave me was "if you're not sure about something, don't guess, just say 'I don't remember." And then the opposing lawyer asked me a bunch of specific things, that I wasn't sure of at that moment (but which I had written down in my journal and stuff but I hadn't looked that over b/c I didn't know I should b/c some things seemed very minor) and basically used the "I don't remember" answer, quite a bit. But like I said, i didn't even know exactly what a deposition was before I went and I was not ANYWHERE near well prepared for it by my lawyer. I was given no "example questions" of what they may ask. And previous to the deposition I wasn't told that I would need to remember specific details right on that moment. Cuz when I called the lawyer to ask how to prepare and stuff, the secretaries were just like "Oh don't worry about it, just come in. They are only gonna ask you a few questions. The lawyer will prep you right beforehand."
So I did the deposition, and after it was over, I wasn't very happy with how it went, but the lawyer said things were ok, so that eased my fears. They also made it sound like it wasn't the "be-all, end-all" of the case.
But now it sucks, b/c last week at the Arbitration my lawyer made it sound like one of the big things that screwed me over was that I "had a bad deposition." So I was like "what the hell?!?!" I thought I'd be able to present the facts to the judge, but basically, I barely got to do, or say anything. The lawyers went in and met with the judge and then mine came out and was like "we have an offer." He then gave me a number, that for the type of injury I have was VERY low. Like nowhere even near the ballpark of where I was thinking.
So me and my mom started to complain. Trying to see why on earth I wouldn't be offered more money. So he gave us the excuses listed above, along with some other legal mumbo-jumbo I'm not about to go through here. But basically in the end, he explained that there is a certain bar that a person's injuries must exceed in order to get any "real" money. And that bar has been constantly raised over the years, to the point where you need to pretty much have gone to the hospital, missed work, been scarred and be in a freakin cast or something. It's absolutely ridiculous. So we explained to the lawyer, fine I may not be "scarred" but I have a freakin PERMANENT injury, that affects me on a daily basis, which will only get worse as my life goes on. How the hell can something like that not be considered above that supposed bar???
Now to my lawyer's credit, he IS a nice guy and he understood my complaints and tried to explain everything to me in "how things really work." He went back in, and came out with another number, which was slightly higher but in the end was barely any difference at all. I wasn't happy at all but he basically broke everything down for me, telling me that sadly my case wasn't very strong and that we COULD go to court with the case, but first off, the maximum amount of money I could get ALSO was not near the amount I originally expected. Plus, he let me know that he doesn't even take cases like mine anymore (I don't know if I mentioned but the main reason he took my case was b/c he was referred to me by the Dean of Alumni relations at Fordham Law, and he saw I was a Fordham grad and decided to help me out) b/c he sees these kinds of cases get thrown out all the time.
So basically my choices were to either go to court, to fight for an amount of money that STILL wasn't what I wanted, but then also have the high chance of having it get thrown out and then I get NOTHING, or to just take the money, cuz in the end something is better than nothing.
Me and my mom wound up thinking it out for awhile and in the end, it just seemed like a waste of time to even bother going to court. So in the end we settled. I'm still really pissed off about it but there wasn't much we could do.
I'm just really upset over everything, b/c I'm SURE things would have gone differently if I was better prepared. Especially for the Deposition, and if I was told about the "lean-basis" thing a lot earlier. I guess I also should have exagerrated my injury more and gone to the hospital the night of the accident (at least just to say I went and to get immediate x-rays and MRI's) but that's just not how I am. Plus I hate going to hospitals and I didn't want to go that night.
So yeah, it was a mix of faults, but I blame it more on the lawyer. It sucks, b/c hell, years ago (before I was born) my mom was in a car accident and she got more money than I did now (Hell, her amount was enough to put the down payment on the house I grew up in and am still currently living in), and I was hoping for something similar so I could do the same thing. So yeah it just sucks. My whole family is pretty upset. But like I said, there is not really anything I can freakin do.
