Podcast appearances and mentions of jonathan rosenfeld

About Jonathan Rosenfeld, Dr. Jerry Fisher and Innovating Edge, Inc: Jonathan Rosenfeld, President & CEO OF Innovating Edge, Inc and qualified professional with experience in Strategic Branding, Fashion Marketing, Business Development, Full Service Advertising Agency, and Start Up/ Small Business Operations. Gerard “Jerry” E. Fisher, MBA, Ph.D. has been advising major Fortune 500 organizations and many smaller and mid-sized companies on techniques for improving their innovation strategies and implementation, strategic planning, team building, marketing effectiveness, cross-team interactions, and sales and management skills for 50 years. Having been raised in family that fostered and instilled the values and ethics and appreciation for philanthropy, Jerry has spent his life working closely with human needs and charities large and small. The Fisher family has donated over $30M to programs that are dedicated to helping ease poverty, racism and devastating diseases. Jerry continues his philanthropy work and support internationally and locally in Rochester, NY. Jerry holds multiple advanced degrees from Michigan State University; including an MBA and Ph.D. in Business Administration with specialties in strategic planning, marketing, advertising, organization development, and life coaching; as well as a Ph.D in Economics with specialties in Finance and Supply Chain Management and Design. He has also studied organizations from an academic perspective. Jerry has spent many years teaching team building, marketing, strategic planning and innovation management at the undergraduate and graduate level at Michigan State University, The State University of New York, Rochester Institute Technology, and the University of Dayton. Certified in multiple instruments and assessments used around the globe in diverse range of business and incubators, Jerry has extensive first hand expertise in correlating client strengths and shortcomings into actionable gains during critical pivot points for management teams and organizations. Having created, helmed and sold multiple companies, Jerry's broad range of expertise allows him to share with his clients a wide range of options for innovation planning, strategic planning and design, team building, executive coaching, and market share growth. His style is a unique one, developed over years of working with executives and executive teams from more than 300 organizations in 35 different industries in over 100 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Latin America. Jerry created and served as President for the award-winning agency: Center for Organization Development Inc., based in Rochester, NY and his award-winning Marketing Edge seminars and consultation material have been translated into French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Mandarin, and Spanish. In a bold shift to a more agile operations. Organizations both large and small in all sectors and industries are increasingly challenged to innovate to survive. Today companies face real threats from emerging competitors and technologies. Give your innovating teams the edge they need to stay ahead of the competition. Innovating Edge offers a powerful combination of innovation instruments and exercises deigned to help you and your teams harnesses the invisible and natural innovation traits we all have. Discover your Innovating Edge with the Innovation Strengths Preference Indicator® Executive Edition (ISPI™ EXE). This is the foundation for analyzing your team's innovation potential. We combine this with award-winning executive coaching lessons developed by the Center of Organizational Development, Inc. (COD) and Fisher DeHann Consulting to give you a total package of tools to analyze your teams, harness their strengths, and position them for innovation success - all without the need for expensive consultants.

Unlimited Business Wisdom Ep #140 With Jonathan Rosenfeld

If you're in a field that is very hard to market and build a brand, especially cost-wise, you have to think of a way to make it easy and less costly to get noticed.In this episode, Jonathan Rosenfeld shares how he started getting noticed in the very tough and competitive market of injury law, and how he managed to stand out and build his brand, with now over 4,000 open cases open as we speak, and over US$250 million recovered for his clients.ViddyozeClient-grabbing videos in just 3 clicks with the world's most powerful video animation platformListen NotesSearch the whole Internet's podcasts with the best podcast search enginePickFuRun a poll and get in-depth feedback from real people in minutes. Coupon: THEUNNOTICEEDPost-production, transcript and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants Support the showAm I adding value to you?If so - I'd like to ask you to support the show.In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now. Go ahead, make my day :)Support the show here.

If you're in a field that is very hard to market and build a brand, especially cost-wise, you have to think of a way to make it easy and less costly to #getnoticed.In this episode, Jonathan Rosenfeld shares how he started getting noticed in the very tough and competitive market of injury law, and how he managed to stand out and build his brand, with now over 4,000 open cases open as we speak, and over US$250 million recovered for his clients.ViddyozeClient-grabbing videos in just 3 clicks with the world's most powerful video animation platformListen NotesSearch the whole Internet's podcasts with the best podcast search enginePickFuRun a poll and get in-depth feedback from real people in minutes. Coupon: THEUNNOTICEEDPost-production, transcript and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants Support the showAm I adding value to you?If so - I'd like to ask you to support the show.In return, I will continue to bring massive value with two weekly shows, up to 3 hours per month of brilliant conversations and insights.Monthly subscriptions start at $3 per month. At $1 per hour, that's much less than the minimum wage, but we'll take what we can at this stage of the business.Of course, this is still free, but as an entrepreneur, the actual test of anything is if people are willing to pay for it.If I'm adding value to you, please support me by clicking the link now. Go ahead, make my day :)Support the show here.

We had a lot of movers, shakers and difference makers on the show this year: Manage Your Creativity with David Kadavy (0.00 – 1:02) Leap Your Way Out of Conflict with A.J. Grossman III, J.D., LL.M, Esquire (1:02 – 1:53) Emmy Award Winning Camera Operator Turned Entrepreneur Howard Zales (1:53 – 2:26) Get Real and Live Your Life to the Edges with Jodee Bock (2:26 – 3:25) Your Career Success Accelerator with Joseph Fung, CEO of Uvaro (3:25 – 4:40) Taking Control of Your Mental Well-Being with Louisa Jewell (4:40 – 5:49) Unleash Your Unique Genius and Experience True Fulfillment with Howard Sambol (5:49 – 6:34) The Confidence Project: Strategies to Project a More Confident You with Tracy Hooper (6:34 – 7:44) Putting the Personal into Personal Injury Law with Jonathan Rosenfeld (7:45 – 8:57) The Seven Universal Principles of Influence with Brian Ahearn (8:58 – 10:05) conversations.biz/podcast youtube.com/@conversationleaders #conversationsaboutconversations—Episode 288

LISTEN TO LEARN Why law school doesn't teach anything about running a business Law firms do not have to be elitist People underestimate all the work it takes to become successful WE ALSO DISCUSS The benefits of interning in law school Most lawyers don't know what kind of law they want to practice How to problem solve while being outside (and surfing, biking, hiking, or swimming)  Watch this interview with Jonathan Rosenfeld on YouTube. After interning with a personal injury law firm, Jonathan Rosenfeld realized that this practice area was great for him. Jonathan continued to work with various personal injury law firms to gain more experience with mass tort cases, truck or car accidents, dog bites, and other class action suits. The true magic of personal injury law is that any person, of any age or occupation, can be involved in a personal injury accident.Jonathan Rosenfeld began recording YouTube videos and podcasts to better explain personal injury law. With greater knowledge, clients will understand the flow of personal injury actions and the patience needed for class action suits. An added benefit to creating content about legal issues is that Jonathan is also advertising for his law firm.In this episode, Jonathan Rosenfeld encourages lawyers to work hard and not rest on their school accolades. “Your J.D. is just a piece of paper,” exclaims Jonathan Rosenfeld. Jonathan insists that becoming successful requires hard work after law school. Regardless of whether you enjoyed law school or found it easy, you must create the career that you want when you are away from the classroom. Jonathan continues, “people who are successful, who have long-term success, put in so much work that you would never believe it.” We discuss how much time and effort is needed to become an overnight success because success is not easy to obtain. Jonathan Rosenfeld is licensed to practice law in Illinois. Learn more about Jonathan Rosenfeld:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanrosenfeld/Website: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/*You Are A Lawyer is hosted by Kyla Denanyoh. Follow the podcast:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youarealawyer/Twitter:  https://twitter.com/YouAreA_LawyerWebsite: https://www.youarealawyer.comYouTube:  Advertiser: Journey and Practice offers The Heart-Centered Lawyers Membership, a community of law students, grads, and lawyers who participate in self-care activities to improve their legal journey and practice. Visit https://journeyandpractice.com/services and enroll with code "podcast" for a special rate.EPISODE TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - INTRO00:20 - WELCOME TO YAAL00:56 - INTRODUCE YOURSELF01:48 - YOU'RE A FOODIE02:04 - JONATHAN'S BACKGROUND04:31 - PARENTS SUGGESTED LAW SCHOOL05:06 - IS LAW SCHOOL HELP YOUR BUSINESS06:36 - BIZ LAW CLASSES ARE ELECTIVES07:33 - WHY PERSONAL INJURY LAW?08:40 - WHY CREATE YOUR OWN FIRM?10:29 - IS A JD IMPRESSIVE?12:05 - RESULTS ARE IMPRESSIVE13:07 - WHY SO LAID BACK?14:05 - WORK/LIFE BALANCE14:27 - ADVICE FOR NEW LAWYERS?15:47 - SUCCESS TAKES WORKThanks for listening to You Are A Lawyer!Join the FREE mailing list and get behind-the-scenes content from Kyla.1) Visit www.youarealawyer.com2) Add your email address to the Subscribe pop-up box OR3) Enter your email address on the right side of the screen4) Get emails from me (I won't fill your inbox with junk)!Learn more about the Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers law firm. Subscribe to the Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers YouTube ChannelAs an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Review my favorite books here: https://amzn.to/3OTfrrZ

EXPERT GUEST: Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld is the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC where he has managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times. While nothing can take the place of hard work and commitment, Mr. Rosenfeld firmly believes in having balance in his life to include time for family, fun, exercise, and personal time. Even during hectic periods at work, Mr. Rosenfeld is committed to allotting time for each aspect of his life which in turn leads to more productivity and happiness. When it comes to running a business, Mr. Rosenfeld is keenly aware that the race is indeed a marathon and successful people need to establish a solid foundation in order to set themselves up for success. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/the-winners-ways-podcast/support

You've seen the billboards and heard the bold advertisements, but have you ever had a conversation with a personal injury attorney? We hadn't… until now. Our guest on this episode is Jonathan Rosenfeld. Jonathan is a personal injury attorney and successful businessman. His firm, Rosenfeld Injury Attorneys, has a national reputation for achieving superior results for individuals and families in personal injury and wrongful death matters. His firm has recovered over a quarter of a billion dollars in judgments and settlements for more than 5,000 satisfied clients from across the country WATCH the episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/AYImZbHRoVU LISTEN to the podcast on Spotify, Apple, Amazon, Google, iHeartRadio or the podcast's page on Libsyn VISIT rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com VISIT conversations.biz Conversations About Conversations – Episode 283 #ConversationsAboutConversations

In this episode, Jonathan Rosenfeld shares: The various types of cases that his law firm focuses on. How his Father influenced his work ethic by serving as a model of hard work. Whether or not he would have been considered a good employee. How wanting do things his way led him to start his own firm. Some of the daily rituals he observes which set him up for success. How scheduled his day s typically are. Whether or not he procrastinates. That he focuses a good bit on SEO because it ultimately drives sales/leads/clients towards his firm. How he defines success in business. That he hates reading and how he compensates for it.  

A Little About Jonathan Rosenfeld:I'm an Illinois lawyer with a nationwide practice who represents members of our society who have been seriously injured or killed due to the irresponsible acts of an individual or company. The injured have the same rights as everyone else — to be treated with compassion and respect — but their vulnerability means they need special protection and representation against those who injure, neglect or abuse them. This is my life's work.In this episode of The Millionaire's Lawyer, JP and Jonathan Rosenfeld discuss: Connect with Jonathan Rosenfeld: Connect with your host, JP:TwitterInstagramFacebookWebsiteShow:LinkedInEmail:  jpmcavoy@conductlaw.comPhone:  1-833-890-8878THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSOR:Conduct Law

Great entrepreneur story here about how our guest found his way to running his own law practice. Shark Bite Biz's David Strausser interviews Jonathan Rosenfeld of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. Check out Jonathan Rosenfeld's legal firm here: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/ Watch us on YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/SharkBiteBiz Make sure you visit David's article on Forbes.com: https://bit.ly/StrausserForbes Visit our NEW Merch store: https://store.sharkbitebiz.com  Join our Reddit Community: https://www.reddit.com/r/SharkBiteBiz/ Donate to our Patreon to SUPPORT this channel and get some BENEFITS and PERKS: http://patreon.com/sharkbitebiz Subscribe to the audio podcast on: http://www.SharkBiteBiz.com Find out more about the host, David Strausser: http://www.davidstrausser.com Follow David Strausser on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dstrausser83/ Follow us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/SharkBiteBiz Follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/SharkBiteBiz Listen on Apple iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/shark-bite-biz/id1522304651 Listen on Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuc2hhcmtiaXRlYml6LmNvbS9mZWVkLnhtbA Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1CZh0QdNr5Nn8CD8kInMAJ Listen on Vurbl: https://vurbl.com/station/shark-bite-biz/  Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/shark-bite-biz Listen on iHeartRADIO: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-shark-bite-biz-68819872/ Intro music courtesy of Stationary Giant: https://instagram.com/stationarygiant?igshid=1mf4umgejvpgi Connect with David Strausser on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/DavidStrausser Produced by: Francisco Strausser: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC82qlvfm4mXg3C3AzqPHthw Visit David Strausser @ Vision33: http://vision33.com 

Today, my guest is Jonathan Rosenfeld. Jonathan is the principal owner and creator of his law firm, a personal injury law firm outside of Chicago. In our conversation today, we'll talk a lot about the nuances of a personal injury practice, particularly in light of the fact that post-pandemic, many law firms are becoming more virtualized, and work is being done more in a remote fashion. We also look at this way of doing business in the personal injury space and if it lends itself to that type of workflow or not. Listen in to another great conversation! In this episode, Neil and Jonathan discuss: The evolution of personal injury law firms with the increase in remote work.  Flexible work options and hiring successful employees.  Increasing efficiency and decreasing human error through automation and systems.  Appropriately conveying information to clients and juries.    Key Takeaways: The commute is a waste of time for most people. If your employees have more flexibility in where and when they work, they will happily get their work done regardless of where and when they are working.  Case intake has increasingly moved out of the 9 to 5 timeframe as people submit inquiries online or even call outside of standard office hours.  Over time, the type of cases you see will help you to develop your systems, automations, and how the resources in your office will be divided.  Prepare, prepare, prepare. The preparation for trial begins with how the work is handled from the beginning of the case.    "Without systems, there are a lot of opportunities in this business for errors. These are errors, which not only affect your business but, ultimately, they can affect the client's case and it's really hard to undo that type of damage." —  Jonathan Rosenfeld Get in touch with Jonathan Rosenfeld: Website: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/ (https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/)  Website: https://camplejeuneusa.com/ (https://camplejeuneusa.com/)  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rosenfeld.Injury.Lawyers (https://www.facebook.com/Rosenfeld.Injury.Lawyers)  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/rosenfeldinjurylaw (https://www.youtube.com/user/rosenfeldinjurylaw)  Thank you to our sponsors! Ruby Receptionist - Virtual receptionist & live call services that will help you grow your office (and save money), one call at a time - to learn more, go to http://ruby.com/ (http://ruby.com/) or call 844.311.7829 Legal Funnels - You're feeling overwhelmed, overworked, and you feel like you're doing everything yourself because you lack the systems, procedures, and automations you need for your law firm to run without you... We will set up automated systems and hire the best virtual assistants for your law firm to run completely without you! Within 6 weeks inside of our battle-tested and results-based implementation program, you will pack your calendar with high-quality meetings from qualified clients for your law firm. You will outpace your direct competitors in your legal market with a reliable, consistent, and predictable system that will bring you clients 24/7 around the clock.  And... You OWN the entire system yourself! Go to http://www.legalfunnel.com/ (www.legalfunnel.com) and see what lots of other attorneys have to say about this program. The Net Profit CFO - Ryan Kimler works with attorneys who want to enjoy higher net profits without working longer or harder. With just 9 Simple Numbers, Ryan will help you drive more profit to your bottom line-and he won't confuse you with all the details! Connect with Ryan at http://www.netprofitcfo.com (www.netprofitcfo.com). Get in touch with Neil: Website: https://thelawentrepreneur.com/ (https://thelawentrepreneur.com/) Twitter: https://twitter.com/lawentrepreneur (https://twitter.com/lawentrepreneur) Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thelawentrepreneur/?ref=hl...

The world changes rapidly, and technologies improve yearly, affecting business industries. You might think, how can your business adapt, utilize new technologies, and surpass your business competitors? As a business owner and a marketer, you first need to know your customer. Today's customers are much more sophisticated. They tend to have done much more homework before they pick up the phone, contact you, or whatever. Thus, you must acknowledge that and start creating content that resonates with your consumer. In this episode, we have Jonathan Rosenfeld. He is the owner and managing attorney of Rosenfeld Injury lawyers LLC. His company is a full-service personal injury law office that handles cases in Chicago and around the United States, intending to provide the best possible counsel for people and families who have been gravely wounded or died in accidents. In today's episode, Jonathan will share his company's difficulties and how they coped with them, excelled, and left their competitors behind. He will also give us some advice that will be helpful to business owners. Resources Jonathan Rosenfeld in Jury Lawyers Official SiteRosenfeld Injury Lawyers Facebook PageRosenfeld Injury Lawyers LinkedinRosenfeld Injury Lawyers YouTube ChannelPersonal Injury Law Podcast By Jonathan Rosenfeld Podcast

Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld is the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC where he has managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic.  At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times.     CONNECT WITH Jonathan Rosenfeld Website: http://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanrosenfeld/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Rosenfeld.Injury.Lawyers Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosenfeldj?lang=en    CONNECT WITH Cedric Francis Website: https://www.lead2greatness.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cedricbfrancis Twitter: https://twitter.com/cedricbfrancis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cedric_francis/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cedric-francis-a0544037/   DONATE TO Meet the Streets Outreach Website: https://www.mtsoutreach.org   Disclosure: Links contain affiliates. When you buy through one of our links we will receive a commission. This is at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting Lead to Greatness and allowing us to continue to bring you valuable content.   Promo:    Try Audible Premium Plus and Get up to two free audiobooks: https://amzn.to/3as87Aw   Recording Equipment    Mic - https://amzn.to/3dHeSAi   Road Castor Pro - https://amzn.to/3aujvvS   Headset - https://amzn.to/2QM2O8a    Mic Cable - https://amzn.to/3dJ9Wec   USB Cable (Mac Book Only) - https://amzn.to/2PbAPy2   USB Cable (Windows Only) - https://amzn.to/3sK5K2h    Cable Compatible with Bose Brands - https://amzn.to/32BpN8j    Camera - https://amzn.to/3ncI7Oz    Mini Switcher - https://amzn.to/3dJGiWy    Micro HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3tISvQK    High Speed HDMI to HDMI Cable - https://amzn.to/3v3NfaG    

833: Putting the Personal Back in Personal Injury Law , Jonathan Rosenfeld, Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers Putting the Personal Back in Personal Injury Law Jonathan Rosenfeld, Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers – The Sharkpreneur podcast with Seth Greene Episode 834 Jonathan Rosenfeld Jonathan Rosenfeld is an Illinois lawyer with a nationwide practice who represents members of our society who have been seriously injured or killed due to the irresponsible acts of an individual or company. The injured have the same rights as everyone else — to be treated with compassion and respect — but their vulnerability means they need special protection and representation against those who injure, neglect, or abuse them. Listen to this illuminating Sharkpreneur episode with Jonathan Rosenfeld about putting the personal back in personal injury law. Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week's show: - How a person has to have a substantial and legitimate injury to receive a settlement. - Why people deserve financial compensation for their injuries. - How one of the biggest mistakes people make is not hiring a lawyer for their personal injury case. - Why you should reach out to a personal injury attorney immediately after an incident. - How hiring an attorney can yield substantially more money than handling a personal injury incident on your own. Connect with Jonathan: Guest Contact Info Twitter @rosenfeldj Facebook facebook.com/Rosenfeld.Injury.Lawyers LinkedIn linkedin.com/company/rosenfeld-injury-lawyers Links Mentioned: rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Gray Beards stumbled upon a gem by finding Personal Injury Attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld! We did have some help from a podcast booking agency, thanks Miriam! Anyway, join us for this great conversation on many things life, law, and happiness. Enjoy!!!

Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld is the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC where he has managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times. While nothing can take the place of hard work and commitment, Mr. Rosenfeld firmly believes in having balance in his life to include time for family, fun, exercise, and personal time. Even during hectic periods at work, Mr. Rosenfeld is committed to allotting time for each aspect of his life which in turn leads to more productivity and happiness. When it comes to running a business, Mr. Rosenfeld is keenly aware that the race is indeed a marathon and successful people need to establish a solid foundation in order to set themselves up for success.

1243 - Getting Your Business Out There with Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers' Jonathan Rosenfeld

We interview attorney Jonathan Rosenfeld and he opens about the behind the scenes of building a small business. How he gets clients, how much time he spends running his business, and how they generate website content. He shares the ratio of time he spends running the business versus servicing clients is interesting. He also explains how to find what keywords to use, claiming your business and so much more.#buildsmallbusiness #smallbusiness #developcontent #financialdads https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/https://support.google.com/business/answer/2911778?hl=en&co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop

Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld is the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC where he has managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times. Visit the website at https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/

In this episode of The Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers and co-host Kyle Houck interview Jonathan Rosenfeld, Personal Injury Attorney and Owner of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. Jonathan discusses how Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers helps their clients navigate personal injury cases. Episode Highlights: Jonathan talks about his background and gives a brief introduction of what his profession as a Personal Injury Attorney is all about. (3:00) Jonathan shares that in every industry and profession, you just have to get out and be consistent in doing what you desire. (10:47) Jonathan shares that he is shocked by the number of people reaching out to him regarding their not being able to get their checks. (17:35) Jonathan explains that a mass tort is really any situation where there's a large group of people who've been impacted by a similar event or incident. (22:59) Jonathan shares some scenarios where he thinks simple cases should have been resolved. (30:22) Jonathan talks about the company needing to be responsible and go down to its insurance obligations. (35:40) Jonathan explains that people, when pushed to their patience, wind up getting an attorney to file cases against their employers. (38:31) Jonathan elaborates on the difference between completely manufacturing an incident and manufacturing an injury and maybe exacerbating the injury. (49:16) Jonathan shares some sample cases that can be considered an exception to the rule. (55:02) Tweetable Quotes: "They're not out there to squeeze blood out of a rock, you know. They're out there to try to pay their bills and really try to get really what's reasonably entitled to under the law." - Jonathan Rosenfeld "There's a difference between, you know, completely manufacturing an incident and manufacturing an injury and maybe exacerbating the injury." - Jonathan Rosenfeld "If anyone's got a legal question, you know, God forbid, someone's injured, reach out, call me. If I can't help you, I can find someone who can." - Jonathan Rosenfeld Resources Mentioned: Jonathan Rosenfeld LinkedIn Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers David Carothers Kyle Houck Florida Risk Partners The Extra 2 Minutes

Join Shalom Klein on his weekly radio show, Get Down To Business with guests: DDS Dobson-Smith Jonathan Rosenfeld Bob Schlegel

In this episode of The Power Producers Podcast, David Carothers and co-host Kyle Houck interview Jonathan Rosenfeld, Personal Injury Attorney and Owner of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. Jonathan discusses how Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers helps their clients navigate personal injury cases. Episode Highlights: Jonathan talks about his background and gives a brief introduction of what his profession as a Personal Injury Attorney is all about. (3:00) Jonathan shares that in every industry and profession, you just have to get out and be consistent in doing what you desire. (10:47) Jonathan shares that he is shocked by the number of people reaching out to him regarding their not being able to get their checks. (17:35) Jonathan explains that a mass tort is really any situation where there's a large group of people who've been impacted by a similar event or incident. (22:59) Jonathan shares some scenarios where he thinks simple cases should have been resolved. (30:22) Jonathan talks about the company needing to be responsible and go down to its insurance obligations. (35:40) Jonathan explains that people, when pushed to their patience, wind up getting an attorney to file cases against their employers. (38:31) Jonathan elaborates on the difference between completely manufacturing an incident and manufacturing an injury and maybe exacerbating the injury. (49:16) Jonathan shares some sample cases that can be considered an exception to the rule. (55:02) Tweetable Quotes: "They're not out there to squeeze blood out of a rock, you know. They're out there to try to pay their bills and really try to get really what's reasonably entitled to under the law." - Jonathan Rosenfeld "There's a difference between, you know, completely manufacturing an incident and manufacturing an injury and maybe exacerbating the injury." - Jonathan Rosenfeld "If anyone's got a legal question, you know, God forbid, someone's injured, reach out, call me. If I can't help you, I can find someone who can." - Jonathan Rosenfeld Resources Mentioned: Jonathan Rosenfeld LinkedIn Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers David Carothers Kyle Houck Florida Risk Partners The Extra 2 Minutes

Jonathan Rosenfeld is the Founder and Owner of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers LLC. As the founder and managing attorney at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers, Jonathan's practice focuses on the representation of the most vulnerable members of society in severe personal injury, medical malpractice, and nursing home negligence matters. Since his days as a clerk in law school, Jonathan has always been involved in different aspects of personal injury law and he has never looked back. In addition to his busy law practice, Jonathan is blessed to have a tremendous family. With a kind and loving wife and two of the most energetic and best-looking kids around, he knows that he is a far better advocate for his clients because of their added dynamic in his life.   This Episode is Sponsored By: Nearside is helping small businesses save money. With Nearside, there's no minimum balance requirement. Nearside business checking helps you grow your business by saving you money and providing valuable rewards and discounts. With Nearside rewards, you can earn cashback automatically on all the business purchases you already make. And they offer seamless online banking for on-the-go entrepreneurs. Go check out the Nearside app in both the Google Playstore and Apple Store. To learn more about Nearside and how they can help your business, go to: millionaire-interviews.com/nearside and sign up for a nearside business checking account. What if I told you, you could be productive in business and in the bedroom. Magic Mind, the world's first productivity drink, is a nootropic shot of healthy natural ingredients that help you decrease stress, boost fluid flow, and keep you focused. If you're ready to race past your competition and satisfy your partner, then try Magic Mind today, go visit: millionaire-interviews.com/magicmind and use code – millionaire20 to get 20% off your first order. With one delicious scoop of Athletic Greens you're absorbing 75 high quality vitamins, minerals, whole foods or superfoods, probiotics, and adaptogens to help you start your day right. This special blend of ingredients supports your gut health, nervous system, immune system, your energy, recovery, focus, and aging. Right now, it's time to reclaim your health and arm your immune system with convenient daily nutrition, especially heading into the flu and cold season. To make it easy, Athletic Greens is going to give you a FREE 1-year supply of immune-supporting vitamin D and 5 free travel packs with your first purchase, all you have to do is visit: millionaire-interviews.com/athleticgreens Blockchain technology is transforming everything from communities to healthcare, to real estate to everything! That's why in 2020 Real Vision Crypto was launched, the world's premier cryptocurrency and digital assets video channel. Right now, Real Vision Crypto is helping more than 200,000 members understand the biggest wealth creation opportunities in a generation 5 times a week. They bring you the most brilliant minds in finance and crypto, including Gary V, Caitlin Long, Mike Novogratz, and so many more. To get your FREE membership to Real Vision Crypto, go visit: millionaire-interviews.com/realvision Otis is an investment platform that makes it possible for almost anyone to invest in shares of cultural assets. Here's how it works, you download their app and sign up for free. They have over a hundred items available for you to invest in, from rare collectibles like sports cards, comics, and video games, to NFTs contemporary art, and even rare sneakers. Shares usually start around 10 bucks, plus they add new assets every week. Right now, Otis is offering listeners of this show a free share when they fund their account, all you have to do is go to: millionaire-interviews.com/otis LinkedIn Jobs has made it easier to get candidates worth interviewing faster, and it's free. Create a free job post in minutes with LinkedIn Jobs to reach your network and beyond to the world's largest professional network of over 750 million people. Focus on candidates with skill and experience you need. Post your job for free at: millionaire-interviews.com/linkedin-jobs     Want to Support the Show? Well we'd love for you to join our Patreon Group!  What's in it for you?  Well you'll instantly get a scheduled call from Austin, where he'll help you with your current or future business... Sign-Up Now at millionaire-interviews.com/patreon.

Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times.While nothing can take the place of hard work and commitment, Mr. Rosenfeld firmly believes in having balance in his life to include time for family, fun, exercise, and personal time.Even during hectic periods at work, Mr. Rosenfeld is committed to allotting time for each aspect of his life which in turn leads to more productivity and happiness.When it comes to running a business, Mr. Rosenfeld is keenly aware that the race is indeed a marathon and successful people need to establish a solid foundation in order to set themselves up for success.Learn More: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/Influential Influencers with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-jonathan-rosenfeld-founder-of-rosenfeld-injury-lawyers-chicago-personal-injury-lawyer

Jonathan Rosenfeld is an attorney in Chicago, Illinois concentrating in cases involving serious injury and wrongful death. Mr. Rosenfeld managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) in the wake of additional competition and headwinds from the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when other law firms are struggling to stay afloat, Mr. Rosenfeld continues to expand his law practice into emerging areas that help stabilize his revenue in uncertain times.While nothing can take the place of hard work and commitment, Mr. Rosenfeld firmly believes in having balance in his life to include time for family, fun, exercise, and personal time.Even during hectic periods at work, Mr. Rosenfeld is committed to allotting time for each aspect of his life which in turn leads to more productivity and happiness.When it comes to running a business, Mr. Rosenfeld is keenly aware that the race is indeed a marathon and successful people need to establish a solid foundation in order to set themselves up for success.Learn More: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/Influential Influencers with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-jonathan-rosenfeld-founder-of-rosenfeld-injury-lawyers-chicago-personal-injury-lawyer

For all its flaws, the legal system remains good and equitable. Matthew Sullivan's guest in this episode is Jonathan Rosenfeld, the founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. Jonathan fills Matthew in about how injury lawyers handle various cases. These can include personal injury, car accidents, home negligence, medical malpractice, and more. Join in the conversation and discover what services you can access with injury lawyers. Jonathan encourages you to educate yourself and get information about your different options. For starters, you can listen to this episode to learn more!

Our amazing guest "Jonathan Rosenfeld" is proud to be a personal injury lawyer representing individuals and families during some of the darkest hours of their lives. Since his days as a clerk in law school, he have always been involved in different aspects of personal injury law--- and have never looked back! While law school and work experience may prepare lawyers to ‘practice' law, only a unique desire to help the injured and maimed can transform a lawyer into a real advocate. Without an advocate, corporations and insurance companies can easily use their power and resources to steamroll an injured person into submission. As a trial lawyer, his job is to see to it that his clients' are treated with respect and fairness, both in-- and out of the courtroom. Today, after practicing law for his entire working career, he have come to appreciate the stresses his clients face in the wake of a tragedy. Only after he take the time to learn the their circumstances and concerns will he be able to effectively represent them. In this episode we discuss: -His journey into becoming a personal injury attorney and helping people solve every type of personal injury case. -There are tons and tons of opportunities out there if you are willing to put the work in, take some rest and just make it happen. -The best thing to do to grow your business is do as opposed to thinking about it. -You need to be genuinely interested and love the business that you do. -You may not love the business itself but you have to actually love the process. -Everyone needs a break from everything. -Get up early. “I think routine is a huge drive if you look at successful people”. -“I think people underestimate how much work other people are doing”. -Get your mind in the space where “this is what it is, this is what it gonna take and this is what im gonna do to it. -Start implementing baby steps. -Google has done a great job of pushing people to create genuine content. -You need to wrap your head around the fact that what people are looking for are totally different things. -Get outside, go for a walk. -Get up and do it! All this and much more from Jonathan, do listen to the full episode to get some golden nuggets from him. Please leave us your reviews as it means the world to us. To get in contact with Jonathan find him at: https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com/jonathan-rosenfeld.html Podcast: Personal Injury ------------------------------- ABOUT THE HOST: I am your host Kajal Khurana - KK, Author of best selling book on Amazon, Mindset & Health Coach, Nutritionist and a Reiki Healer. I am very passionate about helping entrepreneurs achieve their desired goals faster by using tools and techniques which will help them stay energized, focused so they can feel good with their body and mind and make better business decisions. If you enjoyed the episode, if it helped you in any way, or if you had ONE aha moment, please let me know, hit the subscribe button, rate the show and leave me a review. You will make my day :). My new book is launched on amazon here is the link please grab your copy http://mybook.to/whymefirst Get the 5 hacks to escape burnouts, including free weekly planner and a bonus of free 30 minutes consultation call with me, all inside the ebook: https://bit.ly/2yfhjIH Let me know what topics you want me to cover in my future episodes at info@bodymindsolution.com Or visit my website: https://bodymindsolution.com

LifeBlood BRAND: We talked about how to scale your business, how technology and Covid has impacted the legal profession, how to think about and approach marketing, and how it's possible to grow and thrive in any industry with Jonathan Rosenfeld, Founder of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers.   Listen to learn why accentuating your current website could be an important key to growing your business!  You can learn more about Jonathan at RosenfeldInjuryLawyers.com, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Thanks, as always for listening!  If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and subscribe as well.  You can learn more about us at MoneyAlignmentAcademy.com, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube and Facebook or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact George at Contact@GeorgeGrombacher.com.

Everything is turning to online marketing these days. During this pandemic, businesses have had to think fast on their feet and operate in a new way. Lawyers included. With changes in how the world of business operates, online marketing is more important than ever. Attorney, Jonathan Rosenfeld has managed to consistently grow his business (10-20% annually) […] The post Online Marketing: Organic Website Development and Content, With Jonathan Rosenfeld first appeared on Business Creators Radio Show with Adam Hommey.

October 25, 2021 - Creativity w/o Frontiers Roy Sharples and Injury Lawyer Jonathan Rosenfeld

