Mark Perlmutter and Brooks Schuelke are Austin, Texas personal injury lawyers and attorneys who each have extensive experience in serious personal injury litigation.
We handle serious personal injury claims.
You Have Entered a Minefield and You Need a Map to Get Out.
People who are injured by others, or who lose a loved one who is injured by someone else, are physically and emotionally vulnerable. They also often face financial pressures, being unable to work or concerned about paying medical expenses. They should be able to focus on healing and recovering. Instead, an injured or bereaved person faces a bewildering process of claims, insurance companies, and lawsuits—where vultures lurk around every turn. These potential pitfalls come not only from insurance companies, but also from “personal injury lawyers” and even some doctors or other medical providers.
We’re hoping to change that.
If you or a loved one has been hurt or injured, please give us a call or submit your case. We’ll do our best to tell you if you have a case, and if so, to represent you to the best of our ability. But we don’t want to help just our clients. Even if you’re not ready to talk to an attorney, please order our free book HOLDING WRONGDOERS ACCOUNTABLE: Avoiding Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Texas Accident Claim. We’ve written this simple book to help injured persons avoid some of the common pitfalls that they face when making claims.
And today, it’s more important than ever that injured persons make sure that they hire the right personal injury lawyers.
A decade ago, insurance adjusters and personal injury lawyers were often able to work together to come up with fair values to resolve claims. That’s history. Today, the insurance companies have made strategic decisions to try to maximize their profits by minimizing what they pay personal injury victims. Insurance adjusters are well trained, and they know their job is to pay an injured person as little as possible. They’ll use any advantage they can get—even misusing innocent mistakes—to minimize their payouts.
Accident victims are sometimes shocked by how far insurance companies will go. For example, a couple of years ago, a couple made a claim against Progressive Insurance, their own insurance company. To minimize what it had to pay, Progressive hired a private investigator “couple” to join the victims’ church and talk their way into the victims’ private support sessions. That way, the investigators would have access to the victims’ most confidential thoughts and information. While this situation was extreme, it does show the mindset of many insurance adjusters.
Another recurring problem for personal injury victims is the “swoop and settle” tactic employed by some insurance companies who come in and settle claims early before the injured persons know the true extent of their injuries and the nature of their rights. And in many cases, the insurance adjusters not only fail to explain the nature of the settlements, but they often make out-right misrepresentations about the injured person’s ability to bring future claims.
At the same time, injury victims are seeing increasing threats from unethical lawyers and medical providers. The last few years have seen a rise of undercover stories and lawsuits about lawyers, sometimes working through chiropractors, illegally soliciting personal injury clients.
We have also seen a rise in lawyers (often those who advertise on TV or in the Yellow Pages) who want to run a volume practice. They may try to represent as many clients as possible, and settle claims as early as possible even when it isn’t in the client’s best interest. If it becomes obvious that they cannot easily settle the claims, these lawyers will often fire the clients. Do you think a client gets maximum value for a claim when insurance companies know the attorney isn’t willing to pursue the client’s case through litigation?
Unfortunately, the problem extends to some in the medical community. For example, in 2004, Allstate Insurance Company won a fraud lawsuit against one of Texas’s largest chiropractic chains. The suit alleged that the chiropractors conspired with doctors and others to churn up medical expenses for injury victims, which were eventually paid by Allstate.
So what’s a person to do? How is a person supposed to focus on healing and getting back on his or her feet while battling insurance adjusters and worrying about avoiding problem lawyers and medical providers?
We think the best way for personal injury victims to protect themselves from becoming victims for a second time is to arm themselves with information. If you’re ready to talk to a lawyer about a potential claim then call us or submit your claim, and we’ll do our best to help provide as much information to you to help protect your rights.
But we know that some injury victims don’t always want to talk to an attorney (or they have an attorney that they don’t trust). And that’s why we are giving accident victims our free book HOLDING WRONGDOERS ACCOUNTABLE: Avoiding Mistakes That Can Ruin Your Texas Accident Claim.
This book isn’t designed to be a legal book for lawyers. Instead, the book is a consumer guide with easy-to-read information that sets out some of the mistakes that accident victims make and provides advice on how you might avoid these mistakes. The advice deals with everything from how to avoid hiring a lawyer when you don’t need one to hiring the right lawyer, from dealing with doctors to dealing with insurance adjusters. If you or a loved one has been injured, you owe it to yourself or to them to order a free copy of this book to help protect their rights.
The information in our book in most cases won’t help you on its own. The advice works best in conjunction with advice from a good personal injury lawyer. When you are pursuing your claim, the insurance company is going to fight tooth and nail against you. Adjusters may argue that the accident wasn’t their insured’s fault, that you can’t be hurt in a low-impact collision or a “minor” fall, that you haven’t lost the income you have, or that you’re exaggerating your injuries. A good personal injury lawyer can deal with most of these claims. A good personal injury lawyer knows the keys to proving the true cause of the accident. A good personal injury lawyer knows the science of establishing that the injuries you sustain are unrelated to the physical damage of a car. A good personal injury lawyer knows proven tactics to rebut claims that you’re exaggerating your injuries. A good personal injury lawyer knows how to discredit the doctor that the insurance company will hire to say you’re not hurt. In most cases, a good personal injury lawyer is critical to your success.