So i'm just trying to look at the brighter side of things. I got SOME money. Not much, but I can invest it somewhere and probably use it to pay for wedding stuff in the future. So there's that at least. But yeah, don't mind me, I just had to vent. I'm sure my posts will return to usual form after this. I just had to get everything off my chest (plus also it's easier doing it here so people can read what happened rather than me repeating it 80 times to all my friends who would definitely wanna know what went down).
So I may not have been well compensated for my injury but hey, there's always the lotto! (and what goes around comes around). lol
Well as I mentioned in a previous post, I had the Arbitration this past Tuesday for my lawsuit against the guy who hit my car about 2 years ago. Things did not go as well as I had planned.
It didn't go COMPLETELY bad, but it wasn't great either. To make a long story short- Two years ago on Easter Sunday, I was stopped at a red light and some idiot hit my car from behind then drove away before I could get his info, although me and my mom did get the Licence plate as the car drove away. And as many of you know, due to this accident I now have like 2 herniated discs in my back plus muscle spasms. It's a permanent injury that will affect me for the rest of my life. I'm not supposed to lift heavy objects (even semi-heavy objects can be bad), I'm not supposed to go on rollercoasters (which sucks b/c I used to go to Six Flags ALL the time), it hurts a lot when I try to shovel snow in the winter, and I can't stand or sit for too long a period of time without my back bothering me. Oh and also, I can't workout as much as I used to. Running bothers my back due to impact, so I had to cut that down, along with some other exercises, so due to that, within the past two years I've gained more weight than I would have wanted to (which I have since been trying to lose, but it's kind of hard since I'm limited in what I can do). And finally, I have pain (ranging from minimal to moderate) almost every single morning when I wake up, and need my back cracked and massaged constantly.
So you would think that with all those problems, I would have a pretty good case right?
Well according to my lawyer, apparently not. But that was not totally my fault. Turns out both me (and my lawyer whether he'd admit it to anyone or not) made some mistakes. Although for me, I can't be blamed as much b/c I didn't know better and the lawyer should have told me what to do. Basically, after the accident, I did not go to the hospital. I didn't feel I needed to. It bothered, but it did not hurt too bad immediately. I DID contact doctors the next day and got X-Rays and stuff right away though. But the real pain came about 3 weeks after the accident when one day while I was getting out of my car, my back just completely went out on me, and I could barely stand up. And it had me walking around like an old man for about a week. At that point, I missed 3 days of work at Yankee stadium (due to all the walking and lifting I usually would have to do), but I didn't miss any work from Fordham, mostly b/c that is a sit down job, and plus, I had only gotten the job about a month prior to the accident and didn't want to start taking days off so soon.
But apparently, those facts were bad for my case. Since I didnt go to the hospital or miss any work from my full time job, it would look to the judge like the injury was not serious. Add to that the fact, that I had been going to physical therapy from about April-July of that year (about 3 months) but then stopped going b/c my no-fault insurance stopped paying for it, and I couldn't afford to do it on my own. I later found out (about 8 months later in fact), that I could put it on a "lean basis" on my new insurance I got when I started working at Fordham, so I went back and am still going as of this time. But once again, my lawyer pointed out to me that that fact looked bad, b/c it looks like I went to physical therapy only for a bit, then stopped (which could look to people, like the judge for instance, that the injury wasn't that serious), and only went back about 8 months later, b/c I had the deposition coming up (which WAS part of the reason, but also, my back really did bother and I wanted to go back, but I didn't know that I could, which was kind of the lawyer's bad for not telling me how to do that right away).
That plus the deposition itself didn't go very well. But that I blame mostly on my lawyer. First off, my ACTUAL lawyer was not present. I got some other dude from the law firm. Then we only went over stuff in the 'Bill of Particulars" for about 30-40 minutes before the Deposition began. Thing is, I STILL had no idea what kind of questions to expect from the opposing lawyer. The ONLY advice my lawyer gave me was "if you're not sure about something, don't guess, just say 'I don't remember." And then the opposing lawyer asked me a bunch of specific things, that I wasn't sure of at that moment (but which I had written down in my journal and stuff but I hadn't looked that over b/c I didn't know I should b/c some things seemed very minor) and basically used the "I don't remember" answer, quite a bit. But like I said, i didn't even know exactly what a deposition was before I went and I was not ANYWHERE near well prepared for it by my lawyer. I was given no "example questions" of what they may ask. And previous to the deposition I wasn't told that I would need to remember specific details right on that moment. Cuz when I called the lawyer to ask how to prepare and stuff, the secretaries were just like "Oh don't worry about it, just come in. They are only gonna ask you a few questions. The lawyer will prep you right beforehand."