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Zantac Lawsuit Update 2021   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld, and today I am joined by my colleague Marty Gould, and we are going to talk about the Zantac litigation. Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, to begin with I want to talk about Zantac lawsuits in 2021. I'd like you to bring us up to date in terms of what the status of the Zantac litigation is. Lots of cases have been filed, lots of news headlines, but can you bring us up to date in terms of where the litigation stands as of today in 2021? Marty Gould: Sure. Thanks for having me on, Jon. In terms of where we're at with the Zantac cases, hundreds and hundreds of cases have been filed across the country, thousands of cases. They've been consolidated into a multi-district litigation in Florida, in the Southern District of Florida. This is done for efficiency purposes so that the discovery in the case can be performed at the same time and you don't have different rulings in hundreds of different courts. Each case is still an individual case because everybody's injuries and exposures are different, but this stage of the case is all being done at the same time. We can expect some of the first trials, what's called bellwether trials, to go at the end of 2022, that's that's the hope. And that will give us a good assessment of what's going to happen with this litigation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So one of the things that is related to every single type of civil action is the statute of limitations, the time that you have to file a lawsuit. How does the statute of limitations come into play with respect to Zantac lawsuits? In other words, if someone's watching this and they think they may have a potential case, and they're asking you, how long do I have to file a case? How would you respond to that? Marty Gould: Well the first question I would ask is, in what State did you take Zantac? So one of the most important things is for a client, or potential client, to immediately call a lawyer and have them assess their case, because the statute of limitations that would apply would be the one, typically, where the exposure happened, so where the client was buying the Zantac, taking it. And that State's statute of limitations for personal injury cases, for product liability cases, would apply. So that's why it's very important for somebody who may have a case to immediately call a lawyer experienced in this type of case, and find out when your statute of limitations is. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In terms of civil cases, everything ultimately comes down to one thing, it's really about getting compensation, getting financial compensation for your particular injury, for your particular situation. In terms of the Zantac cases, a lot of times people are asking, is there a set payout for a Zantac lawsuit? What is the average settlement for a Zantac case? We know that these cases are still really much in their infancy as far as the litigation goes, but can you give us an idea as to the elements of damages in these cases, and how they may be valued? Marty Gould: So, like you mentioned, we're still in ?he earlier stages of the case, there's no cases that have settled yet. Every case is going to be different, the value of the case is going to be contingent on the individual diagnosis, the treatment, and the experience of that person. These are people who have cancer, many of them are undergoing chemotherapy, invasive surgeries. Some people have lost loved ones, these are catastrophic injuries. So in a personal injury case like this, you can pursue compensation for physical and emotional, pain and suffering, lost wages, lost earning capacity. If you lost a loved one, loss of society, loss of support, emotional distress. These are all things that you can legally seek compensation for, and everybody's case is going to be a little bit different based off their experiences, but these are very serious cases, and they're being treated as very serious cases. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So potentially, people could be looking at substantial damages just in terms of their past and future medical care alone, in some of these situations, correct? Marty Gould: Exactly. And you can get the past medical expenses, which can be significant in a cancer case, future medical care, monitoring of somebody's cancer in those cases where someone, hopefully, has survived and is in remission. And at the end of the day, we're alleging that lives were lost, families were ruined, these are very serious and catastrophic injuries, and that's the way these cases should be treated. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the things that people also look at, and when I say people look at, a lot of times you can see what is trending on the internet, but one of things that comes up periodically is, has anyone won a Zantac lawsuit as of today, as of August 2021? I think you mentioned earlier that these cases are really early on in terms of their litigation, but if someone's looking and saying, hey, has anyone won a Zantac lawsuit, the short answer is, what? Marty Gould: The short answer, Jon, is no. Nobody has tried these cases yet. The discovery is still ongoing, there's a lot being done right now. The goal is to have trials go in 2022. The expectation is probably toward the end of the year, there's much that has to be done before that. And those will be the bellwether cases, those first cases going to trial, which will be critical and important in terms of assessing what's going to happen with this litigation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In terms of who can file a Zantac lawsuit, who would qualify to file a lawsuit against the manufacturer of Zantac under the guidelines that we're using as of today? Is it the individual? Is it the family? Is it both? Can you give us an idea as to who may qualify to bring a case? Marty Gould: Sure. So in terms of who may bring the case, typically it would be the person who took the Zantac and has cancer. If it's a situation where, tragically, that person has already died, the family can bring the case on behalf of that loved one, so they would bring the case as the administrators of the estate of the family member who is now deceased. The criteria that we're looking at is, did the individual take Zantac on a daily or regular basis for at least six months, and after taking Zantac, were you diagnosed with any of the following cancers? And these are cancers that are most closely associated with links to NDMA and the gastrointestinal system which the drug was impacting. Those cancers are stomach and gastric cancer, intestinal cancer, bladder cancer, esophageal cancer, liver cancer, pancreatic cancer, and breast cancer. But every case is different, so that's why it's very important to speak to a lawyer who can tell you whether or not you meet that criteria. Jonathan Rosenfeld: If someone's watching this video and they're saying to themselves, "You know what? I may have one of those conditions. I did take Zantac for a long period of time, but I don't have that product with me anymore. I either stopped taking it, I threw out." How does someone prove that they took Zantac at some point in their lives? Marty Gould: Step one is we always ask the potential client, do you have the Zantac box at your house? If you do, you want to preserve it, that's something that we're going to want to hold on to. That aside, there's many different ways where we can prove that you took Zantac. If there's any receipts from purchases, from like a Walgreens or CVS or any other drug store, medical records, sometimes there's going to be references to the fact that you were taking Zantac, or you might've been prescribed Zantac from your doctor, and that certainly will be in the record. Local pharmacy records, oftentimes people had rewards programs, rewards cards, where their name and their entire history of the drugs that they purchased at the store are documented. Marty Gould: And even in cases where you don't have any of that, this is something that could have been purchased over the counter, the testimony of the witness or family members, that's also evidence. We get an affidavit from you, or if you take a deposition and you say that you are purchasing Zantac, that's evidence in the case, or if you have a family member who can attest to that. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So bottom line is, don't let the lack of immediate physical evidence dissuade you from bringing a potential case and filing a claim, correct? Marty Gould: Correct. So, in the Roundup cases, many people, they would sign off on affidavit attesting and the fact that they had purchased Roundup, or they were exposed to Roundup, in their backyard, gardening and what have you. So the testimony alone is also evidence in the case, in addition to everything else we talked about. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, one of the, I guess, types of litigation that this falls under, that Zantac falls under, is this considered to be a mass tort? And the word mass tort seems to get thrown around a lot. Can you explain to us what a mass tort is, and what a class action is? Are they pretty much the same? Are they different? Give us a little bit of a breakdown of that, and how you would categorize the Zantac litigation. Marty Gould: So, we're taking these cases on as mass torts, and that's because we treat every client and every case as a separate case. Everybody had different exposures, different injuries resulting, and everybody's experiences are different. Some people tragically lost loved ones, some people beat the cancer. So these are all factors that are taken into a case, but in terms of how the case is managed, these are being managed as a multi-district litigation, where you have one judge who's presiding over essentially all the cases in the pre-trial stages. So you have rulings regarding discovery matters that are being handled in a consistent manner, and then cases are being tried on an individual basis, where the individual merits of each case is being tried. That's important too, because in some cases, people really did have catastrophic losses and that's important for the jury and the defendants to understand that. Marty Gould: In terms of a class action, it's similar in the respect that you have one court overseeing the discovery process, but you have a few plaintiffs that are filing a case representing the entire class. So each individual isn't necessarily having their case looked at, in an individual capacity. And in a class action case, generally, everybody gets the same amount of recovery. They have the same case, same amount of recovery, rather than having individual recoveries based off of individual experiences. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So in the case of Zantac, and Roundup, where there's what's called an MDL that you mentioned, the damages and the cases are evaluated on an individual basis, as opposed to a holistic base where the damages are looked at on a specific basis, case by case basis, correct? Marty Gould: Exactly. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, this was great information. I appreciate your time and your expertise with these updates, and I look forward to talking with you again as these cases continue to churn through the litigation process. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Bryce Hensley an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC Here, they discuss: Roundup Lawsuit Update 2021   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello everybody. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And today I am joined by attorney Bryce Hensley, and we are going to talk about the Roundup litigation, the 2021 updates with respect to the Roundup Weed Killer litigation. Bryce, thanks for joining me today. Bryce Hensley: Thanks for having me, John. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, Bryce, one of the largest emerging trends in mass torts in the past several years involves Roundup Weed Killer, and specifically the correlation between non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and use of Roundup. Bryce, many people have contacted our office in relation to these cases and one of the ongoing things they ask is really what is the status of these cases? People have been watching the news, they see a lot of headlines, but can you sort of bring this up to date with the status of the Roundup cases in 2021. Bryce Hensley: Right now the status of the Roundup litigation is there have been cases pending for over five years in various courts across the country, those include California, St. Louis, here in Chicago and various other states. There've been three trials that have proceeded in California that resulted in such decisive victories for Roundup users against the manufacturers that those companies, which is Monsanto and Bayer, the company that purchased Monsanto, has set aside billions of dollars for Roundup users to settle their claims, which typically involve non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or various subsets of that type of cancer. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So at this point, one of the followups that we're seeing with a lot of these potential clients is they're reading these news headlines that Bayer has set aside billions of dollars to resolve these cases. And obviously if you have a potential case, one of the followup questions that a lot of people are asking is really what is the settlement amounts per person when it comes to the Roundup lawsuit. Everything is ultimately about dollars and cents here and if someone's looking at this and saying, hey, Bayer, put aside all this money, how does that translate into what I'm going to get? Jonathan Rosenfeld: What is my piece of the pie? How would you respond to that? And what type of monetary recovery are we looking at here possibly? Bryce Hensley: Well, if you have been diagnosed with a form of cancer and you've used Roundup in the past, my first recommendation would be to reach out to an attorney, an attorney experienced in handling these types of cases. Our office has handled over dozens of cases, and we've also settled a case involving Roundup exposure. Each case is different though. And so the settlement values are really going to depend on a number of things, which include your diagnosis, the amount of Roundup you used, the extent of the treatment you received, the type of the treatment you received, your age and a number of other factors that may increase or decrease the value of your potential settlement. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Bryce, one of the things that I want to also ask you as sort of a follow up here is you mentioned that these cases have been going on now for years. In terms of the time to file a lawsuit and the time to file a Roundup lawsuit, ultimately everything is governed by a statute of limitations, a time requirement that you have to file a lawsuit. How are you looking at the statute of limitations with respect to potential Roundup cases? Bryce Hensley: John, that's a great question. There is still time to bring Roundup lawsuits, but there's two important things that have to be taken into consideration as to why people should move forward and call an attorney immediately. The first you already referenced, which is the statute of limitations. Every state in the United States has what's called a statute of limitations. That's a time period that governs the amount of time where you can actually file a lawsuit and move forward. Now that varies from state to state, and it's important to reach out to an attorney who has knowledge of various state statute of limitations. Bryce Hensley: What also may come into play there is when you first found out about the potential connection between Roundup and your cancer diagnosis. And a second important reason why it's important to reach out to an attorney immediately is because while these companies have set aside billions of dollars, there are also tens of thousands of individuals who have filed claims or filed lawsuits or are currently pending around the country. So it's important to reach out immediately before that money gets dispersed to other people. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Who qualifies to bring around a case? A lot of times people may be watching these videos and they may be saying to themselves, hey, I may not have a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or a different type of cancer, but my family member is. Who qualifies under the guise, the parameters of the Roundup litigation to file a lawsuit? Bryce Hensley: Anybody who had exposure to Roundup could qualify for a potential settlement. These could be landscapers. These could be farmers, or these could be individuals using Roundup around their homes. Now whether or not you qualify also depends on the type of cancer diagnosis that you have. Roundup settlements typically resolve when an individual has exposure to the product and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or one of its subsets. Now whether or not an individual qualifies is ultimately going to depend on their diagnosis and then the value of that claim is going to depend on a number of things, including the type of diagnosis, the age that an individual was diagnosed. Bryce Hensley: It's going to depend on their Roundup, use the type of Roundup use that they had, and it's going to depend on a number of other risk factors that ultimately are used to determine the value of the case. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So the bottom line is if you think you have a potential Roundup case, now is the time to really take action and really contact an attorney. If you've been sitting on the sidelines watching this play out, now is really the time to act. Bryce, I want to ask you, can you give us an idea of the volume of cases that have been filed, the volume of Roundup lawsuits that have been filed? Bryce Hensley: Right now, there are tens of thousands of lawsuits involving Roundup of exposure pending around the country. In fact, it's believed that the number may even exceed 100,000 cases. Our office is handling many of these cases all over the country in various states, and we're currently evaluating settlement opportunities in those cases. But because there's so many cases, it's important that you reach out to an attorney immediately. While all these companies have set aside billions of dollars to settle Roundup claims, there are thousands of people out there and that money can disappear pretty fast. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, if someone's watching this video and they're saying to themselves, well, I think I have a case. I've got a diagnosis of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I may have lived in an agricultural area when I was younger. I may have used Roundup. But you know what, I mean, that was three houses ago. I don't have the product anymore. What would you tell those people about, how you would essentially show the evidence that you would use to show that they actually used and were exposed to Roundup if they don't have the product anymore? Bryce Hensley:   Well, John, that's a great question. There are a lot of people out there who no longer have any proof of their Roundup use. They may have thrown out the Roundup. They may have tossed out the receipts. They may have never gotten the receipts in the first place. But in the Roundup litigation, what many individuals have done is they filled out what are called affidavits or sworn statements attesting their Roundup use, or they may have a family member fill out an affidavit or a sworn statement attesting to their Roundup use.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Jim Hardy an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they discuss: What Should an Employee do if Hurt on the Job? Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hi, I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And today on the Personal Injury podcast, I am joined by Jim Hardy, a work comp attorney in Chicago. And we are going to be talking about workers' compensation settlements, and how to value a work comp case in Illinois. Jim, thanks for joining me today. I appreciate it. Jim Hardy: Sure, no problem. Thank you, Jonathan. I glad to be here. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So Jim, we spoke in an earlier podcast about the benefits that people are entitled to in Illinois, generally under work comp. The money while you're off work, the TTD, the medical benefits while you're injured. And the third prong to work comp cases in Illinois is generally this lump sum payment. When people are talking about, "Hey, I got X amount of dollars for my work comp case," this is what they're talking about. They're talking about that lump sum payment. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so today I want to talk with you and try to educate people a little bit about how this lump sum is derived, because it's not a random amount. It's a very methodical calculation. And I want you to help us get some insight into how these cases are valued under Illinois law. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And I guess the first thing, can you take a step back and walk us through that settlement process. I guess first off, in order to begin with I guess, when is a case, a work comp case in Illinois right to settle? Jim Hardy: Okay. Thanks, Jonathan. So you're entitled to a settlement for a work injury, but you should not settle your case until the doctor has released you from medical treatment. And the docs call that MMI or maximum medical improvement. So some people want to try to settle their case as soon as they're released back to work in some capacity, but that's not the best time, or that's not the appropriate time to settle a case. Because even though you're back to work, the doctor may still recommend treatment, therapy, follow-up visit doctor visits. Jim Hardy: And once you settle the work comp case, then you close out your medical rights. So the work comp insurance carrier, once it's settled, they don't have to pay for any more medical bills. So that's why it's essential to not pursue settlement and sign off anything until your doctor has said that you are done treating, no more follow up visits, you're good to go and they release you from treatment. So that's the appropriate time and not before that. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so if you are injured on the job and your doctor's released you but you're not feeling 100%, it may be in your best interest to wait a little bit and see what happens and see what develops. See if you have any more problems. Jim Hardy: Sure. That's correct also. Just because the doctor has released you from treatment, that doesn't mean that you have to settle. It just means that it's an appropriate time to settle not until you're put at MMI by the doctor. Jim Hardy: But commonly I won't settle a case until a person feels comfortable, once their released from treatment, that they're confident that they don't need to follow up with the doctor any further. They're doing okay at work under the doctor's orders and they feel pretty good. Then it's safe to enter into a settlement because there wouldn't be any anticipated future medical anymore based on the old date of accident when they got hurt. So that's important. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Okay. And now I want to talk with you about how these settlements are derived. And ultimately these cases, they're about money, frankly. How much the case is valued is really dependent on the extent of your injury and how much money you were making at the time you were injured. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And those two things, those two factors, can you explain a little bit how those two elements get calculated and how they figure into an ultimately to a lump sum settlement and work comp? Jim Hardy: Sure. So the benefits in a work comp case under state law are based on what they call the average weekly wage. And the average weekly wage is calculated using the earnings that you made before the date of accident. All right. So you go back and it's just that, it's the average weekly wage or average weekly earnings. You can go back a year per the statute. If you worked prior to the date of accident less than a year, well, then the calculation just is different, but it's still the average weekly earnings prior to the date of accident. Jim Hardy: Then once you have that average weekly wage, then all the other benefits of more comp flow from that. So for the off work benefit, for the TTD, temporary total disability, that's the check that you get every week, every two weeks from work comp. That's calculated under state law at a specific figure, two of the average weekly wage, but then you get that two thirds tax-free. That's why that TTD check is supposed to bring you about what you may take home prior to the date of accident. Jim Hardy: And then the average weekly wage calculation is also used to calculate what they call the permanency rate. And the permanency rate is what you use to settle a case at the end of the day for that specific person. Jim Hardy: So in a work comp case, the average weekly wage is important, and there are different ways to calculate it as well. The insurance company would be more than happy to calculate that average weekly wage for you, because they're going to calculate it to their advantage, which means to keep it as low as possible. Because then everything else, all the benefits that flow from that will be lower. That's why it's important to get an attorney involved to make sure that the average weekly wage is calculated correctly. Jim Hardy: So how we do that as we secure a wage statement from the employer, or look at the pay stubs if the injured worker has all of them for that specific period, and do our own calculation, that there are certain ... There's a lot of case law over the years in court about fighting about how that average weekly wage is calculated, and the adjuster isn't going to calculate it in your favor, that's for sure. So very, very important to calculate that average weekly wage correctly. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So do you calculate the average weekly wage, you figure that out. And then there's a document, there's a schedule in Illinois as well as in other states, basically categorizing each part of the body. And it basically sets forth the amount of money or weeks in terms of compensation that you can recover based on the type of injury that you sustained. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Can you talk a little bit about that scheduled types of injury in Illinois? What that is and how that comes into play with a settlement? Jim Hardy: Sure. So the Work Comp Act lays out a series of body parts, and it goes from at the highest rate for the, they call it the person as a whole, which is the core of the body. Usually the spine or head injuries or shoulder comes from the person as a whole. Jim Hardy: And then from there, it goes to loss of use of an arm, and then a hand, and then actually the thumb. And then each of the fingers, it goes down to the little finger, pinky finger. And then it also breaks it down into legs, ankles, foot, and toes as well. So it's very specific and there are also different schedules for loss of hearing, for instance, loss of vision and so forth for eye juries. Jim Hardy: But so, and what the state law does is, people think that there's a set rate that you get for a work injury. It's only a set rate if you have 100% loss of use of that body part. So if you have a thumb amputated that would be all the way down to the base, then that would be 100% loss of use of the thumb. And you would get a benefit check for the 100% loss. There's no argument, it's medically determined that there's an amputation there. Bone loss all the way down, you lost your thumb. Jim Hardy: So anything short of an amputation though is lower than 100% of course, and that's what you get a settlement for. Say you injure your thumb and fracture it. It's not amputated, you fractured it or you have an injury where they have to go in and do surgery on the nerve and the thumb due to a deep laceration. That's loss of use of the thumb less than 100%. Jim Hardy: And that's what attorneys and insurance adjusters argue about for a settlement. It's the percentage loss of use of that body part, in this case the thumb. And the attorney is trying to get the percentage up as high as possible, because the higher the loss of use to the body part, the higher the dollar figure of your settlement. But it's not fixed because you got that variable of the percentage that we can argue. Jim Hardy: But it's also ... There's another variable there, and that's the average weekly wage that we were talking about. And that's why it's important to get that up as high as possible, because the higher the average weekly wage, the more you get for that whatever percentage loss of use is of that body part. So a person making 10 bucks an hour can have the same exact injury in a settlement for 20% loss of use of the thumb, for instance. That guy making 10 bucks an hour is going to get half the settlement in dollars and cents of a guy making 20 bucks an hour. Jim Hardy: So that's why it's important to get that average weekly wage up as high as possible so your settlement is higher. But that in a nutshell is how the settlement process works with a specific body part, loss of use of a certain body part. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Interesting. So I guess for any employee who's injured on the job and they're looking at the schedule on the Illinois Industrial Commission website, and they're like, "Agh, this is easy. I got a iPhone, I could punch these numbers in and figure this out." There's a lot more to it than just punching numbers. These are typically disputed cases too, correct? Jim Hardy: Right, that's correct. And you're going to have disputes over the calculation of the average weekly wage. You're going to have disputes over what ... Again, short of a full amputation, which fortunately is rare, you have an argument and disputes over what that percentage should be, and that's where the fight is. Jim Hardy: And that's why it's important to get an attorney to be on your side, to fight for you because the insurance company has no obligation to fight on your side, they're trying to save themselves money. So the more money they keep in their pocket, the less money goes into the injured worker's pocket. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Obviously this is great information for anyone who's injured and really anyone who's got a family member who may have a work-related injury. Jim, I want to thank you today for joining me. And if anyone has any questions about work comp settlements, we'll have your contact information in the show notes. But thank you, it's great information. Jim Hardy:   Right, Jonathan. Thank you again. It was a pleasure to be with you today.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Jim Hardy an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they discuss: Workers Compensation   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello everybody, thank you for tuning into the personal injury podcast. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld, and today I am joined by Jim Hardy. Jim is an experienced work comp attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, and Bekkerman in Chicago. And we are going to talk today about the preliminary areas of workers' compensation. Jim, thanks for joining me today. I appreciate it. Jim Hardy: Thank you, Jonathan. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I appreciate you joining me. Could you just give us a little bit of background about your position and your experience with work comp? Jim Hardy: Sure. I'm a partner at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, Bekkerman and we're a personal injury workers' comp law firm. I am the head of the department that handles the work comp claims in the office. I'd been doing work comp my entire career and exclusively, that's all I do is work comp cases. I've been involved in the Illinois Work Comp Lawyers Association for about 12 years now. That's the state bar association for work comp lawyers, 700 members strong. And I was a recent president two years ago of the organization after being on the board for about 10, 12 years prior to that. So a lot of experience in work comp and I'm happy to share my information and knowledge. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Awesome. So to begin with, I think one of the preliminary questions that a lot of people have, and this is sort of a massive question, but if you could just sort of give us a little breakdown of what workers' compensation is and sort of how the system came to be, that would be great. Jim Hardy: Sure. So the work comp system is something that started up back in the industrial age, back in the 1920s and each state has their own law with regard to work comp. It's not a federal system. So each state has an act and in Illinois, they have the Illinois Work Comp Act that lays out the rights and the benefits that injured workers have in the state of Illinois. And so basically it takes over if you're injured while performing your work duties. It takes over from your regular insurance that you might have, the group health carrier, it takes over from them and pays the medical bills. And that's the primary benefit. They pay all reasonable, necessary and related medical bills. And the second benefit in the Illinois Work Comp Act is payment for lost earnings. So in other words, due to the injury, if you have a doctor's note that takes you off work, then the work comp insurance pays you and they pay you a certain percentage of your old wages. And then you get that tax free. It comes to about what you may take home after taxes prior to the work accident. Jim Hardy: And the third benefit and the most important one is that you're entitled to and you have a right to a settlement in work comp, and that's based on the nature and extent of the injury, the permanency of the injury. And those are the three basic benefits, but they're all very important. And it's very common that if you have a work comp case, that you can start with an adjuster and the adjuster will give you benefits, but you don't know if she's giving you or he's giving you the correct amount in the benefits, doing the calculations correctly, paying the bills correctly, paying for all the treatment that's being recommended. So that's why, in addition to securing a settlement, that's why it's important to have an attorney on your side helping you through the process. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So I guess to begin with, who is covered under workers' compensation? Is everyone covered under workers' compensation under the law? Jim Hardy: Almost everybody in the state of Illinois. There are certain exceptions to that and they're rare. In the statute, city of Chicago, policemen and firemen are excluded from the Illinois Work Comp Act because they have their own disability system, duty disability system. Other than that, there are exceptions for independent contractors. If you're, this is quite similar to what happens in the trucking industry where you're an owner-operator, you're an independent contractor and you get paid on a 1099, so you're really your own employee. You have your own company, even though you're working for a trucking company and they're paying you. Jim Hardy: So in that situation, the independent contractor wouldn't be covered under the trucking company's work comp insurance coverage, but frequently the independent contractor will have their own policy that they take out for themselves and they'd be covered under that. And then other than that, pretty much everybody is covered except for some exceptions, for family farm workers and so forth. But it's pretty wide ranging, if you're performing work for an employer and you're getting paid for it, even if it's cash, they are supposed to have work comp insurance that covers you under state law. So it's pretty wide ranging, if you're working in Illinois getting paid for your work, then you're likely covered. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So this covers part-time employees, it would cover someone who's got a summer job or something as well? Jim Hardy: Sure. Yeah. Part-time employees you're covered doesn't matter, first day on the job, covered, doesn't matter. That's fine. You don't have to be there a certain length of time. You could even, a situation where you're doing temporary work, you're only going to work for somebody seasonal, for the summer or something like that. You're still covered because you're an employee and you're on the books there as an employee. And they, under state law, that employer has to cover you for the work comp insurance. So that's how it works and it's a fairly good system. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Under the law in Illinois, employers are required to carry workers' comp insurance. Is that correct? Jim Hardy: That's correct. If they don't, then the Illinois Department of Insurance can fine that employer and they do enforce that pretty heavily. And there are fines for the number of days that you're going without insurance. If the lapses, the employer can get hit with penalties and fines for that, or if it's an employer that simply does not, refuses just to carry work comp, the state of Illinois can come in and shut that business down until such time that they do purchase and buy a work comp insurance policy. They're pretty strict so it's rare to find a situation where the person is not covered when they're supposed to be. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Okay. So in Illinois, everyone's required to have work comp insurance. And I guess obviously, when we talk about workers' comp, we're typically talking about, for the most part, we're talking about an acute injury, an accident for the most part. And this could be a fall, this could be an auto accident. This could be really anything that an employee is doing in furtherance of their employment, correct? Jim Hardy: That's correct. Jonathan Rosenfeld: That's basically the encompassing definition of work comp coverage in Illinois? Jim Hardy: That's correct. And that was the idea behind the law is to help injured workers who are performing their duties and they're injured. And so that they're not just, in the old days before they have work comp, of course they were just left hanging and there was no insurance, of course. Back in the old days, somebody would get hurt, they just keep working or they would, if they had any money to go to a doctor, they try and go to a doctor, but there was no safety net. So then the states came in with these laws and it's precisely that, to help people who are injured at work. And there are certain rules about what's covered. Some things, it's important to get an attorney to check, because some things that you think might not be covered under a work comp or some activities at which you were injured might not be covered, but they are. Jim Hardy: For instance, the classic parking lot cases. If you punch out and you're walking to your car in the company parking lot where you've been designated to park at and you slip and fall on ice on the way out there, or trip and fall on some landscaping or something like this, that's covered under work comp, because you're still covered. You're still in the furtherance of the employer and performing work duties because you have to park your car in order to help your employer by going into their facility to work. So the work comp law says that you're covered as long as you're parking in an employee owned and maintained and designated parking lot under work comp. But that's interesting, some people would think, oh, I punched out already, I'm not covering, but that's why it's important to contact an attorney to see if there's any angle there. And sometimes people are covered even when they think they're not. Jonathan Rosenfeld: One of the other areas I know in work comp that sometimes people may not be aware of is, chronic injuries or overuse injuries. If you're lifting a sledgehammer, breaking concrete for years on end and you develop some tendinitis or you develop some chronic condition, that's something that's covered under work comp as well. Correct? Jim Hardy: Yes, that's true. It doesn't have to be a specific event. It can be continual or cumulative injury or what they call repetitive trauma injury. The classic example of that of course, is the carpal tunnel. Or if you're an electrician and you're pulling wire all day through conduit, you're gripping and pulling, that's a classic and they commonly develop carpal tunnel syndrome. That's covered even though there's not one specific event where they injure that wrist. It's repetitive, that's still covered under work comp, as long as the other requirements are met with regard to notice. As soon as the symptom start, you have to give notice to the employer. And actually there's a deadline for that notice to the employer of 45 days. It's a little bit different with a repetitive trauma because it's that 45 days from the day that you stopped doing the repetitive work. In this case, they electrician pulling the wire. But yeah, those repetitive trauma cases can be compensable. They're not excluded. And a lot of it depends on the doctor who's treating the injured worker. They give a causal connection opinion and say, yes, medically, I believe what this person was doing for that length of time could cause this ailment of carpal tunnel or cubital tunnel or whatever repetitive trauma ailment they have. But those are covered. Yes. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the areas that I know your firm does quite a bit of work with, you guys handle a lot of construction accident cases, work-related injuries where someone's injured on a busy construction site, anywhere in Illinois or across the Midwest. In those situations, when you have someone, let's just talk a little bit hypothetically about an active construction site. Someone is, you may be a carpenter or something and you may get hit by falling debris, may fall from the roof from a different contractor, or a board may fall from a building. In a situation like that, obviously the employee would be covered under work comp. However, they also may have a separate case sometimes referred to as a third-party case. Obviously you handle the work comp case, there's other attorneys in your office who handle the third-party case. But a lot of times, in my experience I've seen employees sort of completely at a loss for the fact that they may have two separate cases. Can we talk a little bit about work comp in relation to a third-party case. Jim Hardy: Sure. So in any work comp case that we bring into the office, we always analyze it to see if there's any potential third-party case, what you were discussing. And that's a negligence case, a civil lawsuit that could be filed against a third party, meaning somebody other than the employer. But a third party would have to be negligently responsible for causing the accident and therefore the injury. So the construction site's a perfect example of that. So you have ABC Carpentry, they're hired by XYZ General Contractor to come in and do a couple of weeks to work on that project. And the carpenter, like you say, gets hit by a board that fell from up above, it was dropped by an employee of XYZ General Contractor, that's not a coworker there. Jim Hardy: So that carpenter then who was injured would have a work comp case that I would handle and then we do the immediate work of getting the benefits started, the off work, like we talked about, the medical bills paid and authorized, like we talked about. And then in the meantime, our firm would also start up a third-party case against that general contractor and the employer of the employee who dropped board on the carpenter. So you have two parallel concurrent claims going in the same law firm, one workers' comp that's filed at the Work Comp Commission and then one a personal injury or a negligent claim, a formal old fashioned lawsuit that's filed in circuit court. So you'd have the same law firm, two different lawyers handling that same accident date. And it's important to have a work comp attorney start the case up because then they will automatically have a look at the facts to see if there's any potential third party. Jim Hardy: Sometimes we find potential third-party cases where the injured worker would never think that anyone else would have been negligently responsible for the accident other than himself or the employer. So it's important to have us look at it to see if there is that angle, if there's any potential lawsuit against the third party, because that can increase the settlement value. And there's a short-term aspect of it, which is the work comp. You get the weekly benefit check going, you get the medical bills authorized and the treatment authorized and the bills paid. And then long-term, then we work on the third-party case to see what we can do about establishing a case against the negligent third party. And then we can settle both cases and you get two settlements from the two cases. And it's more beneficial to the injured worker. Jim Hardy: But without having a good law firm that handles both types of claims, work comp and third-party, like our firm does, you really put yourself at a disadvantage of missing some potential settlement recovery there. So it's a very important to look at. And it's not just a construction scenario. You can see these, the other classic example as you're driving for work, UPS driver, he's hit rear ended by a semi-truck. He has a work comp case with the insurance for UPS and then a separate personal injury case against the truck driver and the trucking company that hit him. But these are all very good examples. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And those third-party cases, you can recover benefits. You talked about a little bit, but you can recover benefits that are not necessarily covered under the Work Comp Act in Illinois. Jim Hardy: That's correct. Jonathan Rosenfeld: For example, you can recover pain and suffering. You can recover economic and non-economic damages that are not necessarily covered under the Work Comp Act in Illinois. So all the more reason to have an attorney really do a very thorough investigation to really make sure that all parties are held fully accountable for both the work comp perspective as well as the third-party case. Correct? Jim Hardy: Absolutely. And then you're covered whatever the rights are under the state law and the federal law and the circuit court laws. You're covered for all the benefits that you're entitled to when we maximize the value for you. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, I wanted to transition a little bit and talk about what an employee should do. If they're hurt on the job. Every single day millions of people go to work and statistically there's a fair amount of people who get hurt at work every day. And when you're doing training for work, they may teach you how to punch in and punch out and they may teach you about company protocol and everything else, but they don't tell you necessarily what you should be doing if you're hurt. And so a lot of people, an accident may happen, they may come home. They may, ah, my arm hurts, my shoulder hurts and they're sort of at a loss of what they should be doing. And I guess to begin with, if you are an employee and you're hurt at work, what would you suggest that that person do? Jim Hardy: That's a very good question. And it's very important too, because what the injured worker does initially after the accident is very important because that can impact the entire case months and years down the line. So if you're injured at work, it's absolutely essential that you give notice to a supervisor of the incident and the injury. What happened, what body part you injured as soon as possible. I always tell people that they should give notice immediately, or if not, before they punch out for the day, because once you go home, you hurt yourself during a shift, once you punch out and go home, then it becomes problematic because then the employer and the insurance company can say, after you tell them the next day or the next week that you got hurt back on last Tuesday, they can say, well, you didn't tell us the day you got hurt, how do we know you didn't get hurt at home or over the weekend or that night after you got home. So it opens up potential for the insurance company to deny the claim. But it's essential to give notice as soon as possible. Jim Hardy: There is a 45-day notice requirement. No matter how viable the work comp claim might've been, if you don't give notice to a supervisor until after 45 days, then the claim is barred under the state law. But the longer you wait to give notice, the more ammunition the insurance company would have for the work comp carrier to deny and dispute the case and the accident and how it happened and so forth. I always tell people, give notice as soon as you can immediately, if not, before you punch out that day and preferably do it in writing or have a witness there. If you go up to the supervisor, make sure you bring somebody with you who can witness the notice being given verbally to the supervisor. Then the supervisor can't say, well, I don't remember anything about that day or anyone telling me anything about a work injury. So that's very important. Jim Hardy: And also if you're injured, get treatment right away, don't put it off, go to your family doctor. Go to an immediate care, if need be. Go to the emergency room if need be. But the earlier you get treatment and get the accident documented in medical records, the better off the case will be. And I know a lot of people, they want to see if it gets better and put it off and all that. But that's fine, if it does get better, that's great. But you should still see a medical professional as soon as possible if you think something's wrong. And people know their own body, if you think something's not right and you hurt yourself, get it checked out. If in the next week you feel a hundred percent and fine, that's great, but at least it's documented if need be. So notice as soon as possible, preferably the same day and then medical treatment as soon as possible as well. Those are the two keys of what an injured worker should do to preserve their rights under the work comp law. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, in some situations, after an accident happens, someone may get medical treatment and they maybe start getting some benefits from their employer if a doctor takes them off work. They may start getting some temporary total disability checks if their off work and everything from their employer. But that does not necessarily mean that a work comp case has been filed. Correct? in other words, giving your employer notice, it's not the same as filing a work comp case, correct? Jim Hardy: Right. That's correct. The employer, once they have notice of the injury, they are supposed to report it to their work comp carrier, but that doesn't always happen. Sometimes the employers, they drag their feet and see if the person gets better right away or if the person just puts it through their regular insurance so they don't have to deal with it and claim it as a work comp case. But the only way to formally have a filing at the Work Comp Commission, which is the court for work comp cases in Illinois, is to have an attorney file a what they call an application, an application of claim at the Work Comp Commission. Prior to that, you don't have a formal claim and in order to get a settlement, you have to have a claim on file at the Illinois Work Comp Commission, or you don't get a settlement at the end of the case. And that's why it's important to, after you give notice, and after you get medical treatment as soon as possible, then you contact Jonathan Rosenfeld, the Rosenfeld injury lawyers, to start up the process of getting legal representation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And I think, just so everyone listening is a hundred percent clear, the way attorneys handle work comp cases in the state of Illinois is on a contingency fee basis. The state regulates what attorneys can charge people. It's not a, Hey, I like you, you get a discount. I'm not a big fan of yours, you're paying more. It's a straight fee schedule for work comp cases. And so, you as an attorney only get a fee when you're successful in getting benefits for that injured worker, correct? Jim Hardy: That's correct. Yes. So there's no hourly rates or there's no upfront fee that you have to cut a check to the attorney for at the beginning of the case. It's strictly a contingency fee and in Illinois, the state law caps that fee for attorney fees and work comp at 20%. So that's 20% of the settlement that we could secure at the end of the case when you're done treating. And that's the settlement for the nature and extent of the injury or the permanency of the injury. And that 20% is taken right out of the settlement from the insurance company. So you don't have to worry about paying anything upfront or watching, we don't bill by the hour, you don't have to watch that. We maximize the value of the work comp case and the fees are 20% of that. If there is no settlement, then you walk away, you wouldn't pay us anything. So that's how it works, strictly contingency fee basis. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And these settlements and the attorney's fees, they're approved by an arbitrator who's essentially the judge assigned to the case. So it's just one more safeguard in place to make sure that everything is done properly. Correct? Jim Hardy: Right. That's true. Yeah, any settlement that we secure has to be approved by the work comp arbitrator assigned to the file at the Work Comp Commission. They stamp it as approved. And with the settlement, it's interesting to note that if you don't have an attorney, the insurance adjuster on the file for the work comp carrier may pay the medical benefits. They may pay the off work, you don't know if they're paying their correct amount or anything, but then they commonly, if you don't have an attorney, they won't offer you a settlement. They won't advise you of your right that you're entitled to a settlement. They have no obligation to do that. And frankly, it's their job not to because the insurance company's job is to keep money in their pocket and the more they pay out on the claim to the injured worker then the less money they have. Jim Hardy: So the goal for the insurance company is to keep the money and not give it to the injured worker. So that's commonly what happens is that they won't get a settlement. If the injured worker doesn't have an attorney, they might get an offer, it's rare, but that offer's going to be pennies on the dollar if you don't have an attorney because the adjuster will just float you a low settlement. People don't know what the true value might be and they might just believe the adjuster when she says, this is what you get, take it or leave it, sign on this line and take the check. But you're leaving a lot of money on the table without an attorney. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So that is great information. We are going to talk about settlements and work comp cases in a new podcast, but this was great information. I think anyone who is injured on the job certainly would do themselves or their family of service in contacting you and just talking about their case. Again, you obviously work on a contingency. So if someone calls or asks you a question, there's no cost or anything to do that. But this was great information, I thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Jim Hardy: My pleasure, Jonathan. And all right, thank you for the opportunity. Glad to help.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Paraquat Lawsuit Update: The Alleged Connection Between Paraquat and Parkinson's Disease   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Johnathan Rosenfeld: Hello, I am Johnathan Rosenfeld. Today, I am joined today with Marty Gould on the Personal Injury podcast, and I am going to talk with Marty about an emerging area of product liability litigation involving Paraquat herbicide. Marty, I appreciate you joining me today. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, John. Johnathan Rosenfeld: Now, Marty, we are sort of really in the early, early, early phases of what may emerge to be a very, very significant piece of product liability litigation involving Paraquat. First off, can you just give us a little bit of overview in terms of what Paraquat is, and how it's used, and why it's used? Marty Gould: Paraquat is a chemical herbicide that's used primarily in farming. It can also be used to kill weeds. And if you're a farmer, or a landscaper, or a groundskeeper, a gardener, you probably come into contact with Paraquat. In 2011, a study by the National Institute of Health found that people exposed to Paraquat are approximately 2.5 times or 250% more likely to develop Parkinson's Disease. Johnathan Rosenfeld: So today we're seeing there's been a trickle of lawsuits that have been filed down in southern Illinois, but we're seeing a trickle of lawsuits that have been filed primarily by agricultural workers who have been exposed to Paraquat during their work. The allegations are that they were never warned of the potential dangers related to Paraquat. Is that correct? Marty Gould: That's correct. Now that we're publicly finding out about the links between Paraquat and Parkinson's, lawsuits have been filed. A lot of them in southern Illinois against various companies that manufactured it or sold it. Most of these plaintiffs are Illinois crop dusters, or farmers, landscapers, and it's essentially that there was knowledge about these harms that weren't disclosed to the consumers. Johnathan Rosenfeld: So, whenever you bring in a case in terms of product's liability, you have to make these allegations in your complaint. The primary allegation, I guess at this point, is that these manufacturers knew or should have known of these dangers but failed to put any warnings on the product while they were using this. Correct? Marty Gould: And that's essentially the basis of the complaints is that they knew about a harm. Just like in all the other cases with Zantec or Roundup, there was knowledge from studies in their own independent research about these harms, or the risk of harm, and the failure to warn the consumer that use of it could increase the risks of Parkinson's or whatever the disease might be. They have certain obligations to consumers in regards to putting them on notice. Johnathan Rosenfeld: Now, these cases are really in the early stages. I anticipate there's going to be many, many, many more of these cases coming forward, many more lawsuits coming forward. It's safe to say that there have not been any settlements related to Paraquat lawsuits at this time? Marty Gould: Not any on a wide-scale basis, but there has been a lot going on in terms of Paraquat and various countries is reviewing Paraquat, its safety. So the European Union banned the herbicide back in 2007. China, Brazil, and several other countries have abandoned its use. And I don't think we're too far away from seeing it banned in many other countries. Johnathan Rosenfeld: Now, we can talk a little bit about or look to the litigation involving Roundup weed killer herbicide and what we've seen in terms of those lawsuits and the damages and those lawsuits, can you talk a little bit about the damages that may be available in a Paraquat lawsuit? Marty Gould: So in a personal injury case, you can seek compensation for your lost income, your lost earning capacity if we established that you did have Parkinson's or increased your risk of Parkinson's and it caused all sorts of damages and you couldn't work, those are all things you can legally get compensated for. But also, more importantly, you get compensated for the physical and emotional pain and suffering, and the tremors that you're getting, the physical pains you get. These are all things that you can legally seek financial compensation for. And that's why it's important to speak with a lawyer to find out what your rights are and what types of compensation you can personally collect in your case. Johnathan Rosenfeld: Marty, some of these people who may be watching this video today or listening to this podcast, they may have been affected either individually or they may have a family member who's been impacted by the use of Paraquat or Paraquat exposure. What would you tell them in terms of moving forward? A lot of times, these people may be sitting back and they may be thinking, "Oh, you know what? This happened years ago. I may not have a claim. The time may have evaporated for me to pursue a case." What would you tell these people? Marty Gould: It's important to speak with a lawyer who can examine your specific facts and know your rights. Many states have laws that allow you to still bring claims even if your exposure was from decades ago or your Parkinson's that you had was diagnosed decades ago because many states have what's called the Discovery Rule. It's the point in time that you realize that your harm was caused by the defendant's negligence. So, it's important always consult with a lawyer even if you think maybe it's too late or maybe you think that there could be other causes of the Parkinson's to find out what your rights are and see if there's a possible connection. Johnathan Rosenfeld: Marty, this was great information. I appreciate you joining me today. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Zantac Cancer Lawsuit FAQ: 4 Most Asked Questions   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello, and good afternoon. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld, and today I am joined by Marty Gould. Marty is currently working on many lawsuits involving Zantac and the development of cancer. Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today, I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, Marty, this is a really quickly emerging area of mass tort litigation that we're seeing. A lot of people have been taking Zantac and the generic version of Zantac over the past 10, 20 years. And today we are learning that some of these people are developing various types of cancers after taking these drugs, both prescription and over the counter. Today I want to run through with you some of the most frequently asked questions by people related to this litigation. I want to run through the four most common questions asked by people who have a potential Zantac case. These are based on the data that we're seeing today from Google search, frankly. I wanted to go through with you quickly, so we can get this information to people in a concise way. First off, has Zantac been withdrawn from the market? Marty Gould: Yes, it has. Jon, in September, 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration reported that there was a link between one of the ingredients of Zantac and NDMA in cancer, and they issued a public warning. And then in April, 2020, the FDA announced that all Zantac brand heartburn drugs, prescription and over the counter, should be immediately pulled from the market because of potential NDMA contamination. And subsequently, retailers across the country, Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, suspended the sale of the over-the-counter Zantac and ranitidine products. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Second question for you, what type of cancer is related to Zantac use? What types of cancers are you seeing today in claims and lawsuits that you are filing against the different manufacturers of these drugs? Marty Gould: We represent hundreds and hundreds of individuals that have cancer because of Zantac use, or in tragic situations, the families of people deceased because of that cancer. From our experiences and from the research, the cancers most commonly linked to Zantac use or ranitidine use are bladder cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, kidney cancer, liver cancer, stomach cancer, and breast cancer. There's also some potential cancers that have a weaker link to the use of Zantac that we're still looking at, and those include pancreatic, ovarian, and melanoma. Jonathan Rosenfeld: One of the questions that we're seeing over and over again by people, is there a settlement related to Zantac lawsuits at this time, as of today's date, we are today April, 2021? Is there a Zantac lawsuit settlement? Marty Gould: There is not a Zantac lawsuit settlement yet, at least not on a wide scale. The cases are all being consolidated, or most of them are, in a multi-district litigation in federal court. There hasn't been any bellwether cases yet, but we're very optimistic that there is going to be a settlement and a resolution for our clients and for many of the other victims and survivors out there. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Along these lines, a lot of people are also looking into what the value of these cases are. They're asking, "What is a Zantac lawsuit worth?" While we don't know what the cases are worth in terms of dollars and cents today, can you just give us a rundown of the damages potentially available in these cases? Marty Gould: Sure. In a personal injury case, you can get what's called economic and non-economic damages. In terms of economic damages, you can get compensation for lost income, so if you got cancer and you couldn't work. Or God forbid it was your loved one who got cancer and is deceased, you can get compensation for the lost income that your family would have had in lost earning capacity or lost future income, medical bills. You can get compensation for all your medical bills. And then you can get the non-economic damages, which can be very significant in a case. And that includes the emotional distress, the physical and emotional pain and suffering. And then there's something called loss of consortium. If you've lost a loved one because of cancer caused by Zantac, you can recover for loss of familial support from having that person around and supporting your loss of love. So it's important to speak with a lawyer to just understand your rights and what types of compensation is available under law. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, this was great information, and I really look forward to talking with you in the future as this litigation continues to move forward. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Abuse: Legal Claims for Sexual Abuse   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello. Thank you for joining me today. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and today on the Personal Injury Podcast, I am joined by my colleague, Marty Gould, and we are going to talk a little bit about an emerging area of litigation, which is abuse in a drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility. Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the areas that's really come out in the past few years in terms of medical treatment, is this whole concept of drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities for people who may have had substance problems as children, as adults. And a lot of these facilities have opened up across the country. They promise everyone an opportunity, in a lot of situations, to get clean, get sober during a short term rehabilitation stay, where they live in a facility for maybe a 30 day, 60 day, 90 day period. And unfortunately, one of the things that we're seeing here, which is really no different than abuse in other closed environments, such as a boarding school, is we're seeing the instructors and some of the other supervisors involved, mistreat these people who may be in a particularly vulnerable situation and very difficult time in their life. Jonathan Rosenfeld: What have you seen in terms of your experience? What are you seeing in terms of abuse and mistreatment in these institutions? Marty Gould: Well, Jon, substance abuse has become a national epidemic. The national survey on drug use and health, estimates that 20.7 million people needed substance abuse treatment in 2017. So a lot of these people are going to facilities, whether it's a live-in facility or a day facility, to get treatment so they can get on the right path. And what I've seen in some of our cases is whether it's an unknown rehab center or a small one up in to the most prestigious ones throughout the country, is that you'll have a staff member or a counselor take advantage of these vulnerable people and engage in sexual relationships, which are prohibited or should be prohibited by every institution, because they know these people are vulnerable. And it derails them. They start using drugs again because of it, or they're out doing things that they're not supposed to be doing, with the counselor. Marty Gould: And some of the cases that we have, the counselor or the staff member was engaging in a relationship with the patient, financially exploits them. Ask them for loans, "Can I borrow a thousand dollars?" That turns into 15,000. That turns into $50,000 and they find ways to take advantage of these people. And if any anything like that happens, you have a potential legal claim against the individual and the entity. They have to make sure that there's policies and procedures in place to protect their patients and to make sure this type of thing doesn't happen. They're aware that it can happen and that the patients are uniquely vulnerable. Jonathan Rosenfeld: You know, I think one of the really sad things in these situations is the fact is, as you just stated, the emergence of these facilities out there, the growth of this industry, has really expanded way beyond the capacity of any state's legislatures to implement any laws or safeguards to protect patients at these facilities. And so what we're seeing right now is a lot of times, states are playing catch up in terms of trying to apply laws and regulations to these facilities that may have essentially gone unregulated for some time. But at the end of the day, as a victim of abuse, you still have the ability to pursue a civil claim against the institution, just as if you're the victim of abuse in a church set. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Can you talk a little bit about what's involved in terms of civil claims for victims of abuse in a drug or rehab facility? Marty Gould: Sure. Jon, as you mentioned, the federal government doesn't really have an official definition of what constitutes a drug treatment or rehabilitation center. So, the licensing can vary from state to state, and unlike in a doctor's office or a medical facility, drug rehab facilities are treated like businesses under the eye. They're not as closely regulated. But they still have duties that they owe their patients. There's still obligations, rules that they have to follow based off just the standards in the industry, and the violation of those standards, like permitting a staff member or counselor to engage in sexual relationships or financially exploit patients, serves the basis for liability, and we file claims of negligence. Failure to adequately screen or negligent hiring of a staff member, negligent supervision, failure to investigate. We even had a counselor at one of these facilities, disclose confidential information to a patient's spouse when the relationship went sour. That's a violation of countless roles. One is, you can't have a relationship with your patient and two is, you certainly can't disclose confidential information to any third party. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think it's important to realize that in these situations, it's not just episodes of sexual abuse that give rise to civil claims. It can be other privacy violations. It can be other situations involving defamation of character. These cases typically go way beyond some of the more traditional sex abuse claims that you and I handle, correct? Marty Gould: That's correct. There's nine different types of negligence and abuse that can occur in a drug treatment center. And the key to the equation there is that these people are uniquely vulnerable. They're there to get help, and it's very important to make sure that the policies and procedures are in place to ensure that they do get that help, and that they're not exploited and abused. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, Marty, this is really an area of litigation that unfortunately, I don't think we're going to really be hearing the end of any time soon. But I really appreciate your time, and I'm going to look forward to talking with you about these situations, if it comes up in the future. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on, Jon.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Orphanage Abuse: Legal Rights of Abuse Victims   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Good afternoon. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And today on the Personal Injury Podcast, I am joined by my colleague, Attorney Martin Gould. And Marty, I am going to talk with you a little bit about an emerging area of litigation involving abuse in an orphanage setting. Now, orphanages in today's world are... they're not really a commonplace occurrence. This was not the case decades ago. And unfortunately, one of the things that we're seeing today is that there was a lot of abuse carried on at these institutions behind closed doors over the past 20, 30, 40 years. Can you share a little bit of background about these cases and about some of the cases that you're seeing today? Martin Gould: No, John, the orphanage cases, I think, are some of the worst cases out there because you're dealing with children that are the most vulnerable. They're at an orphanage for a reason. You got no parents that are looking out for them. And I would argue that there's even a higher level, higher duty that's owed to these children to make sure that they're safe. And unfortunately, it has been a breeding ground for a lot of abuse for decades. Now, orphanages aren't as common now. The Department of Children and Family Services has now made a preference for foster care facilities so all orphans aren't in one location, but there's many cases such as Maryville Academy in the Chicago land area, Angel and Guardian Orphanage, where they had clergy that were abusing children, volunteers or other staff that were abusing young children. And it has been the basis for many of the cases that you and I have, in terms of filing lawsuits and seeking other types of recovery. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So, in some of these cases, we're talking about the orphanage itself, but we're also talking, in a lot of situations, about a religious organization that may be sponsoring the orphanage, or may be sponsoring the foster care. In those situations where you have a religious organization who may be providing the funding and may be providing some of the staffing, they may be overseeing the placement of some of these children, do those religious organizations hold some responsibility when there is abuse that's carried out at these institutions? Martin Gould: Yes. So, ultimately, a lot of these religious organizations were being paid by the state to run the orphanages and they were the ones responsible for the orphanages. So, if you're looking at, for example, like Angel and Guardian Orphanage, it might have been run by the archdiocese. They're owned and operated by the archdiocese or different diocese. But then they were staffed by nuns from a certain religious order. There could have been an association with a religious order that provided priests for a period of time. And then there could have been a different entity that hired the janitorial staff or the teachers. So, in those cases, it's important to speak with a lawyer who can tell you who the potential defendants are, because there may be many different entities that were responsible for the safety of the children within one institution. Jonathan Rosenfeld: When we're talking about abuses perpetrated in an orphanage or in a foster care setting, ultimately, these victims are really entitled to damages and compensation from the perpetrators involved and from the organizations that supervised these organizations. When it comes to damages in these cases, what exactly are these victims entitled to under the law? We're here in Illinois, but in general, can you talk about the damages in these cases? Martin Gould: So, in a sexual abuse case, it's not always so easy to quantify our damages, but it can be the most significant type of damage you can recover in a case. And that's the psychological trauma, emotional distress, psychological and physical pain and suffering. These are all things that you legally can seek compensation for, and they can be very significant when it comes to childhood abuse. The public knows that. People understand that abuse when you're a child can cause lifelong traumas. You can also recover money for counseling, treatment, struggles you've had with addictions. These are all things that you can seek compensation for legally in most states. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In a situation where someone is an adult and the abuse may have been perpetrated at an orphanage, in a foster care home, in another institutional setting, is there a way that they can move forward in terms of pursuing a civil claim today when that abuse may have occurred decades ago? Martin Gould: So, Jon, we always encourage survivors to come forward and find out what the rights are. Even in states where the statute of limitations may have expired and there's no revival statute, we still try and find a way to get resolution for the client, but every state is different and the statute limitations laws in every state are different. And it's also important to understand whether or not your state has a potential bill by the state legislature that might change the laws that allow you to bring your claims that may have already been expired years ago. You can also bring a claim even if the perpetrators are deceased. That doesn't necessarily prevent you from bringing your case and proving your case. And you should still speak with a lawyer. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, for a lot of these people, reliving these episodes of abuse is traumatic, as an understatement, but can you give us a little flavor for how these cases can play out? Having spoken to a lot of victims out there, I know there's a lot of hesitation and a lot of anxiety around the fact that they may have to confront the perpetrator. In your experience, how are these cases typically play out? Are they going to be forced to be in a room alone with a perpetrator? That's a concern that comes up frequently. Can you just sort of give us a little bit of how this process works? Martin Gould: So, at the outset, we speak with our client, we go through a questionnaire, get as much information as we can. Then we reach out to the potential defendants, whether it's the religious institution, a public school, a private school, a former employer. And we tell them about what happened. And then we start discussing what the next steps are. Whether we can engage in a pre-suit discovery, mediation process where we can exchange information. Our client can give a statement, if they're okay with that, to let the other side know kind of what happened and how it's impacted them. Or we file a lawsuit. But it's the client and what their preferences are always control how we go about trying to seek some type of resolution settlement for them. So, it's a lot of communication back and forth regarding how they want to litigate this case and what they feel comfortable with in terms of next steps. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so, there's an element of control, just so people out there know, there's an element of control out there for the victims, but also in no situation would a victim ever be forced to be in a room with the perpetrator without the presence of their attorney. Correct? Martin Gould: That's right. We would always be present and shoulder to shoulder with our client the entire process. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, I'm going to follow up with you as some of these cases move forward. We can talk a little bit more about these cases in detail, but I really want to thank you for joining me today and sharing your insight on these really disturbing cases. Thank you. Martin Gould: Thanks for having me, Jon.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Can You Sue a Boarding School for Sexual Abuse by a Teacher?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Jonathan Rosenfeld and today on ‎The Personal Injury Law Podcast, I am joined by attorney Marty Gould, and we are going to talk about a merging area of litigation involving sexual abuse that occurred in schools and specifically in boarding schools. This is an area that Marty has considerable experience with, and I really appreciate his insight. Marty, to begin with, boarding schools in general, a lot of people, a lot of parents send their children to boarding schools because they are looking for a school that can provide them with individualized instruction, where they may get some more personalized attention ... which is great, but unfortunately, I think what we're seeing in some situations is ... some teachers and some other school officials maybe taking this a little bit too far, a little bit too extreme. Can you talk a little bit about some of your experience with abuse in a boarding school setting? Marty Gould: Sure. Well John, there's 67 New England private boarding schools and over the past 25 years, according to a Boston Globe story, more than 200 students have accused private school authorities of sexual abuse or sexual harassment, and that includes teachers, administrators, staff members, and even in one case, an admissions officer. One of the issues with the boarding schools is that you're in a more intimate setting with the teachers. They're not only teaching you, but sometimes they're living in the dorms, they're inviting you to their homes, and because of the access that you have to a teacher, which can be good in certain circumstances, it also makes children more vulnerable. That's often where children are abused. They're groomed by somebody who's supposed to be their mentor and there's more opportunities to abuse the child because they're also interacting with the student outside of the classroom. It's like I said, sometimes even in the teacher's homes, and that's why it's important for a school to have the right policies and procedures in place to make sure students who are uniquely vulnerable at a boarding school are safe. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think one of the positive things of these boarding schools is that they really are all-encompassing when it comes to school, when it comes to sports, when it comes to socialization, when it comes to living arrangements. Unfortunately I think, we've seen in some situations is that these schools have really insulated the students from the outside world and sometimes these episodes of abuse may go on for some time without getting reported until after the fact. Can you share maybe, without getting into too much detail or anything, can you share some situations that you may have run into where someone is a victim in this setting? Marty Gould: We've had several cases involving sexual abuse of students by teachers at boarding schools. Then in one of the instances, sometimes there's a feeling to protect the school's reputation at the expense of the allegation and they either ask the teacher to quietly resign, where then they go on and they can apply to another school and they can abuse a child again. That's called passing the trash and those circumstances, you can potentially hold both institutions responsible. In a case that, John, you and I recently resolved, the school didn't have a two-adult policy in regards to having the students at teachers' houses or places that were in private, and unfortunately one teacher was able to groom a student, invite the student back to their home and then began abusing them there. That's why it's important for schools to have the right policies like a two-adult policy when it comes to being with students in private settings and other policies to make sure that the children are safe because their parents aren't around like they would be in a regular public high school or a high school you attend in your own community. Jonathan Rosenfeld: One of the things that comes up in boarding school cases, and really all types of sexual abuse is this whole concept of grooming. When we talk about grooming, it seems sort of an innocuous type thing to begin with, but it, over time, these relationships morph from a peer relationship or a teacher-student relationship into something that transitions into something much more deviant. Can you talk a little bit about this grooming concept and what's involved in some of these situations? Marty Gould: John, one of the supposed benefits of attending a boarding school is the opportunity to develop close bonds with your teachers. They're in a better position, maybe, to write a recommendation because they see you so often. Predators are able to use that expectation that they'll be able to be close with that student unsupervised and they take advantage of it. So innocent invitations to go to sporting events, lunches, dinners by yourself with the teacher, can turn into building trust with that student and the student becomes confident with that relationship, and then that's when the relationship can take a turn where they can be abused. Marty Gould: John, in the case that we had, the teacher was using her position of power to coerce the student into continuing the relationship that they wanted to get out of. The student's grades were docked while he was attending this school and he felt like he was trapped. He was trying to get into college and then when he tried to step away from the relationship, he suffered academically. That's essentially how it happens. It's that confidence that you build and they're grooming you early on and that's how they can take advantage of you. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, in boarding school cases and really all civil litigation, there's an issue of statute of limitations. A lot of times, this episode may occur when someone's young and maybe in their early teen years or something. It may not be for 10 or 20 years after the episode, that they actually develop the confidence to come forward and say, "Hey, look, this happened to me. I was a victim here." There's a lot of feelings of guilt. There's a lot of feelings of sadness, anger, frustration, it goes on and on and on, but ultimately there's the statute of limitations, these time constraints to file a case. Obviously, these cases are fact-dependent, but can you talk a little bit about how the statute of limitations applies to a boarding school sexual abuse case? Marty Gould: So the statute of limitations that applies generally would be the statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse within the state in which the boarding school in which the abuse occurred. That can vary from state to state. What's important to know is that because of the public pressure, because of the media attention regarding childhood sexual abuse, politicians have changed a lot of laws that have now allowed survivors to finally bring claims that may have been expired. That's why it's very important to speak to a lawyer to find out if there's [inaudible 00:08:18] but if the laws have changed, whether it's through, what's called the revival statute, that creates a window in which you can file claims that may have been barred by a time limit, or to check to see if there's any legislation pending in that state. Marty Gould: So people will call me and say, "I heard that the statute of limitations expired in XYZ state," and I'll say, "That's true, except that there's a bill pending in your state legislature that may be passed, that will say, 'You may have an opportunity to bring this case in six months.'" So we follow all those in all the different states that we're in, to make sure that we know if there's going to be an opportunity to bring these clamps. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think what you just spoke about in terms of the evolving law that applies to these situations is really the reason why people need to reach out to an attorney who has experience with these cases specifically, because a lot of times, I've heard people, I've spoken to people who've said, "Hey, I spoke to my accident attorney down the street, I spoke to him or her about the situation and they've told me I don't have a case." At the end of the day, they really need to talk to someone who has experience with these particular cases. Now, if someone is watching this and they say, "Hey, I want to reach out to an attorney, but I don't have the assets. I don't have the funds to hire an attorney." What would you say to them? How do you handle these types of cases and how would you help someone if they don't have the funds necessary to fund this type of litigation? Marty Gould: Well, first John, I would say that it's always important to know your rights. Even if we take on cases, even if the statute of limitations has expired, we try and do an outreach to the church or the boarding school or whomever it may be, to see what kind of a possible resolution we can reach even without filing a lawsuit. The last thing that a survivor needs to deal with in these situations is worrying about paying legal fees, and that's why we don't charge any money for any consultation. We don't charge any fees unless we can actually get a compensation and a recovery for the survivor. If we're unable to, if we take on the case and we for whatever reason cannot obtain any type of settlement, the survivor doesn't owe us any money. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, I appreciate your time and hopefully, if people are watching this and they have some questions, they'll certainly be able to reach out to you because you're certainly an advocate for these people. So thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Thanks for having me on your podcast, John.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Royal Rangers Sex Abuse: Sexual Abuse Claims and Lawsuits   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello, thank you for joining me today. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and today on the Personal Injury Podcast, I am joined by Attorney Marty Gould. And we are going to talk about an emerging area of litigation, the Royal Ranger sexual abuse cases and lawsuits. Marty, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Happy to be on John. Thanks for having me. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, Marty, to begin with, the Royal Rangers, to be honest with you, is an organization that a lot of people may not have heard of in the past. It is not a big name organization. Can you give us a little background about the Royal Rangers and what it is and where exactly it's headquartered? Marty Gould: Sure. The Royal Rangers is a, it's essentially an organization similar to the boy Scouts of America, except that it has religious purpose. So their motto on their website is that the program helps leaders play a vital role in helping boys develop a Christian like manhood. And they had many different Royal Rangers organizations throughout California, Idaho, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, in several other states throughout the country. It was structured in a similar format to the boy Scouts. They had the Ranger Kids, Discovery Rangers, Adventure Rangers, and the Expedition Rangers. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, the organization's got these altruistic goals, but unfortunately like many other organizations, some of those goals and some of those areas that they want to really focus on fell to the wayside and there's been some reported issues of abuse in the Royal Rangers. And some of these individuals have come forward recently and they've made allegations that they were abused in the organization by their leaders. Can you share some insight as to some of these allegations and what is actually being alleged? Marty Gould: In 2018, there were six men from Oregon that filed a lawsuit against the Royal Rangers and the Assemblies of God church, alleging that they were sexually abused in the 1980s by Royal ranger leaders. These leaders, in the boy Scouts, called the boy scout troop leader in the Royal Rangers they're typically called commanders. And essentially the allegations were that they weren't properly screening and vetting these people that were leading these young boys to different adventures and camping trips and so forth and that's where the abuse going on. Marty Gould: And a lot of the same allegations that happened in the boy Scouts, where kids were being abused on camping trips or during meetings. We have many cases involving the Royal Rangers, you and I John. And our case, in several of our cases, we've heard that many of these commanders that were leading these troops were allowed to bring whomever else they wanted onto these trips. So you had a commander in charge of a bunch of boys, bring his friends, other males that nobody really knew who these people were, what type of backgrounds they had. There wasn't much screening and policies and procedures in place to protect the children. And unfortunately many kids were sexually abused and it's caused a lot of trauma. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so now I guess we're seeing a lot of people come forward. I think there's some truth, that there's strength in numbers in some of these cases. A lot of times it's not the, it takes a lot of courage for anyone to come forward. But a lot of times when people see others who may have experienced a similar situation step out, they're more willing to come forward. And in those situations, what would you tell those people who may be watching this and saying, Hey, I was part of the Royal Rangers, I experienced some of those issues? What would you say to them? Marty Gould: You're not alone. Together, we're stronger. And it's important to take your life back, take control of what happened and help make sure this doesn't happen to anybody else. We have a number of clients that we represent and other lawyers taking on these cases, but shedding light to reveal what happened and make sure this doesn't happen again. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, I appreciate the work that you're doing in this area. You're really an asset to a lot of people who really need an advocate out there. Want to thank you for joining me today and I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Happy to be on your podcast, John. Thanks for having me.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Church Sexual Abuse Lawsuits: What is Sexual Abuse?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello, everybody. Welcome back to the Personal Injury Podcast. Today. I am joined by Marty Gould, a good friend and colleague, and we are here today to talk about sexual abuse lawsuits in the church and, what is sexual abuse? Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Marty Gould: Happy to be on. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, for those of us who don't really have a full understanding of the breadth of this issue, can you give us some background and give us a short explanation about what sexual abuse is at least in the eyes of the law? Marty Gould: Oftentimes when people talk about sexual abuse in a lawsuit context, it often refers to childhood sexual abuse. It includes many different types of abuse. It could be fondling, oral sex, penetration of any kind, but it can also be showing somebody pornography. John, you and I have a case out in California where a teacher was sending explicit text messages and photographs to a student. That is considered sexual abuse under the law, and it's a basis for a lawsuit. It can also include emotional abuse, so it includes the grooming aspect that happens before the actual physical contact. In lawsuits, it's a broad definition. Anything that can be considered sexual, or that happens to a child under the age of 18 years old. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the emerging issues in the area of sexual abuse litigation is really cases involving the church. Can we talk a little bit about the cases that are involved, the church and sexual abuse involving clergy and the priest, what those cases typically involve? Marty Gould: Most of those lawsuits involve institutional negligence claims against the church. In every lawsuit, you can sue the perpetrator. But in a civil case, all you can get is financial compensation. So a large part of the case is against the institution for covering up abuse, for protecting pedophiles or suspected pedophiles, for failing to investigate allegations of abuse. The claims are often brought in terms of negligent hiring, for not doing a proper investigation to a potential priest who's moving to your parish. So many times, a lot of these priests may have allegations against them in a different diocese or even in a different state. Marty Gould: Like in many of our cases, they came from California or Pennsylvania. Usually, they're being shipped out of there for a reason. The new diocese that's taking him in has an obligation to call the former employer and say, "Hey, why is this guy leaving? What happened? Then if they know of any allegations of abuse, they have an obligation to investigate and to warn the public if there's credible allegations. That's unfortunately, something that didn't happen for many, many decades. Priests were moved from one parish to another without warning the parishioners about this person's history, and they continued to abuse children time and time again. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, do church officials have an obligation to report episodes of abuse if they're a witness to something in their organization, in their church, in their school? Do they have some type of legal obligation to report the abuse to authorities? Marty Gould: In many states, they do. The laws have progressed over time, and every state's law can be a little bit different, but for the most part, clergy are now considered mandatory reporters. So whether they hear about abuse in a confessional, or whether a reported abuse from the survivor themselves, or from a parent, they have an obligation to report it. Typically, the law would require them to report it to the Department of Children and Family Services within that state, or even law enforcement. If the Department of Children and Family Services becomes aware of it, they do their own investigation. It's a separate investigation that's typically, also done by law enforcement. If the allegations are proven to be true, criminal charges are brought and ideally, there's criminal consequences. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, in the issue of a clergy sexual abuse lawsuit, we're generally talking about monetary damages. When we're talking about monetary damages, we're trying to put a value on the restitution to the individual and the harm to the individual. Can you talk a little bit about what the damages are in these cases, and how the church in general, in the past has valued these types of cases? Marty Gould: Childhood sexual abuse is probably the most heinous crime that can be committed. We're talking about children that are uniquely vulnerable. When it's a religious leader, like a priest, the child is taught to respect and to listen to that authority. That breach of that trust, coupled with physical and emotional abuse, can cause devastating consequences. Legally, you're allowed to recover for emotional distress, psychological trauma, and physical pain and suffering, or emotional pain and suffering. We articulate those injuries, the other side through the testimony of our clients, but also through counselors. Many times, a lot of survivors end up using drugs to cope with what happened. We get those records and explain to the church, because of what happened, they went down a certain path. They became addicted to certain drugs to cope with what happened, and that's all part of the damages aspect that we seek compensation from the church. Jonathan Rosenfeld: The church in the past, can you give us an idea as to the payments that the church has made on some of these cases? Not necessarily on an individual basis, but in general. This has been a pretty substantial problem for the church. We're focusing right now on the Catholic Church, but the truth is, is that, this can be any religious institution. But the amount of payments that have gone on over the past several decades have been substantial. Do you have any idea about these payments and about the type of damages we're talking about here? Marty Gould: Legally, when somebody commits a harm against you, whether it's caused by the negligence of the religious institution, whether it's a Catholic church, a synagogue, a temple, or whomever, you can recover, what's called economic, non-economic damages. So we can get compensation for the psychological trauma and harm, the lost earning capacity, lost income that that person might have had had they finished school or done things in a different way when they weren't dealing with that abuse. Marty Gould: Recoveries have been significant, hundreds of millions of dollars have been paid in these cases across the country. That's why it's important to go find a lawyer who can assess your case, work up your case, and articulate to the other side how this has dramatically impacted your life. If you haven't done counseling yet, many people, because they don't come forward earlier because they're afraid they may not be believed, or it's a repressed memory and they haven't done counseling yet, that doesn't mean you didn't have an injury. And that doesn't mean that we can't articulate to the church, or whomever, how it's impacted you. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the things that victims frequently come forward and ask is, "What type of help is out there for me to help me recover from this episode?" It's easy for us to sit here and say, "Hey, you know what? Do some treatment and move on." But the truth is, is that, these people really have lifelong issues. Can you just give out a few resources available for someone who's a victim of abuse? Marty Gould: There's many great networks out there in survivor groups that can help victims and survivors. One of the ones that I've worked with in the past, and I've had many clients be a part of, is called the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, also known as SNAP. It's a support group of survivors of clergy sexual abuse and their supporters throughout the country. If you reach out, you can engage in support groups. You can also try and find counseling through them. There's also an organization called Bishop Accountability, which documents a lot of allegations of abuse. Marty Gould: It's a good resource in terms of finding out more information about what went on in your specific parish or diocese, religious order. There's an organization called Drug Rehab, another one called the Addiction Center, Road to Recovery, Campus Safety, all great organizations that help people deal with some of the traumas, and deal with addictions that are often associated with traumas. Then of course, counseling with an attorney who can help direct you to possible counseling through the institution. We can sometimes get the institution to pay for your counseling if you don't have health insurance. So there's many different great networks out there and resources where you can get support to help move path this. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, certainly, there seems to be some light at the end of the tunnel for some of these people. Marty, I really appreciate you sharing with us today your insight on this important topic. I want to thank you for your time. Marty Gould: Happy to be on. Thanks for having me, John.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Zantac Lawsuits Update   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld : Hi, I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and I am an attorney, and I am with my good friend and colleague Marty Gould today. We are here to talk about probably one of the largest and most prolific drug recalls in the United States ever, certainly in recent history, and that involves the popular heartburn medication Zantac. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Marty is very active with the Zantac litigation, and he is here today to discuss the status of the litigation who qualifies for this and to sort of give us some insight as to how these cases may play out. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Marty, first off, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it, and could you just briefly introduce yourself, and let us know a little bit about the background and just what Zantac is and bring us up to date with the current status of the recall on Zantac? Marty Gould: John, thanks for the introduction. I'm of counsel with Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. Our team represents hundreds and hundreds of individuals that have cancer that we believe was caused by a Zantac consumption or generic. Zantac was a very popular heartburn and acid reflux medication. Marty Gould: Millions and millions of people have used Zantac for those purposes, and recent studies have shown that there's a connection between an ingredient in Zantac, ranitidine, and cancer. It's the chemical structure of the Zantac tablet that once it's consumed, and once it's mixed with water in your body, it causes what's called NDMA, a very toxic substance that is linked to cancer. Marty Gould: For that reason, people that have been taking Zantac, many of these people for years and years on a frequent basis, are now getting cancer. Typically, it's a stomach cancer, bladder cancer, stomach cancer, but also the blood-based cancers such as liver cancer. Right now, there's a litigation that's being handled, a multi-district litigation, where all the Zantac cases are being filed in the Southern District of Florida. Marty Gould: Anyone who has a case, they're filing their claims there, and the lawyers are litigating those cases now. We're still in the earlier stages, and there's trials that are expected to start going in probably 2022. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Now, you mentioned that these cases are filed in what's called a multi-district litigation or MDL. I want to talk with you about the differences between an MDL that some people may not be familiar with and a traditional lawsuit. First off, I guess, as a starting point, I guess, what is an MDL case? Marty Gould: Sure. Multi-district litigation is essentially a type of case where all the cases may be a little bit different, so if you've been taking Zantac for one year, several times a week, and somebody else has been taking Zantac for 10 years on a daily basis, you may have a different type of case because your exposure was different. If you have a family history of cancer, that may be a relevant facts. Marty Gould: Everyone's case is a little bit different. Everyone's injuries are a little different. Some people tragically are filing a case on behalf of a loved one who's deceased, who has died because of cancer linked to Zantac. Others may just have an early diagnosis, so the injuries are different every case. Marty Gould: A multi-district litigation, essentially, consolidates all the different cases into one courtroom for efficiency purposes. It's typically done in a federal courthouse. In this case, it's a federal courthouse in the Southern District of Florida. Marty Gould: To avoid having rulings in many different states, in many different jurisdictions that could be conflicting, you'll have one judge who will oversee the litigation. Will set various deadlines, and essentially, the cases are litigated in a fashion where there's bellwether cases. The steering committee that's litigating most of these cases will choose a certain number of cases, that will be the first cases to be litigated, the first cases to go to trial. Marty Gould: Once these bellwether cases are concluded, that usually allows the rest of the plaintiffs to know what the potential value of these zantac cases are, and it usually drives settlements. If there's successful results at trial, it usually results in a settlement agreements or settlement discussions on other people that have cancer that was linked to Zantac. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Right now, we have this MDL that's been filed in Florida, but we also have a recall that was issued by the food and Drug Administration, the FDA, related to Zantac, and that would happen in 2000... I'm sorry, in September 13, 2019, the FDA issued that recall. Why, I guess, did the FDA issued this recall, and what is the impact that you see in terms of the recall on the pending litigation? Marty Gould: There are studies going back to the '80s that linked NDMA and Zantac to cancer, and as of late, because lawsuits were filed, the US Food and Drug Administration started its own investigation, and September 13, 2019, they essentially published a public warning about the link. There was additional research and lab testing. Marty Gould: The levels of NDMA found were significantly higher than which was deemed to be safe for a body to consume, certainly very alarming. The FDA certainly announced that this was a potential health hazard. Marty Gould: In the wake of the FDA safety warnings, the drug manufacturers for Zantac and its generic brands pulled off the drug from shelves across the country. Walmart, Walgreens, CVS, many of the big retailers pulled the drug because the consensus was it wasn't safe to be consumed. Marty Gould: The unfortunate reality is that, while people now aren't being exposed to Zantac and the cancer-causing substances within the tablets, we still have thousands and thousands of people that have been using Zantac for years and have existing injuries. That's what these cases are about. It's about compensating people for their past harms and for their current harms. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Let me ask you this, so you mentioned that, first off, Zantac has been on the market since the 1980s, so this has been on the market for a long time. I guess as a consequence of the patents are on the original drug expiring, now we have different manufacturers and generic versions of this that were on the market. Is that correct? Marty Gould: That's correct. You had various drug manufacturers that were producing Zantac or a generic version of it, ranitidine, Sanofi, GlaxoSmithKline, [Oringer 00:09:03], and the claims are essentially falling into two categories, defective design or manufacturer of that drug, that it was defective. It was harmful. It shouldn't have been sold to the public in the first place. Marty Gould: The second part of that is the failure to warn consumers, because people are taking these drugs because the advertisements are saying, look, this is a safe drug, and I can remember some of the Zantac commercials. They had somebody with a fire extinguisher, and he's using it and it's, "Hey, this is going to extinguish your heartburn and your acid reflux. It's a safe drug to use." That was the message, and that wasn't the case. Marty Gould: I think through the discovery process, we'll get more specifics. When did these drug manufacturers first know that it wasn't harmful? If there's studies out there from the '80s saying that there was that potential harmful cancer-causing link, there's good reason to believe that the manufacturers had that information, and because they were selling it to millions and millions of consumers, they didn't act on that information. Jonathan Rosenfeld : I guess at this point, if you took Zantac or the generic equivalent, first off, does it make any difference in terms of pursuing a legal claim? In other words, if I took Zantac manufactured by Sanofi or by Glaxo, does it make any difference in terms of my legal rights, in terms of filing a lawsuit at this point? Marty Gould: Well, John, as you know, we represent hundreds and hundreds of plaintiffs who have used either the name brand or the generic. There are legal differences, and that's why I think it's important for people to speak with a lawyer to understand what the potential legal ramifications are if you were only consuming a generic, but there's a few things to keep in mind. Marty Gould: When we sign a case, the first thing we tell people is, for one, do you have any Zantac in the house? Do you have any ranitidine in the house? Were you prescribed it? We've had many clients that still have the bottle, preserved the bottle. That's going to be evidence in the case. It's something we certainly want to hold on to. Marty Gould: Then, I guess, the next part of that is proving the use of the drug, medical records. Some people were prescribed it. Other people maybe, because it was sold over the counter, weren't prescribed it, but had reported to other primary care physician or other doctors when they were asked, are you on any drugs prescribed or over counter? They mentioned Zantac. Marty Gould: Those are some things to keep in mind, but there is a difference in terms of the cases, if it's generic versus name brand. That's why it's important to speak to a lawyer about that. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Now, these cases are filed, and they're pending in this MDL in Southern District of Florida. Can you give us a little insight as to how these cases are handled in terms of an MDL, what the court really does to sort of get a grasp of these cases? Jonathan Rosenfeld : We have people from really all over the country who have been impacted and what the court is doing in terms of unifying these cases and getting a grasp as to how people have been impacted. Logistically, it seems like a little bit of a nightmare to have all these different people and all these different cases and everything else. Jonathan Rosenfeld : As a person who has been impacted, either individually or if I have a family member who may have been impacted, and I'm looking at this and saying like, oh boy, do I even want to get involved? Can you just give some insight as to what a plaintiff could expect if they were to get involved with the case? Marty Gould: Sure. Step one is, we have an internal questionnaire that we have potential clients fill out, which asks a lot of the questions that the court is going to want to know, the type of cancer the individual has, when they used the drug, how often they use it, are they still using it, and that's essentially the information that we're going to have to submit to the court. Marty Gould: Judge Rosenberg from the Southern District of Florida, the federal judge who's overseeing the case, has essentially issued a questionnaire. It's called a census plus form that all claimants have to complete and file in the Zantac case. Those questions are the questions that we have our clients answer, when they used it, how often, for how long, what's their diagnosis. Marty Gould: From there, that allows the court, the defense and the lawyers, to have a better idea of each individual's claim. It provides a basis to verify the claims and make sure that the ones we have are legitimate claims that we can ideally get compensation for. Marty Gould: With that, there may be a second phase to the case, where after the census plus form is submitted, we may have a more detailed questionnaire that we have to submit to the court, sometimes with you attached medical records, verifying your cancer diagnosis and any medical records that list Zantac as a drug that you use, whether it was prescribed, or perhaps you referenced it to a doctor. Marty Gould: That's not the only way you can prove use. Your testimony is evidence, so many people don't keep receipts. Maybe they didn't tell their doctors they're taking it because it's over the counter. You can still have a case, even if you don't have that. Your testimony is evidence. If you have family members that knew you were taking it, their witnesses, they can provide evidence. Marty Gould: There's many ways in which we go about proving your use and litigating your case. It starts with that initial intake to find out whether you meet the certain criteria that we believe would put you in a position to file a claim. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Now, before you even get to the point where you're filing a claim, I guess the first step is, hey, are you eligible? When I'm talking about eligible, I'm talking about the timeframe for bringing a case. Every single case is governed by a statute of limitations, and the statute of limitations in these cases, it varies by where the person lives. Is that correct? Marty Gould: That's correct. Even though there is a multi-district litigation in Florida, that doesn't mean that Florida law is controlling here. Every case, every claim in every client's case can be a little bit different, because you're applying laws often from that state in which the individual had experienced the harm, where they were consuming the Zantac. Marty Gould: If you were consuming the Zantac while you were living in Illinois and then you were diagnosed with cancer, and then you move to Michigan or Florida, the law that would apply in terms of the statute of limitations would likely be Illinois law, but every case is a little bit different. It's important to speak with a lawyer to help you find out whether there's an issue with the statute limitations. Marty Gould: With cases against drug companies, such as this or Roundup or Losartan, many people have consumed the drug decades earlier, and they consumed it for a long period of time. It's not like being in a car accident where if you were hit by a car, you knew that you were injured the day of the accident. There is a period of time, a latency period, where you may not be diagnosed with cancer. Marty Gould: It's the worst news to get. It's a very traumatic situation, but you may not get that diagnosis until 10 years after you had been taking Zantac. There's something called the discovery rule in many states, a point in time where you discovered that you were injured and discovered why you were injured. That could trigger the running of the statute of limitations. Marty Gould: Every case is a little bit different, but if you had consumed it a long time ago, that may not close the door to pursue a case, and you should certainly call lawyer and find out if you still can. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Interesting. One of the ancillary issues here is we have a whole nother group of potential plaintiffs who may have taken Zantac or the generic equivalent, and they may have developed a cancer and they may have have died from that cancer. Jonathan Rosenfeld : In those situations, can the family of the deceased pursue a claim at this point? Can they pursue a wrongful death claim if their loved one took Zantac in the past? They may not have been aware of the connection between their cancer and the NDMA in Zantac. Marty Gould: In many cases, you can. A family can file a wrongful death case on behalf of a loved one who was taking Zantac and, unfortunately, died of cancer. There's still the same process is involved, where we file a census plus form. We try and retrieve as many of the medical records as we can, although you can still pursue it. Marty Gould: Then there's also something to note is, sometimes, because we're dealing with cancer cases, we have clients that file lawsuits while they're still alive, and then tragically, they died during litigation. The family can then step in and pursue that litigation for the loss of that loved one, for the wrongful death and survival damages. Marty Gould: Courts recognize the sad reality that many claimants may not survive to see the under this case or really any of these cases, and because of that, in some of those circumstances, we can fight to have a deposition of the individual before they pass away. It varies from case to case, and it varies in terms of the health of the plaintiff. Marty Gould: But it's certainly something we've done in many cases where we've taken a deposition of our client before he passed away, and judges understand that, and the defense attorneys understand that. Then they're sensitive to the situation and the emotional difficulties surrounding giving testimony in that circumstance. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Now these, the pending Zantac cases, they're civil lawsuits, and I want to talk with you about damages in a case like this. Now you and I, we don't have a crystal ball. We have no way of anticipating how these cases may play out. There's still a lot of evidence that needs to be disclosed by all parties involved, but obviously, when you file a civil lawsuit, your sole recourse really is to get economic compensation. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Obviously, we have no way of predicting the value of these cases, but can you just talk through the available damages in a civil case, such as Zantac, where someone at home may be thinking, well, I don't know if it's worth bringing a case. It may not be that much, which I hear pretty consistently. Can you just sort of explain the potential damages available in these cases? Marty Gould: Yes. We're talking about cancer lawsuits here. The damages are catastrophic. It's the worst news for anybody to hear that they were diagnosed with cancer, and we're also talking about a case where the allegation is that these drug manufacturers were creating a drug that was dangerous, was cancer-causing. Marty Gould: People were consuming this, and it was essentially like putting gunpowder and a fuse in somebody's body. It was being lit once it's mixed with water and other substances within your body and causing a very toxic cancer-causing substance, NDMA. The types of recoveries in a situation like that, where somebody's wrongful conduct caused somebody else to get cancer, in some cases to die. Marty Gould: You can get what's called loss of consortium. The family can get a recovery and survival claim, family can get a recovery for the loss of love, the loss of having that person around, pain and suffering for when the person was alive, emotional trauma, emotional distress, economic damages, lost income that the person could have earned, past and future lost income. If they weren't able to work for a period of time, because of the cancer treatment. Marty Gould: You can also get punitive damages in these cases. At this stage, we don't know yet whether we will, but there's certainly going, in many of these cases, we do get punitive damages. Those are additional damages, which can be significant, as a way to punish the drug manufacturers if they in fact knew about the harms and didn't warn people, or didn't take the necessary actions to protect the consumers. Jonathan Rosenfeld : Well, it certainly seems like these are cases which really are going to be an emerging area of litigation. I really appreciate you sharing your insight with us. Jonathan Rosenfeld : If someone is sitting on the sideline, sitting at home, is there anything you would tell them to do at this point in terms of moving forward? If they're sitting on the sideline and they're a little hesitant at this point, do you have any suggestions for them? Marty Gould: They should immediately contact a lawyer to understand their rights, because they don't have to make a decision whether they want to file a claim or not just yet. But they should understand are there any deadlines that could apply to them, is there any statute limitations that may be expiring soon, and speak with a lawyer and find out what their rights are and also whether they have a potential claim. Marty Gould: Maybe they don't, but it would probably give them some peace of mind to know that they had asked the lawyer. They had spoken to a lawyer, and they did not meet the criteria, but you don't want to sit around and do nothing if there's a chance that your Zantac consumption did cause serious injuries up to and including cancer. Marty Gould: If you were taking Zantac for a long period of time and you don't have cancer, you should still be monitoring their health. I would speak to a doctor about it, just to get their opinions on whether you are at risk, and more importantly, to make sure that you don't take any other substances like Zantac that have this toxic substance, and that you switched to alternative drugs that are safer for heartburn or acid reflux. Jonathan Rosenfeld : This is great information, Marty. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise with us today. I look forward to talking with you about this again as these cases proceed towards trial. Thanks again, and I'm going to put your contact information in our show notes, but we appreciate your time. Thank you.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Robert Anderson Abuse Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hi. My name's Jonathan Rosenfeld. I am an attorney, and I am here today with my good friend, colleague, and what else? Respected co-counsel on a lot of these cases, Marty Gould. And today we are going to talk a little bit about a really disturbing news story that's come up involving sexual abuse claims involving the University of Michigan and a doctor who is employed at the University of Michigan for decades, Robert Anderson MD. And these are news stories which really have been making the tabloids in the Michigan area, but they really can translate to other jurisdictions as well. And Marty handles a lot of different sexual abuse cases across the country in different contexts, but today I want to sort of get an update from Marty as to the status of these cases. And before we even get to that, I'm going to let Marty introduce himself and give a little bit of background about these particular cases, because whether you've heard about this or not, I think Marty does a great job giving the relevant background, because these are really, really disturbing situations. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And when we look at them in the context that they are in, this went on for decades just right under the university's nose. So Marty, could you just share with us a little bit about the Robert Anderson situation and really help the audience get some grasp as to what happened in the situation? Marty Gould: Well, I'm of counsel at Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. We handle sexual abuse cases all across the country. We represent many, many survivors of physician abuse. And this one is particularly disturbing. The case involves Dr. Robert Anderson. For nearly 50 years, Dr. Anderson was in charge of the medical care for the University of Michigan college athletes. He also was in charge of medical care for many of the University of Michigan other students at the Student Health Center. He retired in 2003, and he passed away in 2008. Recently, there's been a number of lawsuits filed in state and federal court in Michigan alleging abuse by this physician for decades. He was performing unnecessary medical exams, hernia exams, prostate exams, and groping, fondling, and grabbing student's genitals, penetrating students, forcing students to touch his genitals. And there's a whole litany of other allegations made against him. Marty Gould: Hundreds of people have come forward. The University of Michigan set up a hotline for survivors to file complaints, and they had over 250 complaints against Dr. Anderson. This was so well-known for so long that Michigan athletes actually had a nickname for him called Dr. Drop Your Drawers and Dr. Glove. There's reports that other administrators or supervisors knew about it. So it's just a very, very traumatic, unfortunate situation. And because he wasn't stopped earlier, hundreds of other student athletes and students were abused by this person and have all sorts of psychological injuries as a result. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, one of the situations that comes up in a lot of childhood sexual abuse cases is what happens in a situation such as this where, Dr. Anderson died I believe in 2008 or so, but how do I bring a case against an individual who may be deceased? A lot of times, childhood sexual abuse survivors may be hesitant to bring a case, because the perpetrator may be serving time in jail or they may be deceased. Can you explain a little bit about how that works in a situation such as this where Dr. Anderson is no longer with us, what that involves in terms of a victim pursuing a claim? Marty Gould: In many of our cases, the offender is deceased, and we're still able to pursue cases and receive substantial compensation for clients. And there's various ways you can go about proving your case. For one, the testimony of your client is evidence. But in those cases that we do pursue, it's difficult to pursue a case against the offender. You have to sue the estate for the offender. In many cases, they don't have substantial assets. But you can still sue the institution for their own failures and for their own culpability in failing to prevent the abuse, failing to investigate it, failing to take necessary precautions to make sure students and children are protected. In those cases, any evidence regarding reports made to the institution is evidence in the case. So if we're able to find out if there was other reports from other students. In this circumstance, Dr. Anderson, Roger Stone actually stated that he had made reports and he was aware of supervisors that were aware of Dr. Anderson decades ago. Okay, that's evidence in a case like this, that's evidence against the university where we would argue that. Marty Gould: Well, at that point in time where reports were made, more should have been done to supervise Dr. Anderson and to make sure students were being treated in a safe environment. So the ways in which you go about the evidence is through testimony of other witnesses and any documentation that you can find, emails, letters, and that's typically primarily how you go about establishing these cases. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In a situation like this, where this took place at the University of Michigan, a very, very well-respected institution, the cases are now actually, as you mentioned, they're now actually proceeding against the University of Michigan. As a victim, what type of damages can a victim pursue in a sexual abuse claim against the university? In other types of personal injury cases that we handle, we talk about specials. We look at their medical bills, we look at the amount of time that they may have lost from work. We look at a lot of hard economic damages in a childhood sexual abuse situation. We may not have those tangible economic damages and the case may be primarily composed of non-economic damages, pain, and suffering, loss of normal life, disability even. I want to talk with you a little bit about how the damages in these cases may play out for a potential victim. Can you talk a little bit about that? Marty Gould: In the Dr. Anderson cases, the University of Michigan has filed motions to dismiss the claims, but with those, they've also acknowledged the abuse that has occurred. They're not disputing really that Dr. Anderson was abusing students and children, and they're working to set up a claims process. So in the claims process, how would we go about establishing somebody's injuries from these such situations. There's acknowledgement through research, through state governments, even the federal government, of the fact that sexual abuse causes serious psychological traumas, it causes all sorts of injuries, such as a post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, anxiety, inability to sleep, inability to eat, trust problems, inability to be in it in some circumstances. We go about establishing how it's impacted somebody through the testimony of the survivor, through testimony from their loved ones, family members, significant others, spouses, even friends, some cases, employers, it's totally up to the survivor regarding who they think will assist in providing that testimony, medical records. Marty Gould: Many of our clients have counseling that they've had to go through throughout their lives. Some of them had to be institutionalized, because of psychological breakdowns or suicide attempts. Some of them have never had counseling up until just now. They didn't want to tell anybody and they'd just started getting counseling. Those records can be introduced into the case and through all of that, we help build a picture for the claims handlers, the insurance companies, the defendants, to explain to them how this abuse has impacted our client. And it can impact them through financially, whether it's through psychological treatment that they have to pay for, medical bills, if they were admitted for suicide or other serious psychological injuries, financially, has it impacted their ability to work in any way? To respond to supervisors, to work on a team. And then non-economic ways, just the emotional trauma, the pain and suffering. Marty Gould: And in these cases, you can also get punitive damages. The courts can award you punitive damages, if there's evidence that meets that requirement, and that's additional compensation you can receive. And it's meant to deter future conduct. It's to send a message to the institution that they should have done things differently. Had they done things differently, students and children wouldn't have been abused. And this punitive damages is a message to them saying they got to change the way in which they do business. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, there's no way that you and I can sit here and predict how these cases will shake out. But I just want to point out that unfortunately, there have been some other situations similar to this involving colleges and universities. Obviously in the past couple of years, there's been a settlement involving Larry Nassar at Michigan State University. And that involved a $500 million settlement for 332 people. There was a settlement involving the University of Southern California for 215 million people involving George Tyndall. That happened in 2020. Everyone knows about Jerry Sandusky at Penn State. And in that situation, the university paid out $109 million. Ohio State has paid out $45 million to 185 victims, involving Richard Strauss, another sports doctor. So, I think the bottom line is, these cases do have substantial value. Obviously, a lot of it's going to be dependent on the situation involving the individual and how their attorney relays that information and helps convey those damages to the decision-makers in the case, whether it's a judge or jury or a mediator. Jonathan Rosenfeld: But before you even get to the damages, can we talk a little bit about how the statute of limitations applies to a situation like this? And the statute of limitations is basically a time for bringing a legal claim that is set forth by the state legislature, which says, "Hey, you have X amount of time to file a lawsuit or resolve a case." Typically, if you fail to do so within that statute of limitations, you will be barred from collecting a penny. In this particular situation involving Robert Anderson, can you share with us a little bit about how a statute of limitations would apply? And I don't expect you to necessarily say with absolute specifics, but if you could generally lay forth how the statute of limitations would apply to this particular context, that'd be great. Marty Gould: Sure. Well earlier you mentioned all these other cases where they had physicians that abused many students, and you were talking about numbers like 332 survivors in the case against Larry Nassar at Michigan State. Hundreds, 185 at Ohio State University, hundreds of others and University of Southern California. When you have those type of numbers of students that were abused, there was red flag after red flag that was ignored or concealed. And that's why in these cases there ends up being settlements, because once you get down to the evidence, you don't have physicians or anybody, teachers or religious leaders that can abuse that many people without others seeing something. And that's why these cases are so significant. Now, in terms of the statute of limitations, there's a lot of variables involved, the age of the person when the abuse occurred. Marty Gould: So that's why it's very important for a survivor to immediately speak with a lawyer who can explain to them what the potential statute of limitations is. Many of these cases involving University of Michigan student athletes, there an argument by the university saying that the statute of limitations has expired. Depending on the time period in which the abuse occurred, it may actually be the case depending on the facts and time and the circumstances, but because of the outrage regarding what happened, there's bills that are being proposed in the state of Michigan seeking to change some of the laws seeking to create a window to which survivors can file claims against the University of Michigan and anybody else such as public officials that are responsible for what happened. So it's important to understand what those potential laws are. In the Larry Nassar situation. In many of those cases, the statute limitations had expired. And the state of Michigan did the same thing, they created a window for survivors to file claims. Marty Gould: So that's why it's important to speak with a lawyer to find out, even if perhaps somebody had told you the statute of limitations expired in your case, is there a chance that there may be a viable case in the near future and to keep tabs on any legislation in Michigan or really any state in which you were abused. And there may be an issue with the statute of limitations. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So really these cases are very case-specific and situation-specific. I think the ultimate the message to people I guess, would be if you are sitting at home and sitting on the sidelines and watching this whole situation unravel, and you are a victim, I guess, the bottom line is now is the time to move forward and really, and contact an attorney and sort of get your claim on file while that window of opportunity may be open. Marty Gould: Correct. Now is the time, now is always the time to, at the very least, even if you don't want to pursue a case, speak with a lawyer to find out what your rights are, what deadlines are coming up, what your options are. You don't have to file a claim and while I would encourage everyone to do so, and you can do so confidentially, if you have concerns. Know your rights, Jonathan Rosenfeld: Marty, I really appreciate you explaining the situation with me today. As someone who has worked with you, I really admire your dedication to the clients. You certainly are someone who is really willing to roll up their sleeves and really be an advocate for clients. And I really appreciate your time today. And I look forward to speaking with you again about these cases as we watch them move forward in the claims process. Thank you. Marty Gould: Thanks, Jon.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Martin D. Gould an Attorney at Romanucci & Blandin, LLC. Here, they discuss: Jeffery Epstein Abuse Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hi. I'm Jonathan Rosenfeld, and I am an attorney in Chicago, Illinois. I am here today with my good friend, colleague, Marty Gould. Today, I want to talk with Marty a little bit about a sex abuse case that has made the headlines pretty much all over the world really, for the past couple of years, and that involves Jeffrey Epstein. Marty and I have worked together on different types of sex abuse cases. And as attorneys who prosecute these cases, I wanted to get some insight from Marty about the status of these cases and what is going on and how victims can potentially get involved in terms of filing a claim. But before we get to any of that, Marty, can you... First off, thank you for joining me today, and can you please just give us a little bit of background about yourself? Marty Gould: Sure. I'm of counsel of Rosenfeld Injury Lawyers. We handle sexual abuse cases all across the country. We're in over 20 to 25 states, and that's essentially what I do. It's the focus of my practice. We're not only lawyers, but we're advocates. We're advocating to change to limitations laws to give access to the courts for survivors. And we're also advocates in terms of fighting to make sure our clients get counseling and injustice in their cases. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, I want to talk with you about these Jeffrey Epstein cases. And before I do that, we were just talking a little bit about the Netflix documentary, Filthy Rich, about these cases. If anyone is looking for something to watch which is both horrifically disturbing and gripping at the same time, I would highly recommend that you watch this documentary because it really goes through how Jeffrey Epstein basically systematically found these young girls. You know, He sought them out. He essentially, he corralled them into his world in Florida, and it's really just a shocking thing to witness as to how he was able to manipulate the system. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And we can talk a little bit about the cases in general, but today I want to really take a step back and I want to talk with you a little bit about what is going on in terms of these claims are being handled. These, unlike other types of sexual abuse claims where involving a church or a school or other organization, these cases are actually being brought in a separate claims handling manner. Can you share with us a little bit about what is going on in terms of these Jeffrey Epstein cases, how they're being handled and what the status of them currently is? Marty Gould: As most people are aware of from all the media reports, Jeffrey Epstein was a very wealthy financier who was alleged to have transported underage girls to his homes in the U.S. Virgin Islands, to New York and to his ranch in New Mexico and forced them into sex work. Most of the survivors were abused between 2001 up until 2018. And he was criminally charged. He was criminally charged over a decade ago. And then he was also criminally charged more recently, he was brought to a federal detention facility in August 2019. Before the survivors could get justice in the criminal process, he committed suicide. Law enforcement is still investigating the case. They're still investigating any other potential co-conspirators, and you have the civil cases. There's really two processes in which survivors can get justice. One is many have filed lawsuits in the state of New York, for anyone that was abused as a minor, they can file up until August 14 2021, which is when the New York child victims act window expires, the time period in which anyone who abuses the child in New York has to file a lawsuit. Marty Gould: The executors of Epstein's estate also created a separate process. They separated from the actual civil justice system. There is an Epstein's victims compensation fund that was created. It's an entirely voluntary process where survivors can submit claims. And many of those circumstances, they provide some type of testimony, a statement. So the claims handlers can assess what happened. They can also get counseling through that process and attempt to seek justice that way. Over 50 claims have been settled through that process thus far, in over $50 million, I'm sorry, over 150 claims have been settled through that process. And more than $50 million has been paid out Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now in these civil cases. And these are really what you're talking about in terms of the victims fund, that does not necessarily mean that they're filing a lawsuit, does it? Marty Gould: It does not. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Okay. Marty Gould: A survivor doesn't have to file a lawsuit. They can go through the Epstein victim compensation program, which is also confidential, and they can attempt to resolve their case that way. The process typically involves filling out a questionnaire. The questionnaire asks when the abuse occurred, where it occurred, how they met Jeffrey Epstein, any other potential witnesses, and typically involves a statement. And then it's submitted to claims handlers who assess the cases and they may provide a potential settlement amount. And it typically goes back and forth with the lawyers. You don't have to accept the settlement. It's important to have a lawyer negotiating with you and helping you put the package together to understand what the case should settle for and to make sure you're meeting all the required deadlines. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, as an attorney who handles different types of civil cases involving sexual abuse, can you just talk a little bit about the damages in these cases? Unlike other types of personal injury cases where, I have a broken bone and everyone can see that I have a broken bone. A lot of times in a sexual abuse setting, a victim may walk into a room and he or she looks healthy, relatively happy. They don't really look very different than you or I. How, as a trial attorney, how do you convey the damages in a case like that? So that person can get the compensation that they really are entitled to. Marty Gould: Psychological scars, I think are some of the worst injuries that anybody can have. And like you pointed out, it's not always easy to show a jury what those scars are because they don't walk into court in a wheelchair or with a cast on their arm or their neck, but there're ways to let the jury or the claims handlers or the insurance adjuster or the defense attorneys know how it's impacted a person. Typically, it starts with the testimony from the survivor, and they provide testimony about how it's impacted them. Trust issues they've had, the feelings of anger, humiliation, their personal pain and suffering from what happened. In many cases, clients have also went through counseling or in some cases they've spoken about the abuse and how it's impacted them. In many cases, people have went through counseling and never mentioned the abuse. Marty Gould: That's fine too. You can still use that to help show how it's impacted you. If you are exhibiting depression, anxiety, and perhaps you didn't tie it to that specific abuse until you actually saw a counselor or until you heard about these cases, and until you started going through this process. So any prior counseling records, therapists records, we also look at your employment history. If you've had difficulties listening to supervisors or holding a job, that could be evidence of one way in which the abuse impacted you. Marty Gould: Testimony from family members. If you have a wife, girlfriend, siblings, they can also provide testimony about how it's impacted you, how it's impacted your relationship with your children, perhaps you're not as affectionate or you don't like when people touch you. So there're many ways in which we can explain to the other side, how it's impacted you. And in some cases, if you haven't done counseling yet, because you just never want to tell anybody, or you didn't have the financial means to do so, we can get you into counseling and even a recent counselor who's treated you, they can provide testimony. Some people have post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, anxiety disorders. So there's many ways in which we go about explaining the psychological traumas, even though you may not have any visible physical injury to show. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, these cases, as you mentioned, is claims, they're actually being handled in the U.S. Virgin Islands. And there's a couple high profile administrators who are overseeing the claims process. Now, if a victim is sitting at home and they're saying to themselves, "Well, I don't have the resources, how am I going to get to the U.S. Virgin Islands?" First off, I assume they don't have to go to the U.S. Virgin Islands to pursue a claim, correct? Marty Gould: That's correct. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Okay. And the other thing that comes up in a lot of these cases, having represented victims in sexual abuse cases, is sometimes there's a perception that they need funds or some kind of money to get a case started. Now, you and I work on a lot of these cases and we handle these cases on what's called a contingency fee basis where we only get paid when, and if a case gets resolved, we advance all of the costs associated with bringing a case. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Can you just elaborate a little bit about the contingency process, and again, just sort of explain to folks at home how that process works. Because a lot of times there's a horrible predicament that victims face, where they feel even more trapped than they need to be, because they feel like they can't contact an attorney without having the financial resource to pay them. And so in a situation like this, where we handle a case on a contingency fee, can you explain to them a little bit how that works, and sort of what that process is? Marty Gould: If in many of our cases, the defendants in the case are institutions, they're companies, they have the means to hire lawyers and pay them on an hourly basis, whatever that may be, hundreds of dollars it could be. And then every couple of weeks, they get a check from the company paying off the legal fees. They front all the costs. Our clients are regular people. Most of our clients, if not all of our clients have endured terrible traumas. The last thing that they need to be worrying about when they're thinking about pursuing a case is how they're going to pay for lawyers to represent them. Marty Gould: We take case on a contingency fee basis where we only collect an attorney's fee if we recover for the client, if we're able to actually obtain a settlement to a jury trial through a mediation, through any other means, that's how we collect our attorney's fees. And if we can't, if we take on your case and the case gets dismissed because of a statute limitations argument, or we couldn't prove our case, we don't collect anything from you. And that's just because of the nature of the type of work we do. And just from a fairness perspective, it's a lot for a survivor or a client to be thinking about, especially at this time. Jonathan Rosenfeld: One of the nice things about the contingency fee agreement is that really the interest of the client and the attorney who's representing them are really in line with one another, because we want them to recover as much as possible under their circumstance, because it really serves them as well. That's again, it's how it's an incentive for us to secure that recovery. And I guess in a situation like this, given sort of the timeframe involved in terms of pursuing a claim with this victim's fund, do you have any recommendations to a person who may be a victim of Jeffrey Epstein who maybe sort of has been sitting on the sidelines for a while and watching this whole situation play out? Do you have any advice for them as to what they can or should do at this point in terms of moving forward? Marty Gould: They should speak to a lawyer as soon as possible. There's deadlines that are very important to follow. There's a claims deadline for March 25th. There's also registration deadlines that the Epstein compensation fund has created. So my advice would be speak with a lawyer as soon as possible and find out what potential deadlines there are that could impact any potential case you have, but you don't want to miss your chance at getting compensation or getting closure through this process because you didn't speak with a lawyer and find out what your options were and when those deadlines were. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, I'm going to ask you a little bit about another issue that seems to come up consistently in these cases. And that is a product related to privacy. As a victim of a sexual crime, if you will, a lot of times people, there's a huge hesitation involved with pursuing a claim or a lawsuit because they just don't want their name going out in public. In most lawsuits, it's a public record, they're filed in a courthouse. And that is a public record where that can be searched by the plaintiff's name or the defendant's name. In a case involving sexual abuse, are there any safeguards that can be put into place to protect their privacy and to really insulate them from getting the scrutiny from either friends, relatives, or even from media at this point? Marty Gould: The laws in most states permit survivors in childhood sexual abuse cases to file their lawsuits anonymously. Most of these lawsuits are filed as a John Doe or a Jane Doe because there's an understanding of the sensitive, personal, confidential nature of these types of cases. So with that process, it allows somebody to pursue a case, to fight for justice, to obtain compensation, without having to worry about everybody in their community finding out what had happened to them. Marty Gould: And for that reason, we have people from all different backgrounds. Some people have public jobs. Some people are former or current police officers that were abused as children that have brought claims. So we have all different types of clients and that mechanism allows them to pursue their cases without having to disclose their name publicly. Now there's still the option to file your case publicly if that's what you want to do. And it's totally up to the client. In the mediation process, such as the Epstein compensation program, it's all done confidentially. So there's no requirement for you to publicize your name as somebody who was abused by Jeffrey Epstein. The same is applied for the Boy Scouts of America cases. All those survivors, their names are kept confidential unless they decide they don't want to have their name kept confidentially. So there's typically that option in nearly every state in every compensation program I've been involved with, and that I'm aware of. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, I really appreciate you sitting down with me today and sort of giving us an update about how these cases are being handled. And if anyone has a question about a potential claim, or if they're looking for more information, I am going to put your contact information in our show notes so they can reach out to you directly. But again, thank you for spending some time with me today, and I appreciate your expertise on this area.  