So I did the deposition, and after it was over, I wasn't very happy with how it went, but the lawyer said things were ok, so that eased my fears. They also made it sound like it wasn't the "be-all, end-all" of the case.
But now it sucks, b/c last week at the Arbitration my lawyer made it sound like one of the big things that screwed me over was that I "had a bad deposition." So I was like "what the hell?!?!" I thought I'd be able to present the facts to the judge, but basically, I barely got to do, or say anything. The lawyers went in and met with the judge and then mine came out and was like "we have an offer." He then gave me a number, that for the type of injury I have was VERY low. Like nowhere even near the ballpark of where I was thinking.
So me and my mom started to complain. Trying to see why on earth I wouldn't be offered more money. So he gave us the excuses listed above, along with some other legal mumbo-jumbo I'm not about to go through here. But basically in the end, he explained that there is a certain bar that a person's injuries must exceed in order to get any "real" money. And that bar has been constantly raised over the years, to the point where you need to pretty much have gone to the hospital, missed work, been scarred and be in a freakin cast or something. It's absolutely ridiculous. So we explained to the lawyer, fine I may not be "scarred" but I have a freakin PERMANENT injury, that affects me on a daily basis, which will only get worse as my life goes on. How the hell can something like that not be considered above that supposed bar???
Now to my lawyer's credit, he IS a nice guy and he understood my complaints and tried to explain everything to me in "how things really work." He went back in, and came out with another number, which was slightly higher but in the end was barely any difference at all. I wasn't happy at all but he basically broke everything down for me, telling me that sadly my case wasn't very strong and that we COULD go to court with the case, but first off, the maximum amount of money I could get ALSO was not near the amount I originally expected. Plus, he let me know that he doesn't even take cases like mine anymore (I don't know if I mentioned but the main reason he took my case was b/c he was referred to me by the Dean of Alumni relations at Fordham Law, and he saw I was a Fordham grad and decided to help me out) b/c he sees these kinds of cases get thrown out all the time.
So basically my choices were to either go to court, to fight for an amount of money that STILL wasn't what I wanted, but then also have the high chance of having it get thrown out and then I get NOTHING, or to just take the money, cuz in the end something is better than nothing.
Me and my mom wound up thinking it out for awhile and in the end, it just seemed like a waste of time to even bother going to court. So in the end we settled. I'm still really pissed off about it but there wasn't much we could do.
I'm just really upset over everything, b/c I'm SURE things would have gone differently if I was better prepared. Especially for the Deposition, and if I was told about the "lean-basis" thing a lot earlier. I guess I also should have exagerrated my injury more and gone to the hospital the night of the accident (at least just to say I went and to get immediate x-rays and MRI's) but that's just not how I am. Plus I hate going to hospitals and I didn't want to go that night.
So yeah, it was a mix of faults, but I blame it more on the lawyer. It sucks, b/c hell, years ago (before I was born) my mom was in a car accident and she got more money than I did now (Hell, her amount was enough to put the down payment on the house I grew up in and am still currently living in), and I was hoping for something similar so I could do the same thing. So yeah it just sucks. My whole family is pretty upset. But like I said, there is not really anything I can freakin do.
So i'm just trying to look at the brighter side of things. I got SOME money. Not much, but I can invest it somewhere and probably use it to pay for wedding stuff in the future. So there's that at least. But yeah, don't mind me, I just had to vent. I'm sure my posts will return to usual form after this. I just had to get everything off my chest (plus also it's easier doing it here so people can read what happened rather than me repeating it 80 times to all my friends who would definitely wanna know what went down).
So I may not have been well compensated for my injury but hey, there's always the lotto! (and what goes around comes around). lol
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