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Anthony C. Lanzone an Attorney at Lanzone Morgan LLP. Here, they discuss: Bed Sores in Nursing Homes They discuss 5 key issues: 1) What are bed sores? 2) What causes bed sores? 3) What should nursing home and other care facilities be doing to prevent bed sores? 4) What complications can arise with bed sores? 5) Can a family file a claim when a family member develops a bed sore?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello everybody. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And today on the Personal Injury podcast, I am joined by attorney Anthony Lanzone in California. And we are going to talk about one of the most prevalent types of nursing home abuse cases out there, bedsores. You can call them bedsores, you can call them pressure sores, you can call them decubitus ulcers but at the end of the day, they're all the same. And Anthony is really a leader when it comes to elder abuse cases in California. And frankly, I'm really happy that he's joined me today so we can talk about this issue. Anthony, thank you for joining me. I appreciate it. Anthony Lanzone: Jonathan. Thanks for having me. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, to begin with, I think a lot of times people who may have a family member in a nursing home they may get a call at some point, or they may be going through their loved one's medical records and they see a term on there. There's frankly, a lot of medical terms in these records but they may see a term, decubitus ulcer, or pressure sore, or pressure ulcer. And they may not really know what that is. To begin with, can you give us an explanation about what these are? What is a pressure sore? Anthony Lanzone: Yeah. Bedsore it's exactly what the name suggests. It's a sore that can develop on the skin. They primarily develop on bony prominences and you can get those from sitting at a chair for extended periods of time, laying in bed for extended periods of time without relieving the pressure to those areas. And obviously the older we get, the more prone we are to those types of injuries. And so, it's essentially an ulceration or a sore that develops when you're lying in bed or sitting in a wheelchair, for extended periods of time without relieving the pressure to the area. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And when we're talking about these bedsores, we're typically not talking about a situation where there may be a bruise or a scab or something? These bedsores can really amplify as they develop and they really can open and really form large wounds or craters, in the body. Correct? Anthony Lanzone: That is correct. Bedsores just the term sounds nonchalant. Just a bed store, it's no big deal. But the reality of those bedsores, you're right, they could be very significant things that could really harm somebody. The biggest organ in the body is the skin, right? And so when you develop a bedsore and if you don't take care of it, that could do some serious damage to the biggest organ in your body. And it creates a portal for infections and all types of problems. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, nursing homes know that many of their patients are susceptible to develop bedsores. This is not a new medical condition out there. This is something that people in nursing homes and hospitals and other long-term care facilities, have really suffered with for some time. What steps should a nursing home or other type of care facility be doing to help prevent these bedsores, from forming or developing in the first place? Anthony Lanzone: Well, there's a lot to that question, Jonathan. I think the first thing I'd like to point out is that, people are not supposed to be getting bedsores. A lot of times nursing homes will communicate to the families and say, "Oh, he's got a bedsore. Don't worry about it. It's no big deal." And they play these types of injuries down. But the obligation of the nursing homes by statute, I should say by federal regulation and the state regulations here in California, they require people that come into the facility without bedsores, that they don't get them unless they can show through the clinical record and the clinical things that they've done, that they've taken every step possible to prevent that bedsore. Now you can imagine that's a pretty steep burden but the reality of it is, is that the nursing homes are aware that people are prone to bedsores when they get there but they're just not doing enough, to try to prevent it. Anthony Lanzone: The only way to prevent these wounds is to relieve pressure to the area. And we're in the middle of a pandemic and everyone's like, "Oh God, the nursing homes they're heroes and they're fighting to take care of everybody in the nursing homes." But it just takes one good pandemic to show how poorly the nursing homes have done over the past decade, at least. I would say decade plus, on just typical infection control protocols. And that goes for the same with bedsores. They're just not doing enough. It has to do with staffing, not having enough people to make rounds to turn and reposition folks. It has to do with money. Nursing homes, the vast majority of them, are owned by big, large companies that want to make a bunch of money. And all those factors go into why nursing homes do a poor job of making sure that, people that come into the nursing homes and don't have bedsores that they leave with the bedsores. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, I think one of the things that I've seen and really continue to see is that, these bedsores don't develop overnight. These are wounds that well, you may have an early stage bedsore after a few days or something. But by the time of a wound has manifested into... And they grade these wounds based on a system to try to make them objective on one to four. But by the time a wound becomes a stage four bedsore, that's a situation where it's not one person who is doing a poor job tending to a patient. It's really an overall breakdown in the type of care that the patient's getting. And if you see a situation where a patient has a stage four bedsore, what, if anything, would you suggest that the family do at that point? Anthony Lanzone: Well, the most important thing is the victim, right? The patient. They got to get in touch with the doctor. They got to be proactive. They have to get involved in the care. And I don't know about you, Jonathan but my gut is usually a good thing to follow. If your gut's telling you that there's something wrong, then you're usually right. Now what to do about that, as I said, you got to get involved in the victim's care. And unfortunately, a lot of nursing homes don't do a very good job of communicating clearly with the family members. And you just have to do everything you can to advocate that this person gets the care that they need, through the personnel and the physicians that are responsible for taking care of the individual. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, when a wound gets to an advanced stage, sometimes the call in a wound care expert, or they'll send the patient out for a surgical debridement where they actually remove some of the dead tissue, to try to help the wound heal. I always tell people, tell families, "Hey, these are keyword words to hone in on. And if you hear those terms, it's probably a more severe wound than the facilities letting on." Obviously, you've come in contact with these cases on a fairly regular basis. Would you agree that those are things that families should be on the lookout for? And if they do hear those terms, or even see a gaping wound on their loved one that they really do need to take some action? Anthony Lanzone: 100%. Absolutely. In fact, even just leaving the bedsores aside for a second, I would make the argument that you have to be an advocate. You can't just simply rely on the people in the white coats and the nursing home. Generally speaking, a lot of these bedsores and problems that the nursing homes have, they don't really necessarily have to do with the hands-on caregivers. These people are really doing God's work and the vast majority of them want to do a good job, and they want to prevent people from getting bedsores and all those things. But the problem is, is the way the system is set up, the way they're organized. The way that these companies squeeze every penny out of it, for corporate profit. There's just not enough people and they don't do enough training. And that's why the people get the bedsores. Anthony Lanzone: So, if you're ever in a nursing home or you have a loved one there, you have to be there. You have to be there every day, watching and asking questions and making sure that they're getting the care that they need and that they're not being harmed. So yeah, if you ever hear stage four bedsore, that is a red flag that things are not going well. Many, many years ago when I first got into this business, I went to this seminar or something along those lines where they were discussing the elder abuse issues. And there was this prominent woman at the time, who owned several nursing homes in Southern California and was also the administrator of those homes. And she stood up in front of this crowd and said, "No nursing home residents should ever get bedsores on their heels. Ever. If you ever see a bedsore on a heel, that is 100% avoidable because all you have to do is float the heels." Anthony Lanzone: That really stuck with me throughout my career because if that's true with the heels, it's also true with a lot of other areas of the body that people just aren't supposed to get bedsores. It seems over the years, the standards for the nursing homes changes within the nursing homes. The regulations stay the same but the standards within the nursing homes, it's becoming acceptable for people to get bedsores. And it's a common thing to where they even tell the family members, "It's common. Don't worry about it, this was expected." But the reality of it is, is that there's a million things that you could do. You don't even have to be a medical professional, you just have to make sure you do everything within reason to alleviate pressure to the pressure points, that are prone to the development of the bedsores. Jonathan Rosenfeld: One of the things that I always advise my clients to do, and I advise them to do this and regardless of the type of case, whether it's an auto accident or work related injuries. I always say, "Hey, you know what? You're walking around with the camera. You know what? Use the camera." And at the end of the day, photos really do carry an awful lot of weight. But in a situation involving a bedsore, when you see these photos and if the photos ever make it to the light of a jury or something, they're really horrific and really graphic. You and I sitting here talking about the bedsores, a lot of times doesn't necessarily do them justice when it comes to how graphic and really just how dehumanizing these are, because it's really an open wound. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So, can you talk a little bit about photos in these cases. Not necessarily, whether they're from the client, or their family, or from the facility. But can you talk a little bit how the photos play into the outcome of some of these cases? Anthony Lanzone: Yeah. The good news is that generally speaking, wound care over the years has developed where photographs is actually part of the standard of care, in terms of treating the wounds. So, when people get bedsores in nursing homes, or if they get shipped out to the acute care hospital for whatever reason, there's usually a good photographic record within the nursing home chart or the acute care chart that shows you the development of the wound. The pictures are horribly important because generally speaking, the public hears bedsore, they don't know what that is. Like what we touched on it, in the beginning of our conversation. What is a bedsore? It doesn't sound it's that big of a deal, right? You and I are fairly young guys. We don't know what bedsores would be from our personal experience. Jonathan Rosenfeld: No. But in terms of the outcome of these cases, Anthony Lanzone: Right. Jonathan Rosenfeld: ... it ultimately... When you are working on one of these cases and someone has a stage four pressure sore, and whether or not you're negotiations with an insurance company, defense counsel, or if the case goes to trial. Ultimately these cases, are very visually, dependent on the images. Anthony Lanzone: Right. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Can you just talk a little bit about, how you've used some of these photos maybe to get some of these cases resolved? Anthony Lanzone: Because the public doesn't know what that is, or they're not familiar with them, there's nothing more important than a picture. You can stand up and have an expert explain to you what a bedsore is and what this one was and what it looked like, and so on and so forth for hours. But until you see it, you really get a clear understanding when you see a picture of a bedsore, a stage two, a stage three. Whatever it is generally speaking, they're horrific. It almost looks like carnage from a war movie or something. A lot of times these bedsores. Sometimes they're really small and they don't look that bad but when you look at a little closer, you can see the bone. Anthony Lanzone: That's a deep bedsore that is horribly harmful and creates a huge risk of harm to the resident. So, if you have pictures of a bedsore, if you have a loved one in a nursing home and you hear bedsore your damn right, you should get photos of it. Especially if you're anticipating litigation because it makes my job a lot easier, when I don't have to explain it. I can just show it and everyone gets it, the second you show them a picture. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think that's really good advice. Now, we're talking a little bit about, right now, the end result. If someone does have a bedsore, how that plays out in resolving a case. But if someone does have a family member who is in a nursing home, assisted living facility, or other types of long-term care facilities and they do learn about an advanced stage bedsore. Would you suggest that they contact an attorney at that point? Anthony Lanzone: Again, the first thing I would do is, I would try to do everything I can to make sure that the victim is getting the care that they need, to treat the bedsore to try to heal that thing. But a lot of times, again, by the time a loved one ends up in a nursing home, this is usually the family's first time of experiencing what a nursing home is and what goes on into a nursing home. And a lot of times, they're just relying on the people or the system that's actually putting the victim in harm's way, by allowing them to develop a bedsore. So the first thing is, let's get the person the treatment that they need. Do the best you can with that. But a lot of times, that's not going to get you very far unless you get a lawyer involved and not just any lawyer. You really need to find lawyers out there that do nursing home abuse cases, because it's just a different animal. Anthony Lanzone: And our profession over the years has become so sub-specialized, it's very rare to see a lawyer that does everything now. And you really need to know and have experience with the nursing home business to understand what the [inaudible 00:18:14] client's problem is, and how to go about trying to make sure that the victim gets the care that they need. And also to evaluate whatever evidence that we need to evaluate, in order to hold the nursing home accountable for the harm that they caused the victim. So yes, definitely contact an attorney. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Well, obviously you are seasoned when it comes to evaluating nursing home negligence cases and pressure sore cases. So, I really appreciate you joining me today and giving your insight on this topic. And if anyone has any questions, I'm going to put your link to your website on our show notes, but I appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Anthony Lanzone: Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for having me.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with James M. Morgan an Attorney at Lanzone Morgan LLP. Here, they discuss nursing home abuse and how to handle it from a legal perspective. They discuss into 4 key issues related to nursing home abuse and litigation: 1) What is Nursing Home Abuse? 2) How do You Report Nursing Home Abuse (Who Do You Report Nursing Home Abuse To)? 3) What does an investigation by state agencies do and how does it work? 4) At what point should the family of a resident consider a civil lawsuit against a nursing home? Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello, everybody. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and today on the Personal Injury Podcast I have my friend and colleague, Jim Morgan. Jim is an attorney in California and he is a named partner at Lanzone & Morgan, and the bulk of Jim's practice is related to nursing home negligence and elder abuse. Today, I want to talk with Jim about one of the real emerging areas of litigation in the field of personal injury law, and really, this is specific to nursing home care, is nursing home abuse. Jim has been practicing in this area for many, many years, and when it comes to these types of cases, I feel very fortunate to have him with me today to really answer some questions that people and families really come to us continually related to their care of their family member. Jonathan Rosenfeld: First up, Jim, I really appreciate you joining me today. James M. Morgan: Yeah, thanks for having me. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, today, we're going to talk about something called nursing home abuse. Nursing home abuse seems to me like the most broad, general term ever. In the field of personal injury law, a lot of times we talk about a surgical error case. We talk about a car accident case. We talk about a truck accident case, but a nursing home abuse case seems like it's the most over, all encompassing term ever. I guess, to begin with, can you just, in your mind's eye, give us an idea of what that term means? What does nursing home abuse mean? James M. Morgan: Yeah, well, you're really right on that because all the other stuff you mentioned, those are event cases where there's a car accident and that's an event. Somebody does something to somebody else. That can be within the realm of elder abuse or nursing home abuse, because you can have physical abuse cases where a caregiver is hitting a patient or resident or choking them. We've had those cases, or a sexual assault on a resident, but believe it or not, most of the nursing home abuse cases are neglect cases, which is really a failure to do something, so it's not an event. James M. Morgan: It's not a CNA or a nurse or a care provider doing something to the resident physically. It's more what they're not doing for the resident. They're not giving them sufficient water so that they get dehydrated, or they're not turning them and repositioning them to prevent them from getting bed sores, or they're not providing enough supervision or assistance to go to the bathroom so that the resident ends up falling and fracturing their hip. When we say elder abuse or nursing home abuse, most of our clients and callers, they're really talking about neglect and failing to provide proper care to the resident as opposed to actually doing something for the resident. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Interesting. In most of these cases, it's really just a systemic breakdown, almost, when it comes to the care of these patients. I've seen these cases. I know you've worked on many, many of these cases, and it seems to me like a lot of these cases, like you mentioned, it's not an isolated episode or event, it's a systemic breakdown where there's maybe not enough staff available to care for these patients or maybe the staff is not trained sufficiently to care for these people. Is that the type of situation that you see? James M. Morgan: Absolutely, and in fact, you really hit the nail on the head. Well over 50% of our cases result from lack of staff or insufficient number of staff. It's not that the caregivers are necessarily bad people who are doing bad things. We get that, too, but it's really, they don't have enough time because they have so many patients, so one person can't feed or give a bath to 20 different residents on their shift or two meals and a bath to that many residents, so well over 50% of our cases are a result of just the facility not hiring enough staff to take care of the residents. James M. Morgan: Some of it's not necessarily not enough staff, but a lack of training of the staff, so the staff doesn't know how to prevent bed sores or to provide fall prevention or cautions, or they have no training on how you get somebody with Alzheimer's or dementia to eat their whole meal when they say, "Oh, I'm not hungry," or, "I don't want to eat." They don't know what to do. They take their tray away and they say, "They don't want to eat dinner." They really don't have the training, so I'd say the vast majority of our cases come down to either insufficient number of staff or insufficiently trained staff. Jonathan Rosenfeld: You mentioned a bunch of episodes involving cases that you see on a fairly regular basis, falls, pressure sores, medication errors, patients who may wander from a facility, patients who may become dehydrated. Now you're sort of going into a new phase, if you will, of COVID, where family members, a lot of times, they may not be able to see their family member for some time over the past year, but now, some of the restrictions in various areas of the country are starting to lighten up a little bit, people are able to actually get in and see their family member, and they may see something where, "Hey, that doesn't look right to me," or, "Hey, man, Grandma Sue has really deteriorated over the past year," if they see that, is there anything that a family member can do? What kind of action can they take? James M. Morgan: A couple things. Let me start with the first thing that I tell my clients to do when they're getting back in the nursing homes and seeing mom or dad or grandma, and they don't want to do this, especially the men, but you need to look at them head to toe and assess them yourself. You need to look at their skin. You need to take their socks off and look at their heels and make sure they don't have any redness or bed sores on their heels, and, frankly, the number one place to get bed sores is the coccyx area, right above the butt. Listen, you don't want to go in there and visit mom for the first time in a year and go taking her clothes off and looking at her coccyx area, but if you don't do that, you're not going to know what's there, because most of the time they're not telling you that mom or dad's getting a bed sore. James M. Morgan: If, at all possible, I tell them, assess mom or dad or grandma head to toe, especially their skin, because you don't know what kind of bed sores they may have gotten during this COVID lockdown, and by the way, that's important even when there isn't COVID. I can tell you a case in particular where a lady said, "I noticed, every time I went to visit my husband, that they weren't changing his socks and they always told me they would change him, and I'd come back and he always had the same socks on, so finally I changed it," and she pulled off the sock and half of his heel came off with the sock, because nobody ever changed his sock and nobody ever knew he had a horrible bed sore on his heel, so even in normal times, you need to assess the resident's skin. James M. Morgan: That's number one. Number two, kind of to answer your question a little more directly, if you notice there's some weight loss, mom doesn't look so good, you need to ask questions and you need to ask questions not just of the caregiver who's coming in, because a lot of times that's a CNA and they don't have a lot of answers. You need to go to the head nurse or the director of nurses or the administrator and say, "Hey, look, when I saw mom or dad 12 months ago, I think they weighed significantly more than they do now. Will you show me their weights from last year and how that's decreased over time?" Because, they should be weighing them on a regular basis, especially if they're losing weight, and by the way, if they lose a certain percentage of weight in a certain amount of time, they're required to report that to the state. James M. Morgan: Ask questions and ask questions of the higher ups, not just the CNAs who are providing the hands on care. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Jim, we were talking a little bit about situations where a family member may see their loved one with a situation where it may not be an acute injury. They may not have that broken bone and they may have gone to the staff at the nursing home, they may have had a meeting with them, but they still don't feel like they're really making any headway in terms of remedying the situation. In that context, what, if anything, would you suggest that they do to help their family member and ensure that this doesn't manifest into something more severe or really a fatal injury? James M. Morgan: Before I answer that, I'm going to tell you what I tell all of my clients, which is, take notes and take detailed notes. Every time you make a complaint or you ask somebody to do something at the nursing home, write down the date you asked them, who you asked, and what you asked them, so that you have a record of it, especially if you're going to make a complaint to the state or somebody else that I'm going to mention, or if you come to a lawyer, ultimately, the more information you have, the better, so take detailed notes during the whole residency. You may not think it's important at the time, because there hasn't been an injury, but there is an injury, you're really going to want to go back and look at those notes, especially your lawyer's going to want to go back and look at those notes. James M. Morgan: Now, to answer your question, if a care plan meeting doesn't work, your complaints to the charge nurse, the director of nursing, the administrator, none of that works, you're being met with silence, basically, at least in California, every nursing home is required to post the name of an ombudsman and the phone number and that ombudsman is supposed to be the liaison between the family and the nursing home when the family has a complaint about the resident care. That's the next step. James M. Morgan: If the ombudsman is of no help, you can make a complaint to the state. For nursing homes in the state of California, you would call the Department of Public Health and you would ask them to do a complaint investigation, and you'd give them very specifically what your complaint is and they're supposed to go into the facility within 10 days unannounced and do an investigation specifically on your complaint. By the way, for an assisted living facility in California, it's the Department of Social Services, so, assisted living facilities, the Department of Social Services is who will do the complaint investigation. James M. Morgan: Nursing homes, it's the Department of Public Health who will do a complaint investigation, but let me say this. A lot of times people have called us before they've called the state and asked for a complaint investigation. A lot of times I will tell them, "Don't do that," because I don't want them to get an unsubstantiated result from the state and then I have to overcome that if there's ultimately going to be a case, so I will either tell them, "I don't want you to make a complain to the state yet," or I may help them draft the complaint to the state because they may not necessarily know how to articulate what they want investigated. James M. Morgan: If they call us first, I'll give them advice on making the complaint to the state, but if they don't want to call a lawyer and they just want to handle it themselves, then they absolutely can call the state and ask for a complaint investigation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In Illinois where I'm located, you can make a complaint to the state anonymously and you don't have to necessarily give them all your information. I'm not sure if that's how things work in California, but a lot of times families feel much more comfortable making that complaint anonymously so they're not necessarily put on the spot. James M. Morgan: Yes, and you can do that. The only problem with that, and I don't want to say it's a problem, but the catch with that is you may not know what happens with that complaint. You may not know what the state did or what they found. If you give them your information, then you're going to get the results. You're going to know what they did and what they found, but you absolutely can make an anonymous complaint to the state. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Assuming that the family makes a report to the state and the state goes in and they do their investigation, they do make a finding ... We're going to get a little technical, here. That finding may not necessarily be admissible in a civil case, but that could be helpful in terms of giving you some direction in terms of prosecuting the case, correct? James M. Morgan: That's right. One reason I tell them sometimes not to make a complaint to the state until I look into the case further or I get the records and look at it, is because if the state comes back and says, "Well, we investigated your complaint but we did not substantiate your complaint," that, likewise, might be harmful to a possible case, but a lot of times the state will do a good job investigating and sometimes, if somebody calls us and asks, "Do I have a case?" and I'm kind of on the fence, it's borderline, I'll tell them, "You know what? Let me help you write a complaint to the state. Let's let the state go in there and investigate, because they can do it a lot faster than an attorney can, because they can pop in unannounced and talk to people and look at records," and I'll say, "Let's let the state go in there and investigate this complaint, and if they substantiate what you're telling me, then, yeah, we might have a case, here, or, likewise, if they don't substantiate what you're telling me, maybe there's not a case, here." It can be very hard. Jonathan Rosenfeld: No, I think people really need to take advantage of a lot of these services out there. People love to bad mouth when people aren't doing things that they necessarily should be doing, but the truth is is that there is an awful lot of support for people who are in nursing homes and for families. They just need to know where to get that and how to access that. I think this information's really, really helpful. Ultimately, if someone does have questions, I think contacting an attorney such as yourself to get some direction, make some contact, would be great. You have a tremendous amount of experience. You know who all these players are, all the resources are, so if anyone in California or any of the other states where you practice, has questions, I'm going to put your contact information in our show notes, but thank you very much for your time today, and I look forward to talking with you again in the future. James M. Morgan: All right. Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate what you're doing. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Thank you.In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with James M. Morgan an Attorney at Lanzone Morgan LLP. Here, they discuss nursing home abuse and how to handle it from a legal perspective. They discuss into 4 key issues related to nursing home abuse and litigation: 1) What is Nursing Home Abuse? 2) How do You Report Nursing Home Abuse (Who Do You Report Nursing Home Abuse To)? 3) What does an investigation by state agencies do and how does it work? 4) At what point should the family of a resident consider a civil lawsuit against a nursing home?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello, everybody. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and today on the Personal Injury Podcast I have my friend and colleague, Jim Morgan. Jim is an attorney in California and he is a named partner at Lanzone & Morgan, and the bulk of Jim's practice is related to nursing home negligence and elder abuse. Today, I want to talk with Jim about one of the real emerging areas of litigation in the field of personal injury law, and really, this is specific to nursing home care, is nursing home abuse. Jim has been practicing in this area for many, many years, and when it comes to these types of cases, I feel very fortunate to have him with me today to really answer some questions that people and families really come to us continually related to their care of their family member. Jonathan Rosenfeld: First up, Jim, I really appreciate you joining me today. James M. Morgan: Yeah, thanks for having me. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, today, we're going to talk about something called nursing home abuse. Nursing home abuse seems to me like the most broad, general term ever. In the field of personal injury law, a lot of times we talk about a surgical error case. We talk about a car accident case. We talk about a truck accident case, but a nursing home abuse case seems like it's the most over, all encompassing term ever. I guess, to begin with, can you just, in your mind's eye, give us an idea of what that term means? What does nursing home abuse mean? James M. Morgan: Yeah, well, you're really right on that because all the other stuff you mentioned, those are event cases where there's a car accident and that's an event. Somebody does something to somebody else. That can be within the realm of elder abuse or nursing home abuse, because you can have physical abuse cases where a caregiver is hitting a patient or resident or choking them. We've had those cases, or a sexual assault on a resident, but believe it or not, most of the nursing home abuse cases are neglect cases, which is really a failure to do something, so it's not an event. James M. Morgan: It's not a CNA or a nurse or a care provider doing something to the resident physically. It's more what they're not doing for the resident. They're not giving them sufficient water so that they get dehydrated, or they're not turning them and repositioning them to prevent them from getting bed sores, or they're not providing enough supervision or assistance to go to the bathroom so that the resident ends up falling and fracturing their hip. When we say elder abuse or nursing home abuse, most of our clients and callers, they're really talking about neglect and failing to provide proper care to the resident as opposed to actually doing something for the resident. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Interesting. In most of these cases, it's really just a systemic breakdown, almost, when it comes to the care of these patients. I've seen these cases. I know you've worked on many, many of these cases, and it seems to me like a lot of these cases, like you mentioned, it's not an isolated episode or event, it's a systemic breakdown where there's maybe not enough staff available to care for these patients or maybe the staff is not trained sufficiently to care for these people. Is that the type of situation that you see? James M. Morgan: Absolutely, and in fact, you really hit the nail on the head. Well over 50% of our cases result from lack of staff or insufficient number of staff. It's not that the caregivers are necessarily bad people who are doing bad things. We get that, too, but it's really, they don't have enough time because they have so many patients, so one person can't feed or give a bath to 20 different residents on their shift or two meals and a bath to that many residents, so well over 50% of our cases are a result of just the facility not hiring enough staff to take care of the residents. James M. Morgan: Some of it's not necessarily not enough staff, but a lack of training of the staff, so the staff doesn't know how to prevent bed sores or to provide fall prevention or cautions, or they have no training on how you get somebody with Alzheimer's or dementia to eat their whole meal when they say, "Oh, I'm not hungry," or, "I don't want to eat." They don't know what to do. They take their tray away and they say, "They don't want to eat dinner." They really don't have the training, so I'd say the vast majority of our cases come down to either insufficient number of staff or insufficiently trained staff. Jonathan Rosenfeld: You mentioned a bunch of episodes involving cases that you see on a fairly regular basis, falls, pressure sores, medication errors, patients who may wander from a facility, patients who may become dehydrated. Now you're sort of going into a new phase, if you will, of COVID, where family members, a lot of times, they may not be able to see their family member for some time over the past year, but now, some of the restrictions in various areas of the country are starting to lighten up a little bit, people are able to actually get in and see their family member, and they may see something where, "Hey, that doesn't look right to me," or, "Hey, man, Grandma Sue has really deteriorated over the past year," if they see that, is there anything that a family member can do? What kind of action can they take? James M. Morgan: A couple things. Let me start with the first thing that I tell my clients to do when they're getting back in the nursing homes and seeing mom or dad or grandma, and they don't want to do this, especially the men, but you need to look at them head to toe and assess them yourself. You need to look at their skin. You need to take their socks off and look at their heels and make sure they don't have any redness or bed sores on their heels, and, frankly, the number one place to get bed sores is the coccyx area, right above the butt. Listen, you don't want to go in there and visit mom for the first time in a year and go taking her clothes off and looking at her coccyx area, but if you don't do that, you're not going to know what's there, because most of the time they're not telling you that mom or dad's getting a bed sore. James M. Morgan: If, at all possible, I tell them, assess mom or dad or grandma head to toe, especially their skin, because you don't know what kind of bed sores they may have gotten during this COVID lockdown, and by the way, that's important even when there isn't COVID. I can tell you a case in particular where a lady said, "I noticed, every time I went to visit my husband, that they weren't changing his socks and they always told me they would change him, and I'd come back and he always had the same socks on, so finally I changed it," and she pulled off the sock and half of his heel came off with the sock, because nobody ever changed his sock and nobody ever knew he had a horrible bed sore on his heel, so even in normal times, you need to assess the resident's skin. James M. Morgan: That's number one. Number two, kind of to answer your question a little more directly, if you notice there's some weight loss, mom doesn't look so good, you need to ask questions and you need to ask questions not just of the caregiver who's coming in, because a lot of times that's a CNA and they don't have a lot of answers. You need to go to the head nurse or the director of nurses or the administrator and say, "Hey, look, when I saw mom or dad 12 months ago, I think they weighed significantly more than they do now. Will you show me their weights from last year and how that's decreased over time?" Because, they should be weighing them on a regular basis, especially if they're losing weight, and by the way, if they lose a certain percentage of weight in a certain amount of time, they're required to report that to the state. James M. Morgan: Ask questions and ask questions of the higher ups, not just the CNAs who are providing the hands on care. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Jim, we were talking a little bit about situations where a family member may see their loved one with a situation where it may not be an acute injury. They may not have that broken bone and they may have gone to the staff at the nursing home, they may have had a meeting with them, but they still don't feel like they're really making any headway in terms of remedying the situation. In that context, what, if anything, would you suggest that they do to help their family member and ensure that this doesn't manifest into something more severe or really a fatal injury? James M. Morgan: Before I answer that, I'm going to tell you what I tell all of my clients, which is, take notes and take detailed notes. Every time you make a complaint or you ask somebody to do something at the nursing home, write down the date you asked them, who you asked, and what you asked them, so that you have a record of it, especially if you're going to make a complaint to the state or somebody else that I'm going to mention, or if you come to a lawyer, ultimately, the more information you have, the better, so take detailed notes during the whole residency. You may not think it's important at the time, because there hasn't been an injury, but there is an injury, you're really going to want to go back and look at those notes, especially your lawyer's going to want to go back and look at those notes. James M. Morgan: Now, to answer your question, if a care plan meeting doesn't work, your complaints to the charge nurse, the director of nursing, the administrator, none of that works, you're being met with silence, basically, at least in California, every nursing home is required to post the name of an ombudsman and the phone number and that ombudsman is supposed to be the liaison between the family and the nursing home when the family has a complaint about the resident care. That's the next step. James M. Morgan: If the ombudsman is of no help, you can make a complaint to the state. For nursing homes in the state of California, you would call the Department of Public Health and you would ask them to do a complaint investigation, and you'd give them very specifically what your complaint is and they're supposed to go into the facility within 10 days unannounced and do an investigation specifically on your complaint. By the way, for an assisted living facility in California, it's the Department of Social Services, so, assisted living facilities, the Department of Social Services is who will do the complaint investigation. James M. Morgan: Nursing homes, it's the Department of Public Health who will do a complaint investigation, but let me say this. A lot of times people have called us before they've called the state and asked for a complaint investigation. A lot of times I will tell them, "Don't do that," because I don't want them to get an unsubstantiated result from the state and then I have to overcome that if there's ultimately going to be a case, so I will either tell them, "I don't want you to make a complain to the state yet," or I may help them draft the complaint to the state because they may not necessarily know how to articulate what they want investigated. James M. Morgan: If they call us first, I'll give them advice on making the complaint to the state, but if they don't want to call a lawyer and they just want to handle it themselves, then they absolutely can call the state and ask for a complaint investigation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In Illinois where I'm located, you can make a complaint to the state anonymously and you don't have to necessarily give them all your information. I'm not sure if that's how things work in California, but a lot of times families feel much more comfortable making that complaint anonymously so they're not necessarily put on the spot. James M. Morgan: Yes, and you can do that. The only problem with that, and I don't want to say it's a problem, but the catch with that is you may not know what happens with that complaint. You may not know what the state did or what they found. If you give them your information, then you're going to get the results. You're going to know what they did and what they found, but you absolutely can make an anonymous complaint to the state. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Assuming that the family makes a report to the state and the state goes in and they do their investigation, they do make a finding ... We're going to get a little technical, here. That finding may not necessarily be admissible in a civil case, but that could be helpful in terms of giving you some direction in terms of prosecuting the case, correct? James M. Morgan: That's right. One reason I tell them sometimes not to make a complaint to the state until I look into the case further or I get the records and look at it, is because if the state comes back and says, "Well, we investigated your complaint but we did not substantiate your complaint," that, likewise, might be harmful to a possible case, but a lot of times the state will do a good job investigating and sometimes, if somebody calls us and asks, "Do I have a case?" and I'm kind of on the fence, it's borderline, I'll tell them, "You know what? Let me help you write a complaint to the state. Let's let the state go in there and investigate, because they can do it a lot faster than an attorney can, because they can pop in unannounced and talk to people and look at records," and I'll say, "Let's let the state go in there and investigate this complaint, and if they substantiate what you're telling me, then, yeah, we might have a case, here, or, likewise, if they don't substantiate what you're telling me, maybe there's not a case, here." It can be very hard. Jonathan Rosenfeld: No, I think people really need to take advantage of a lot of these services out there. People love to bad mouth when people aren't doing things that they necessarily should be doing, but the truth is is that there is an awful lot of support for people who are in nursing homes and for families. They just need to know where to get that and how to access that. I think this information's really, really helpful. Ultimately, if someone does have questions, I think contacting an attorney such as yourself to get some direction, make some contact, would be great. You have a tremendous amount of experience. You know who all these players are, all the resources are, so if anyone in California or any of the other states where you practice, has questions, I'm going to put your contact information in our show notes, but thank you very much for your time today, and I look forward to talking with you again in the future. James M. Morgan: All right. Thanks, Jonathan. I appreciate what you're doing. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Thank you.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Gerald Bekkerman an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they discuss dog bites and how prevalent they are. They also answer 4 key questions: 1) What are laws that cover dog bites in Illinois? 2) Who pays for injuries related to a dog bite case? 3) How do insurance companies defend dog bite cases? 4) How do damages in dog bite cases work? How they are different from other types of personal injury cases? What about scarring and disfigurement? Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello everybody! I am Jonathan Rosenfeld, and today on the personal injury podcast we are going to talk about dog bite injuries. And before you start rolling your eyes and say to yourself: "Wow, this guy's really digging deep for topics", the truth is, is that dog bites are probably one of the most common and most significant type of personal injury cases out there that people in every demographic will likely experience. I was doing some intensive research prior to the podcast, and I was looking at Canine Journal and each year, there are four and a half million people who are involved in dog bites. And 800,000 of those people receive medical care for dog bites each year. Very, very significant number. If you look at that number even a little bit closer, probably the more disturbing thing is that children under 14 make up almost half of those 800,000 injuries. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So there's almost 400,000 children out there who are injured every year in dog bite cases. And when it comes to the legal aspect of a dog bite case is, I'm going to talk with my guests about very shortly, the dog owner in these situations is typically responsible for the injuries their dogs may inflict on a victim. So, as the owner of a dog, this is a podcast that you want to listen to. As someone who may have been involved in a dog bite, this is also something that you're really going to want to take note of. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Because at the end of the day, dog bites make up a very significant percentage of claims made under homeowners insurance policies here in Illinois, and really across the country. They're really one of the most common types of claims made under people's homeowners policies. And today, I'm really excited to have a... In Illinois we can't say an expert, but I've got a very experienced attorney with me who's handled many, many dog bite cases. Gerald Bekkerman. Jerry is a partner in Chicago at the law firm of Taxman, Pollick, Murray, and Bekkerman, and Jerry and his firm have handled dog bite cases really across Illinois in the Chicago area. So, first off Jerry, thank you for joining me today. Gerald Bekkerman: You're welcome. Thanks for having me, happy to talk about the fabulous world of dog bites. It's always ironic as a dog owner to discuss a topic, but you're very accurate in the numbers you read. I mean, these are prevalent cases. Dogs bite. There's issues that happen with owning a pet and there's insurance issues that apply, and there's interesting nuances in the law that apply. And it's a serious topic. Jonathan Rosenfeld: To begin with, in Illinois, the state legislature has the Animal Control Act here and you don't have to recite the law to us, okay. But can you sort of give us an idea of what the Animal Control Act is and how it applies to these situations? Because when you're pursuing any type of personal injury case, you can pursue it based on general negligence or, in some situations there's actually a statute that applies to the situation. So, can you just sort of give us a little bit of a rundown of what the Animal Control Act is in Illinois? Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah. Basically the law says that if you own an animal, I mean, we'll talk about it, the dog. If a dog, and the key word is without provocation, okay, what does that mean without provocation? So you go up to a doggy on the street and you start poking and prodding at him and the dog bites you. Well, you probably don't need to do that. That's not what a reasonable person does. But, if a dog or any other animal, keep it in the context of dogs cause that's most prevalent, attacks or attempts to attack you, which is another nuance. Basically, attacks you while you're peacefully conducting yourself. So instead of poking and prodding, just sort of walking by a dog, for no reason whatsoever, that dog just lunges at you in the street, it takes a nice, big old chunk out of your thigh. All right. Gerald Bekkerman: The owner of that dog is liable to you, the victim, for any damages in a civil court that you can claim as a result of that injury. So what does that mean? We talk about provocation. You can't provoke the dog. I mean, that's a defense and you could lose on a case like that. You got to be peacefully conducting yourself. So the example I gave is very, a common one. It's just walking down the street and the dog bites you. Or, the dog escapes from a fence in someone's property because they left the hole opening or whatever, or the dog leaves it jarred and jumps into the neighbor's yard and attacks a kid, all those are the laws that basically say that you own that dog. Gerald Bekkerman: You may have done nothing wrong. Okay? Your dog may have been fine, gentle pup and acting out because they're one and a half years old, and you're just in your home watching the game, having a beer on the couch. Your dog leaves the yard, where there should be and goes into the neighbor's yard and bites the neighbor's kid. You as dog's owner are liable to that child or that victim, whoever the dog bit, for their damages. Those damages are the same as any damage claim in the state of Illinois. So the medical bills, okay. Pain and suffering, loss of enjoyment of life. And oftentimes in these kinds of cases: scarring. Because these dog bites, the significant ones lead very serious scarring, often require plastic surgery, visions, things of that nature. You as a dog owner and your insurance, which is typically involved, are liable to the victim for those monies, even though you, as a human being, did nothing wrong, other than going to get a dog some point in your life. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think one of the things that comes up in a lot of dog bite cases is, first off, these typically happen either in your home or in your neighborhood where you may be walking your dog. And these claims typically involve friends or family members who may be at your house or in your yard. And a lot of times there's a hesitation involved with victims of these cases in terms of pursuing a claim against the dog owner. And can you talk a little bit about what the claims process is? Because a lot of times I've spoken to people where they're like, "You know what, I don't want to pursue a case against my relative or my neighbor, because I don't want to be the bad guy. I liked that person". First off, can you just sort of explain a little bit about the insurance coverage for these cases? Gerald Bekkerman: Sure. So any home owner, typically when you purchase homeowners insurance and you purchase for whatever limits you have 300,000, 500,000, a million more, whatever you and your broker or whatever you're required to by the mortgage company work with. When you purchase that insurance dog bite protection if you will, insurance for your pet is provided. So you've got to disclose say I own a Goldendoodle. I own a German Shepherd. I own this. I own that. I own a Beagle. And as part of the coverage for your homeowners, the same as if they would fall down your stairs, cause you didn't maintain your stairs, if they get bit by your dog, if they're acting peacefully, they'll provoke it. And they're where they're supposed to be. So if you invite somebody over to your house, they're where they're supposed to be. They're not trespassing, right? And your dog influenced damage on them by biting them. Gerald Bekkerman: They have a claim against your insurance. So no different than if you didn't maintain your stairs and someone falls through them and injures themselves, they can sue you and file a claim, same thing with your dog. And it does often happen. A lot of cases are between family members or friends or play dates where someone's dog nipped at a child's eye, and unfortunately, now that child's got scarring under the eye, the rest of their life. It can be an uncomfortable topic, but honestly that's what you have insurance for. I mean, if you're paying for the insurance and your pet injures a friend or family member and causes a great despair financially, mentally, physically. You probably want them to get whatever they're entitled to under the law in the state of Illinois. And that's what we have insurance, and that's how typically the process would work. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Yeah. I think a lot of times people have a misconception that they're somehow going to cause some financial hardship where the dog owner or their friend or whatever. But the truth is, is that that claim is paid by their homeowners insurance company and there's really no money paid out of their pocket. Correct? Gerald Bekkerman: Correct. Usually the homeowners coverage is sufficient, and most homeowner insurance coverage policies are pretty significant and are adequate to pay for the kind of injury sustained in dog bite cases. So yeah, it's not going to be "Oh gosh, I'm suing my aunt and she's going to lose everything". It really is an insurance coverage issue. Now, in some situations, unfortunately there either is no insurance or some pets are excluded. Some breeds of dog may not be applicable under the coverage. It's rare, but in most scenarios, insurance will cover you for injuries sustained by a pet, if your pet bites somebody or injures somebody. And it doesn't have to be, it's interesting, attacks or attempts to attack. So, there's also nuances of case law in cases we've had where it sounds silly, but you know, the dog runs at you. It doesn't bite you, but it knocks you down, break your shoulders as a result of getting bulldozed by a German shepherd. Well, that's the same thing. That's the animal control act. That's a compensable cause of action, your insurance would take care, et cetera. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Jerry you're reading my mind. That's exactly what I was going to talk with you about, is a situation where a non bite injury, those are also covered. So, that was great. I guess one of the other situations that comes up in a lot of these cases is, someone may have a dog, and also talking about non bite injuries, a dog may claw someone, and the claw injury is actually covered as well as the bite. So it's really, when we're talking about dog bites, it really encompasses anything related to a dog. But one of the situations that seems to come up over and over and over again in these cases, is scarring and really how to put a value on that. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Insurance companies love to be very formulaic when it comes to valuing claims in any type of situation. Whether it's car accident, premises liability, dog bite, whatever it is, they love to punch numbers into their computer and have the computer spit out a formula and say, "Hey, all right. Your case is worth X amount of dollars because these are your bills and these are your lost wages, and these are your other expenses related to your case". But the truth is, is that to look at dog bite cases exclusively based on your economic damages is really not fair or realistic because a scar on a face, [inaudible 00:13:12] someone who, especially for a young person, can really be a significant impediment to their life in terms of every aspect of their life, from their social to their vocation or whatever. So as a lawyer who handles these cases, how do you try to convey those scarring or the cosmetic injuries to an insurance adjuster or a jury, if you file a case? Gerald Bekkerman: Sure, that's a great question. Yeah. In dog bite or Animal Control Act, cases are different because a lot of times there's not a lot of significant, if you will, medical treatment. Sure, there's a really big bite, deep scars. You need revision surgery, you need plastic surgery. I mean, medical bills will come up. And a lot of times, it's a couple thousand dollar trip to the ER, but now all of a sudden you have a huge scar running across your face and you're 28 years old, right. Or you're 15 years old. And those scars are permanent. So how do we value those? Well, we have opinions from plastic surgeons to decide: is this fixable. If it's fixable, what kind of treatment is it? Is it a lifetime of putting creams on your face? Or is it legitimate plastic surgery? Can we skin graph from a different part of your body to try to fix the wound? All sorts of variables. Gerald Bekkerman: So oftentimes these are not fixable injuries and it does come down to the scarring, right? So, what is the effect of the scarring? Is that victim seeking psychological treatment because they're so embarrassed to show their face, show their arm, show their leg. If they have a huge dog bite on their calf, are they afraid to take off their pants for fear of a mockery? Those are all really serious non-economic damages. They go to emotional distress, they go to traumatic experiences. And we as lawyers, our job is to maximize that value. How do we do that? Witness testimony, person's testimony, psychiatric testimony, right? All those things. You can't be more than just a medical bill on a piece of paper. And just because you're still at work, you didn't lose time from your job because of a dog bite doesn't mean that every day you're at work, you're self-conscious about how people at the office perceive you with the scar on your arm or on your face. Gerald Bekkerman: So our job as lawyers is to really explain that and make a sympathetic argument to a jury, supported by whatever evidence we can find. And a lot of times those rewards do become very significant for the right person. I mean, if you are tattooed head to toe, skulls and bones, and you have a little scratch on your arm from a Rottweiler bite, it's probably not going to be too dramatic for you. But if you're a 21 year old female, it was a scar on her face. It's going to be permanent. You think that's going to affect your ability to date, to find a job, to wear makeup, dress, and all that for the rest of your life. I mean, that's really serious. It warrants admitting and compensation. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Very, very good points. You know, I think movie stars aside, these cases really can be significant and impact people. And I think we talked in an earlier podcast about the importance of photographs. Photographs in a dog bite case are probably one of the most important pieces of evidence out there. And if anyone ever is involved in a dog bite case, taking a cell phone picture of the immediate bite wounds at the scene, at the hospital, that's really important. And I think you'd also agree that maybe given the right situation, getting a professional photographer out there after the scar may have healed, that may have keloided or something, is also important to really help convey the full extent of the injuries. So, I think that's something that is important, and I've seen you do this repeatedly on these cases. Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah. We get professional photographers. We do every three months, every six months. We kind of track the progression of the scarring. Insurance companies usually want to see a picture a year out or so. After a year, you kind of know what's possible, what's not. We'll supplement that with any plastic surgery opinions or options for revision surgery or improvement, but typically after a year or so, the photos, they don't go away. But you also want to document how bad it was. The beginning. A lot of times things do improve. We've had some really grotesque, gruesome photographs, and in a year or two it really gets a lot better. But you went through that as the victim, you had to live with that grotesque bite or that chunk of your skin missing or surgical revision you had to go through, we document that. Because that shouldn't be forgotten. That's compensable. That goes to the emotional trauma you sustain. It goes to the physical pain you sustain. And that evidence is very, very important. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Jerry. Again, this is not necessarily the sexiest personal injury topic out there, but this is really good information. Really useful information. And you did a great job breaking it down for us. So thank you for joining me today, and I look forward to talking with you again. Gerald Bekkerman: Absolutely. Just remember, don't provoke those dogs. Nothing good can happen. I appreciate your time John, and happy to talk about this and any other topic with you.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Gerald Bekkerman an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they discuss 'What is a Third-Party Claim?" and the nexus between work compensation coverage and civil law and dive into what benefits are and are not offered. They also answer 3 key questions: 1) What is a 3rd party claim? What are some examples of 3rd party claim cases? 2) So as a person injured on the job, can you have both workers comp and 3rd party 3) There are some situations where the responsible parties are apparent. How can you tell if you have a case or not?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And thank you for joining me today with the Personal Injury podcast. and I am joined today by Gerald Bekkerman, a partner at Taxman, Pollock, Murray & Bekkerman in Chicago, and Jerry's got a laundry list of accomplishments in the legal world. But I think one of the things that stands out most is really his track record of success. Jerry and his law firm have recovered over $400 million for people who have suffered injuries, and Jerry is really seasoned in what we're going to talk about today, which is third-party liability in work-related cases. And to give you an idea about this, just to give you a little bit of a lay of the land, if you will, if you are injured while working in Illinois or pretty much any state, you will be covered by workers' compensation. And workers' compensation, while it is great and it serves a very essential role, it does not necessarily cover you fully for your injuries. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so today I am going to talk with Jerry about what a third-party case is, what situations may give rise to a third-party case. And then we're going to go through some, some sample third-party cases, if you will. And this is a really important topic. If you are any person who is injured while working or has a family member who is injured while working, a lot of times, these happen on construction sites or other situations where there may be multiple parties involved. So this is really important information. But first off, I just want to introduce Jerry and I want to really thank him for a taking the time out of his extremely busy schedule to join me today. So thank you, Jerry, Gerald Bekkerman: Of course, John, happy to help. I appreciate you having me on the podcast. One of my favorite topics, third-party claims and work injuries, kind of the bread and butter of our firm and something that a lot of people probably not a lot of knowledge on and miss out on opportunities for more recovery financially. So it's a really good topic. I'm happy to answer any questions. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Thank you. Well, I guess to begin with, if you are injured on the job in the state of Illinois, you are covered under workers' compensation and- Gerald Bekkerman: Correct. Jonathan Rosenfeld: We can have a whole podcast, I guess at one point about workers' compensation, but you're essentially entitled to three things with workers' comp in Illinois. You're entitled to basically your temporary total disability while you're unable to work, you're entitled to your medical bills, medical expenses related to your injuries, and then you're entitled to a lump sum payment, which is essentially a scheduled payment based on the type of injury that you sustained and the amount of money that you were making at the time that you were injured. What this does not cover though, is it does not cover pain and suffering. It does not cover past or future wage loss. It does not cover disability. Jonathan Rosenfeld: It does not cover a lot of what we sort of refer to as non-economic damages or even economic damages. It's really basically intended to keep people from falling into a situation where they're destitute and completely reliant on the social support system of the state and the federal government if they're involved in a work injury. So while workers' comp does serve a vital role, today I want to talk with Jerry about a situation where there may be an entity or a party involved who's responsible for your injury who may not be or is not necessarily your direct employer. So Jerry, I think the best way to sort of get into this for those of us who haven't gone to law school is to really just maybe give a couple examples of what a third-party case may be because I think that may be a lot more illustrative than trying to explain the intricacies of this and the complexity of the law to someone. So can you just sort of give maybe a couple examples of a third-party claim? Gerald Bekkerman: Sure, sure. Of course. So the work comp you described, great. I mean, that's a no-fault. If you get hurt on the job in the state of Illinois, you're going to be entitled to two-thirds of your weekly wages up to a certain limit, your medical bills to be paid, and in the end, there's a formula that's statutory that gives you some amount of money. It's not going to be significant. There's no compensation for pain and suffering or non-economic damages or scarring or any of these things. But third-party cases is when you get hurt on the job, you can't sue your employer, but somebody else that's also on your job site that's not your employer, you don't work for them, contributes to or causes exclusively your injury. Gerald Bekkerman: So if you're a delivery driver and you pull up to a loading dock, and you're unloading your freight. And at the warehouse you're delivering to, some guy operating a forklift runs you over because they don't know how to operate a forklift. You can sue the warehouse for their employee's negligence and running you over with the forklift. Gerald Bekkerman: If you're delivering a beer to a bar, when you have to carry the beer downstairs into the coolers and there's no handrails, or the handrail broke, or there's slippery stairs and nobody put out a wet floor sign, and you slip and you fall down all those stairs and break a bunch of bones, yes, that happened on the job. But if it wasn't for the bar's negligence and making sure those stairs are safe, not slippery and up to code, you wouldn't have gotten hurt. You have a case against the owner of the bar, the manager, whoever. Gerald Bekkerman: If you're on a construction site... a lot of cases like these in our office... and you fall off a scaffold while you're a mason like brick, but the scaffold was set up by the general contractor on the site, but it was set up poorly. Scaffolding was loose, whatever, and the thing collapses, you go down, you fall, you break your wrist. You can't do masonry work for maybe forever or just for a year or two. You have a third-party claim against the general contractor, the one that's overseeing the project, the one that put up the scaffold. Gerald Bekkerman: In those three scenarios... and there could be tons of those kinds of similar situations... you can Sue the insurance of the property owner, the construction manager, the forklift operator, the warehouse, whoever for causing an injury to you while you were in the course of your employment. Gerald Bekkerman: In those situations, you get pain and suffering. You get lost wages without any statutory factors about what you can and can't make. Your full wages can be recoverable. You get scarring. If you're scarred, you get loss of enjoyment of life. If you used to be a marathon runner, because of a knee injury caused by the scaffolding collapse, you can never run again, you're entitled to those non-economic damages plus your medical bills. So it really opens you up to something that's no different than the damages you'd recover in a car or a truck accident against the third-party insurance company. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I mean, I think one of the things that people who suffer a work-related injury may not fully grasp is that the benefits you are entitled to under work comp are generally very limited. A lot of times people are very... They sort of have sticker shock when they're like, "What? My finger was broken in four spots. I can't grasp a pen anymore. I can't type anymore. I can't sleep because of my finger," very legitimate complaints for a significant injury. But at the end of the day, they're very much capped out on what they can recover under work comp. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And so in a situation where another entity may have caused or contributed to their injury, you as their lawyer can go after that party and pursue them for the full amount of their damages. And as opposed to for example, auto case where there may be limits on the amount of liability coverage out there based on the policy, in a third-party case where you have a company involved, companies typically have much more significant assets. They have more significant insurance coverage. You can go after that company and recover the full value of their case, correct? Gerald Bekkerman: Correct. You can have concurrent work comp and third-party personal injury actions. And the work comp really is limited. I mean, in the work comp world... one of my partners here has been doing it for almost 30 years... the high settlements on some of these large construction cases or work injuries, 3, 400,000 is high-end. 5, 600 is almost unheard of. Those are kind of the worst of the worst, life-altering, career-ending injuries. You're never going to be able to do your job and you're relatively young. That's as high as it gets, as opposed to some of the results we've attained in the third-party action against the forklift operator's company, the warehouse, owner of the bar, all of the scenarios I gave. I mean, we're talking 8, 9, 10, $15 million, which encompasses a lifetime of lost earnings without any caps, right? A lifetime of pain and suffering without any caps or ceiling, a lifetime of future medical treatment and past medical treatment, if that's what your damages are. Gerald Bekkerman: We had a case where a manhole wasn't covered by one of the contractors on a construction site. No warning was given. It was dark. It was muddy. Our client walked and fell into the hole. Okay? It wasn't his fault. He had no way to see it. He was badly injured, couldn't ever return and do job again. Young guy. Under the comp statutory limits, he made too much money. So he's at the higher end of what the work comp laws and state allow for compensation for hourly wages. And they gave him what he was statutorily entitled to, but it was several hundred thousand dollars, not what we were able to recover, which I think was almost $8 million. Gerald Bekkerman: You encompass a lifetime of medical treatment, lost earnings, different jobs. I mean, if you're in the trades, you make a pretty good living, encompassing your benefits, your retirement, all those things get put into the third-party case against an asphalt business owner, an at-fault construction company, an at-fault anybody. Gerald Bekkerman: And the spectrum is really broad. I mean, you can slip and fall at a warehouse while making deliveries. An Amazon employee could be injured at a third-party premises while making a delivery. There's just a lot of variance as to how you can get hurt. And so the best thing is to really explore with an attorney other avenues of recovery outside of the workers' comp spectrum, if that makes sense. Jonathan Rosenfeld: It does. I mean, a couple of things. I think one of the interesting things about these cases is a lot of times people may not necessarily know or be aware of the fact that they may have a potential third-party case. And a lot of times people are like, "Poor me. It sucks, but it is what it is. I was injured on the job. I guess this is what I'm entitled to." And I think that's why it's really important for someone who is injured at work to really have a lawyer, their own personal lawyer, who's really their advocate and has really has their interests first and foremost, as opposed to sort of relying on the benefits that are fed to them by the company or the work comp insurance, because there are many situations where people are injured on a job site, maybe on an active construction site. They may be walking and trip and fall over a board or something. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And it may seem like a real basic thing. They say, "I slipped and fell. I broke my arm." Well, you know what? The board probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. And if the other entities involved aside from their employer were doing their job, that board wouldn't be there, they wouldn't have fallen, and they wouldn't have to necessarily endure all the physical and financial hardship that they may be experiencing. So again, I mean, this sounds a little bit self-serving, but having an attorney who's looking out for your interest can really help in a situation like this. I know you've done a lot of investigation in situations like this, where you've gone out and you've hired an investigator. Can you just talk a little bit about what you guys do in that situation? Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah, absolutely. So the example you gave, we've had a case just like that. A toolbelt that was left by another contractor that was difficult to see because it blended in with the flooring, our client worked for a different subcontractor on a big project, tripped over a toolbelt. It seems silly, but that resulted in two knee surgeries and fractured legs. And guess what? He's not going back to work. So the comp case was obvious. "Yeah. I tripped at work" But when we started talking to him and asking him questions, well, "What'd you trip over? Wasn't your belt? Whose was it? Oh, interesting. Well, why is the other entities on the job site just leaving debris and junk around where for you to fall on to no fault of your own?" That opened us up to, "Let's get our investigator. Let's start pulling permits. Who else was on the job site?" Gerald Bekkerman: Because you as the worker on a construction setting, there might be four or five different companies on the same job site, and you may not know who's who. So what we do, firms like ours, we have professional investigators. They go, they pull permits, they collect statements, they go take photographs, they investigate and determine who's in charge of the worksite, who was present on the work site, who holds responsibility for the injuries that our client sustained. And sometimes, it doesn't go anywhere, and sometimes there are no other culpable parties. It's just you and your employer. But a lot of times, we find that there's other entities involved, and there are certain duties that are owed within the construction setting specifically by general contractors to their subcontractors. But those have to be just in the construction setting. Gerald Bekkerman: We've had cases where people lost their hand because of a malfunctioning machine, a press of some sort on a industrial job site. Well, that press, yeah, it took off our client's hand. And now he has no hand and he's an amputee, and he's never going to be able to work again, but there should've been a stop switch that was not repaired or fixed appropriately at the facility. And it wasn't his employer. His employer contracted with a company whose sole job was to go and inspect these machines and make sure that certain safety protocols are properly working and certain parts are there to protect people from being injured. So in that case, we learned that this outside company that didn't provide the service they promised they would and didn't catch the [inaudible 00:17:33] that they were supposed to catch that resulted in our client losing his hand in the press. Well, guess what? Now we have a whole different case against the manufacturer potentially, against the company that failed to safely inspect it fixed. They owe a duty under the law. Gerald Bekkerman: Our investigator, they determined who these companies are. Sometimes they're foreign entities. We've got to sue them in all sorts of fun jurisdictions. And skip all the legalese aside, that the main crux is you got to look a little deeper, search a little deeper than just work comp, and lawyers like ourselves, not to be self-serving, but that's what we specialize in. And it's a big injury, and it's going to be something that work comp's never going to be able to make you whole. You have to, have to, have to look a little bit further and see if there's a viable third-party case. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think that's really excellent, excellent advice. And I would encourage anyone who themselves is injured at work and has a significant injury to reach out to an attorney who has experience both with work comp and third-party liability claims so every avenue can be investigated to the fullest degree. And unfortunately, hey, look. It may be a situation where, you know what? You're going to be limited in terms of a recovery by work comp, but it also may be a situation where you may have a potential third-party claim. So the only way to really make that determination is to have an experienced attorney do the digging for you, really make sure every possible avenue of recovery is explored to the fullest degree, and can sort of make sure that every base is covered. So this is great advice. And I really hope that if someone listening to this is teetering on whether or not to investigate a third-party claim, we sort of inspire them to move forward. So thank you for joining me today and [crosstalk 00:19:52]. Gerald Bekkerman: Thank you, John, happy to help. It's very important. It's one of those things where there's nothing worse than finding out after the fact that you had a viable third-party case. So you were entitled to the loss, if you could prove it, that significant compensation. Your lawyer didn't do it. You didn't look into it. You didn't raise the issue and sadly lost out on a potential opportunity of money that you may have needed for you and your family. So very, very important. And it's so broad. I mean, I can give probably 50 more examples, but anytime you're hurt on the job, number one thing, get an attorney and look at whether anybody else outside of your employer is at fault, and potentially a lot of avenues can open up for you. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Thank you.

In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Gerald Bekkerman an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they give statistics drivers causing car accidents without insurance and uninsured motorist coverage. They also answer 4 key questions: 1) What is uninsured motorist coverage? 2) What does uninsured motorist coverage cover? 3) What is the process for availing yourself to uninsured motorist coverage? 4) What are damages in uninsured motorist cases?   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hello! I am Jonathan Rosenfeld and today I am joined with Gerald Beckerman, and today we are going to talk a little bit about uninsured motorists, and uninsured motorist coverage in particular, and if you are listening to this podcast or watching the video and are thinking to yourself "Well, that sounds like a really boring, esoteric, random topic." Well, before you automatically write this off, listen to this for a few minutes. Jonathan Rosenfeld: In today's world, post-COVID, we are seeing more and more people impacted financially by the COVID-19 fallout, and the incidents of uninsured motorists on the road in Illinois and across the country is really, really, really, unfortunately, on the rise. People are really facing some economic hardship today that they may not have faced in the past, and when it comes to making ends meet, one of the things that they are doing, unfortunately, is they are going without liability insurance coverage when they get behind the wheel. And despite the fact that there is mandatory auto insurance in Illinois, there are almost 13% of the motorists on the road today are driving without any type of liability coverage. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So, today I want to talk with Jerry about these situations, and about what drivers can do, and what you can do to protect yourself and your family from getting in an accident with a uninsured driver and really sort of being left out to dry in terms of financial recovery. So, Jerry, first off, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate it. Gerald Beckerman: Of course. Nice to see you again, and always happy to talk about the fascinating world of uninsured motorist coverage. Jonathan Rosenfeld: It is indeed a fascinating topic. Jerry- Gerald Beckerman: It's fascinating in the sense it's such a lifesaver to so many clients and all. I'll give some stories about just what this unknown insurance provision can really do and how it can change someone's life for the better. But, go ahead. I'll give you those examples of all of that. Jonathan Rosenfeld: No, I think that it's one of those things where you get your insurance policy and it's pages and pages and pages of super fine print, and you may read the first page or whatever, and then you sort of shake your head and bury it in the sand and scribble off and send your payment. But, it's an important thing to have when the situation arises and you're actually really grateful that you have it. So, I guess to begin with, can you just sort of give us a little bit of an explanation about what uninsured motorist coverage is? Gerald Beckerman: Sure, let me do this. Let me tell you the story about why, and then we'll kind of work backwards, it's so important and what the benefit of having it is, and I'll explain the nuances because the story is always a nice, more interesting way to get an understanding of the topic. I had a client, who happened to just be a friend of mine. He was out on a date with a girl. They were driving, their first date, they were coming back from dinner, and they got in a really bad accident here in Chicago off of [inaudible 00:03:59] Drive. Actually, right in front of our office. This is a while back. Fortunately, at that time they were struck by a vehicle that had adequate insurance, $250,000 insurance policy. It was a Cadillac, something or other corporate car, and there was enough damages for them to recover from this big fireball of an accident. Gerald Beckerman: They were hospitalized for it, et cetera, et cetera. I told them at that time, "Jake, you're very lucky that this car had coverage because I looked at your insurance policy and you only have $50,000 of uninsured or under-insured motorist." I said, "You really, really should talk to a broker and get that increased," because you never know when you get in an accident and the other person doesn't have $250,000 of available insurance. They may only have 25. They may only have 50. He took that advice to heart. They actually wound up getting married, the same friends of mine. Gerald Beckerman: Five-six years later, they got into a pickup truck, out in another state with four other friends. Out on the day of water skiing just enjoying some outdoor activities in a rural part of the state, and the driver of the car that they were in made an illegal U-turn in front of another pickup truck and caused a terrible, terrible accident where four people, including my friends who were in the car, were seriously injured, again. One person passed away and there's a total of seven injured people all in this case, including a fatality. The driver who had the car that they were in had $50,000. The driver of the other car, who may have been at fault, also had $50,000. Gerald Beckerman: That is a total of 100,000. That was to be split between seven people, including the estate of someone that passed away, and my friend had significant, significant, significant injuries. Hospitalized. $500,000 in medical bills. Well, he took my advice, that I gave him those five years back, to heart and bought a million dollars worth of uninsured motorist coverage, which, and I'll explain what that is in the sec. Didn't cost him a lot of money. Cost them a couple of hundred bucks per year, but he took my advice to heart because he purchased that and spent $200 bucks or whatever it was to have that coverage. He was able, and we were able to secure for him, total of $1.1 million in recovery for his medical bills, his pain and suffering, his loss of income. Whereas, otherwise he would have only been able to recover, I think about $8,000. Gerald Beckerman: So, we're talking just a wild swing, and life-changing, and important money, and deserving money for the kind of injuries he sustained without having any fault of his own and being through such a tragic accident, having lost a friend. So, that's kind of what the end goal of getting this coverage is. What is it? What is this magic thing that gives you money? It's basically a provision in an insurance policy that provides coverage to you, if you are injured in a motor vehicle accident, that covers you above and beyond what the person that injured you covers on their card. So, if John and I get in an accident, and I carry a $100,000 in insurance and I rear-end John at 60 miles an hour cause I'm texting and watching the NCAA tournament on my phone instead of paying attention to the road, and poor John is badly injured. Breaks every bone in his body. Gerald Beckerman: He goes to the hospital. He wants to sue me. He wants to file a claim against my insurance. My insurance will say, "Listen, this guy Jerry Beckerman, he's kind of a loser. He doesn't have any assets. He owns a lot of credit card debt. He's basically bankrupt. He has a $100,000 of insurance. We'll give it to you. Good luck. I know you have $250,000 worth of medical bills. I know you're going to miss a year of work. I know you have scarring and you're going to be in pain the rest of your life, but all we got is a hundred thousand. Godspeed." Now, John, being the astute attorney that he is, obviously carries a large uninsured motorist policy. So, that means at some point back in the day, kind of like my friend, he contacted his broker and that doesn't have to be a broker. It could be online through Geico. Gerald Beckerman: It could be online through State Farm, Progressive, and he chose to increase his limits for uninsured or under-insured motorist coverage to a high number, maybe 500, maybe a million, and he chose to pay a little bit of an extra premium for it, and they're really not large premiums. Chose to pay another couple of hundred bucks per year for the protection. I call it kind of like a life insurance policy, or a hazard pay policy of some sorts, but he chose to have this uninsured, under-insured coverage, and that gives him a gap of coverage from whatever me, the deadbeat with a $100,000 only my insurance can give him, up to whatever he paid for. So, if my coverage is a hundred, my insurance company gives it to John for the injuries that I caused him. His own insurance then steps in and whatever limits he paid for. Gerald Beckerman: If it's 500, they'll give them an additional $400,000 for his medical bills, his lost time from work. If it's a million dollars that John has in uninsured or under-insured coverage, it would be an extra $900,000 that he could collect, okay? From his insurance company. Doesn't mean they're going to hand it over to you. You still got to prove your case. You got to go to arbitration, I'll explain the nuances, but it gives you an opportunity to recover more money than someone like me that carries a hundred, or someone that's even more of a deadbeat and doesn't buy any insurance. Kind of like John said, so many percentage of people don't carry any insurance. So, a zero. You get nothing for me. Your insurance would step in and cover that portion. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Yeah. I think it's important to realize that in Illinois and other states, the wallet liability insurance is mandatory. The limits, the minimum coverage limits are extremely, extremely low. The state of Illinois recently raised the minimum to $25,000 in terms of liability coverage, and that $25,000 that covers situations where a person may have catastrophic injuries. You may have multiple fractures, extended hospitalization. You may actually, or a family member, actually may die in an accident, and at the end of the day, you are essentially going to be limited to, in terms of collecting from the person who may have caused the accident, by the limits of their insurance coverage. Most people, I think, don't realize that when someone says, "Hey, I have full coverage." That basically just means that they have the minimum coverage out there. That doesn't necessarily mean that they have sufficient coverage to cover a loss or an injury. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And I think that's something that a lot of times people naively might think, "Hey, all right, that guy has got full coverage, I'm good." The other thing that I think I would just add is that, well, if someone even sues the person who caused the accident individually. Most people don't have significant liquid assets to satisfy a judgment against them for a significant injury. Gerald Beckerman: Yeah, absolutely. Jonathan Rosenfeld: People don't have hundreds of thousands of dollars sitting under their bed or in their bank account to satisfy a situation like that. So, all the more reason to. If you can afford to have a Netflix account, you can afford to have uninsured motorist coverage in a relatively significant amount. So, I think all your suggestions are really, really important for anyone out there who's involved or even considering getting any type of insurance coverage for their vehicle. Gerald Beckerman: And it doesn't just cover you uninsured or under-insured coverage, it also covers your family members, members of your households. So, we have a lot of cases where a 16 year old, the parents gave the car to the 16 year old, the 16 year old is not at fault. They get in a hit and run by a drunk driver who's never caught, they're badly injured, the 16 year old, and the parent's policy that they have on their car gives $500,000 of uninsured motorist, under-insured motors coverage would apply to that child as medical bills, injuries. And we've had great success recovering those kinds of amounts for those kids. And if they parents didn't pay for those policies, like that Netflix account analogy, and payout a couple hundred dollars a year to have this coverage and increased limits, then that child of theirs would recover nothing potentially from an at-fault driver. Gerald Beckerman: It's really, really important. And another thing that that you mentioned, John, a personal injury judgment or verdict kind of goes last in line against an at-fault party. So, if you don't have assets and you don't have a couple hundred thousand dollars under your bed, which most people don't, and you only carry a $100,000 of insurance and I badly injured John, right? John didn't pay for any uninsured, under-insured extra levels for himself. And he's going to sue me. He doesn't want to just take a $100,000, and he goes to court and he gets a judgment against me for a million dollars. Well, guess what? It's not like I'm going to pay him a million dollars. He goes last in line behind home mortgages, credit cards, student loans, any and all other creditors. Personal injury kind of goes last in line. Gerald Beckerman: For example, I don't know if people remember 2008, there was a big recession and General Motors had a lot of cases pending against them for faulty airbags, rollovers. Just a lot of product liability lawsuits. All those had to take a pause during the restructuring and bankruptcies and all that. I mean, it's just really hard to get assets collected, even against corporations sometimes, against individuals and car accidents. It's near impossible. So, the best protection you can give yourself and your family members is to pay a little bit extra in that premium, get uninsured or under-insured coverage of limits that are at a minimum 250,000 upwards of 500 and even a million or more if it's doable. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Yeah, and I think that the other thing that a lot of times people don't realize with uninsured motorist or under-insured motorist coverage is other situations that may have given rise to coverage. For example, let's say you're out walking with your kids and, God forbid, someone blows a stop sign and hits your family, or something, as pedestrians. There could be coverage. If you're a bicyclist and you're doing your best and you're staying in the lane and someone, God forbid, hits you. If you decide to jump in a car with a friend or something. These are all situations where uninsured or under-insured motorist coverage would apply and it could really not just come in handy, but really protect yourself and your family from significant financial hardship that you could endure as a result of your insurance. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So, I think that this is all really, really important because a lot of times people don't realize the intricacies of this stuff until way after the fact where, "You know what? It's too little too late," as I like to say sometimes. So, this is good advice. Now, I just want to talk with you, real quickly, a little bit more about how these cases, uninsured motorist coverage cases, potentially could get resolved as opposed to traditional motor vehicle accident cases where let's say, using your analogy again, you rear-end me, and I said, "Hey, you know what? I'm hurt. My back is messed up. I'm going to file a lawsuit against you." In a situation involving an uninsured motorist or under-insured motorist, can you explain just a little bit how that process works in terms of resolving the case? Because as far as I'm aware, you don't go out and just necessarily file a lawsuit. There's a certain procedure that has to be followed, correct? Gerald Beckerman: Absolutely, yes. So, the uninsured and under-insured world takes place in an arbitration setting. So, there's no one to sue. You can't sue your own insurance company. You got to follow the arbitration act. No one reads it, but when you get an insurance policy, you get a pamphlet that big containing all the provisions. We, the lawyers, we read them. So, we have to follow them. But, in long and short, is that there's no judge. There's no jury overseeing your case. You've got to follow certain steps. You still got to work with an attorney. You got to answer your discovery documents. You've got to produce your medical records, your background, your work information. You have to sit for the quasi deposition. They call it a recorded statement, talking about the accident, your injuries, your damages, everything you claim you've lost, why you're seeking compensation. Gerald Beckerman: Your doctors have to give supporting documentation and depositions to support your injuries. Your employer must support your lost wages. I mean, all the same steps we would take in the jury trial, except there's no jury. There's a three panel arbitrator, typically, that makes decisions, weighs all the evidence, and then gives you an award. They move a little bit slower. There's no jury trial mechanism, unfortunately. So the uninsured, under-insured cases sometimes take a little bit longer, but the results, I mean, usually your insurance company is going to pay you a fair value on a case that's legitimate, that you've sustained legitimate injuries. Cause you pay for this coverage, right? It's an insurance policy you bought for yourself. You've paid the money to this, to Allstate, or State Farm, or Zurich to give you this coverage, and ultimately these cases result in favorable outcomes. And all you have to do really to get this process going, contact an attorney and notify, and we notify them of our intent to proceed to arbitration under your uninsured or under-insured policy. The ball gets rolling and it's as simple as that. Jonathan Rosenfeld: No, these are important things that hopefully people won't have to deal with, but it's nice to know that there are seasoned attorneys out there who can really help people navigate through a potentially really difficult time and uncertain time. So, I want to thank you today for joining me, and this is great information and thank you. Gerald Beckerman: Of course. Thank you, John. Happy to help.

  In this episode Jonathan Rosenfeld chats with Gerald Bekkerman an Attorney at Taxman, Pollock, Murray, & Bekkerman, LLC. Here, they give statistics on car accidents in Illinois including injuries and fatalities. They also go over the 5 crucial steps to take after a car accident: What to Do After a Car Accident? 1) Check yourself for injuries. 2) Contact law enforcement. 3) Gather information about the incident. Take photos of the cars, intersection, etc. 4) Get medical attention. 5) Consult with an attorney.   For more information visit https://www.rosenfeldinjurylawyers.com   Read the Transcript Download the PDF Jonathan Rosenfeld: Hi everybody. I am Jonathan Rosenfeld. And today I am joined by my colleague and good friend, Gerald Bekkerman, who is a partner at Taxman, Pollock, Murray & Bekkerman, in Chicago, Illinois. And one of the things that I've always respected about Jerry is that he is a really a lawyer's lawyer if you will. I've known Jerry for over 10 years, and I've watched him develop as a lawyer, as a person, and really people, others have really started to grab onto what I sort of recognized early on, that he's really committed to his cases. He really is dedicated to his clients, people, other attorneys really respect him and enjoy his company, and these have not gone unnoticed by the legal world. Jerry is also... I'm not going to embarrass him too much, but Jerry has won numerous awards in the legal community recently, and over the past few years. Jonathan Rosenfeld: He is a 2018 Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, 40 under 40 very prestigious award, he is an Illinois super lawyer, a National Trial lawyers 40 under 40, top 40 in the country, he is a Illinois emerging lawyer for several years, and he's also a lifetime member of the million dollar advocates forum, and multi-million dollar advocates forum. Today, I am going to talk with Jerry and get his input about the steps to take after a car accident. And before we get into that, of all the different types of personal injury cases out there, every single person, I'm sure who's listening to this, can relate to being involved in a car accident, some type of motor vehicle accident, whether they are directly involved or they have a friend or family member involved, this is something that really impacts everyone. Before we started doing this, I just started looking around a little bit. And one of the shocking statistics that I saw was that in the state of Illinois, where we're located right now, there were almost 320,000 motor vehicle accidents last year. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And of those 300,000 plus accidents, there were 94,164 people who were injured, and 11,345 of those people sustained significant injuries which required extended hospitalization, or medical care. Over 1,000 people lost their lives, in motor vehicle accidents in Illinois last year. So this is an extremely pervasive problem that we have. And it is something that really everyone needs to be aware of. So, Jerry, I really appreciate you joining me today, and really looking forward to talking with you. I guess from the beginning, an ounce of prevention goes a long way. And I think a lot of times that people are aware of the things that they can or should be doing, after a car accident that can really go a long way towards helping them from a physical perspective, as well as helping them from a legal perspective, if they need to pursue a claim. So, first off, thank you for joining us. Gerald Bekkerman: Of course, John, thank you. And didn't embarrass me too much, I appreciate the kudos. Obviously we've known each other a long, long time and mutually respect what we've accomplished in the legal community, and I think podcasts like these are a great way to educate people on some of the missteps that I've seen, my 12 years of practice and what we see on a daily basis, almost in this firm. Auto accidents are the bread and butter of law firms. Even as large ones like us, we have 20 attorneys. We practice, everything from medical malpractice, civil rights work injuries, but the crux of the practice 80% of it is car accidents. Most of our clients come into our office as a result of injuries sustained in car accidents. Gerald Bekkerman: And as part of working with those clients over the years, we've picked up and some of the mistakes, some of the nuances in these cases, and unfortunately there's mistakes that are made and just steps that people aren't aware of. Maybe because they're just not educated enough. They've not experienced a car accident. They're shocked, they're surprised they're afraid. And they don't take certain steps that unfortunately wind up hurting them in the ultimate process of working with an attorney like myself, or here at our firm. So the main steps, the main things that people need to do, we can kind of go through them. Gerald Bekkerman: The five things that we always recommend somebody does when they get in a car accident, whether it's their first or their third, and they don't know what to do, are the following. First five are, so you check yourself for injuries. Are you hurt? Are you just in shock? Obviously, you can tell if you have a broken bone, you are going to be in excruciating pain, but are you unable to move your neck? Are you stiff? Did you feel something in your knee twist when you were putting your foot on the brake, did the seatbelt, give you scars and burns, and did the airbag go off and injure your face? There's a lot of elements involved pending on the severity of the crash. So first thing is check yourself for instance am I hurt? The second thing of course, and this one is commonplace. People do know that contact police, right? So get your cell phone. You know you have one in the car, OnStar or things like that with some vehicles. Get police, get law enforcement at the scene. Sometimes it might take a while. Gerald Bekkerman: The city of Chicago police officers could come quickly at some areas and other locations, maybe more rural places it takes the Sheriff's office a while to get there, be patient. Make sure the police arrive at the scene. You might be running late to pick up your kids from soccer, or to an appointment, but having the police come is really, really crucial to build your evidence in a case. [inaudible 00:07:14] police report and we'll go through these in more detail is very critical. So make sure, check yourself for injuries, contact law enforcement, and then take some basic evidence gathering steps that are so crucial to attorneys like us. Take [inaudible 00:07:29] of the vehicle, maybe take a photo of the intersection, maybe call somebody, give a statement to somebody, check in, all right. Obviously the police wait for them and give them all the actual information on what happened. Hey- Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now Jerry, If I can stop you for a second. Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think one of the things that every single person, as far as I'm aware of today, walks around with... they basically have them glued to their hand is their cell phone. And a lot of times people, after an accident, they may not be thinking clearly, they are clearly shaken up, but certainly, in today's world where every cell phone has a camera on it, documenting that the damage to the vehicles, documenting the area of the accident, is that something that you would suggest that people do? Gerald Bekkerman: Very, very critical, it helps us. When you call and speak with an attorney, which is the fifth step we're going to get into, get your medical attention for your injuries, contact a lawyer. But when you contact us the three questions I'm going to ask you are, were you injured? Is there a police report? And do you have any photos of your car, the other car, your injuries, and the scene of the occurrence, right? And that's really where it's really critical for us as lawyers, because that makes us figure out what we need to do and how quickly we need to move. What's good evidence. If you are claiming that you can't move your neck and your shoulder because of this really huge rear end and by a pickup truck, it would be great to have a picture to show that, that really happened as opposed to, I don't know, we don't have any photos. Gerald Bekkerman: In that a month or two later, the insurance claim gets open and we get a photo of the back of your car, and there's not even a scratch on it. We're going to be like, "Well, I don't understand, I thought you said this was a huge... you got to hit a 50 miles per hour by this pickup truck, and where's damage?" And that doesn't mean you don't have a case or you weren't injured, but there'll just be a thing that we would look at with not suspicion, but with just curiosity and obviously the insurance company, defense lawyers, things like that would look at the intersection, the scene of the occurrence, the other vehicle, maybe your car doesn't have a lot of damage to it, because you have a nice big American built tank, you got rear-ended by a [inaudible 00:10:05] that folded like an accordion. Gerald Bekkerman: Well, that's good evidence for us that this was a large impact, that there was some trauma that could have resulted from significant forces. The intersection, when you said you had a green light, or you said that there was a construction zone, so you slowed down for the construction zone as you're required to do under the law, but you're claiming that the person that hit you didn't slow down. Well just take a couple of pictures. You have your phone in your hand, we're all glued to them. Show me a construction barrier, show me a work zone. It's really, really helpful because that work zone might be gone the next day, and so we're going to have to take a lot more steps to prove that there was construction going on in that day, and that was a cause of why somebody was negligent in how they were driving. So yeah, pictures, evidence, very important. Jonathan Rosenfeld: So after this accident, the police are there. The police are documenting everything, which is important for preserving the evidence and preserving the scene of the accident and how this incident occurred, and the photographs are taken. What is really... what should someone be thinking after that? Let's say that maybe their back or their neck, is giving them some problems after an accident, which is very common. Sometimes, people are in shock after an accident and they're just not thinking clearly, but at some point, a lot of times these are delayed onset conditions. At some point, would you suggest that someone get checked out by a doctor? Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah, absolutely. So most of the time when you call the police, you're also going to get an ambulance if you're in a car accident. So a lot of municipalities here in Chicago and all over, they're going to offer you an ambulance. And to offer, to take you to the hospital. A lot of times you actually have to refuse the ambulance ride. Now we always tell people, don't refuse if you're legitimately injured, go to the hospital because the shock is stimulants that could be making... effect your judgment, but I mean if you're hurt, and an ambulance comes and you're involved in a big accident, and you're feeling pain, you should probably go to the hospital, take the EMS. Gerald Bekkerman: Now, if you can't, you're concerned, because you have a child in the car that's not injured, or you're concerned about what happened to your car, tow truck's not there, or any other circumstance, do what you have to do at the scene, finish up with the police, finish up with the tow driver, or maybe drive the car home if it's salvageable and then get immediate attention that night go to an urgent care, maybe the next morning at the latest. There's so many urgent care facilities. Now, even in our, we have a new boom and private medicine in this country. There's so many different clinics. Obviously you got your classic emergency rooms, but go get medical care. One of the biggest issues we see that hinders our ability to recover the most amount of money for clients, is a delay in medical treatment. So, I'd call it the classic tough guy syndrome, although it applies to soccer moms as well. "I'll be fine. I can't lift my shoulder up and my God, I got tingling coming down in my feet from my back, but I'll be all right." Gerald Bekkerman: You wait a day, you wait a second day. "You know what? I'll call my primary care doctor. Oh, they won't give me until next Friday." Now we have a 10 day, we call gap in treatment. And you may well have great intentions, and try to hold off, and try to not go see a doctor, but in the insurance world, you're going to be flagged as someone that probably isn't hurt. And they're going to argue to a jury, a judge, or devalue your case, even if it's legitimate and say, "Well, wait a minute, no reasonable person would wait 10 days to go seek medical attention, if they claim they have a torn rotator cuff or herniated disc or any of these medical issues." So, sooner you can get medical attention, given your circumstances, the better. It's very, very important, it's one of the main, I call them case killers, an otherwise great case or an otherwise compensable claim, that's going to either be dragged out for years by defense, or undervalued, or rejected outright. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Now, if there are... you've seen hundreds and hundreds of car accident cases where various types of injuries and everything, but, if you had two different people, one person, goes to the hospital after the accident, the other person goes home, sits the couch, he's clearly in pain, they'd take some over the counter pain medication, they take it easy, maybe they take some time off from work, you're going to see potentially drastically different results, based on not even necessarily what the injury is, but the type of medical care that they received following the injury, the accident. And I guess as someone who's seen that, over and over and over again, would you agree that it's just really important that you not only get medical care initially, but that you actually follow through with the prescribed care, whether it's physical therapy, whether it's getting a medication, whether it's taking time off from work, can you talk a little bit about how those factors play into the eventual outcome of a case in terms of settlement or trial [inaudible 00:15:56]? Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, having tried dozens of cases, I've seen the arguments actually made by lawyers for insurance companies to jurors, and those arguments appeal to the common sense of 12 people in a jury box. Well, if they were so injured as they claim, two years ago, they should have gone to the emergency room and they didn't go for five days or alternatively, well, they went to the emergency room and they said that they were hurt, and then they were told to follow up with a pain management physician, or an orthopedic surgeon for the shoulder, and they never went for two months. Those are again, it's a continuation of that gap in treatment kind of argument. Gerald Bekkerman: And it makes sense. It resonates because there's a person sitting in a jury that's going to relate to your common sense because you're going to say, well, wait a minute. If I had a torn shoulder, or a herniated disc, and now I have to have surgery, or my knee was torn, I wouldn't for sure go to an orthopedic doctor if that's what they told me to do, or I would for sure go to physical therapy as the told me to do. And it makes you as the injured victim in a case seem almost less credible, if that makes sense. So, it's clearly really critical after you seek your first care, whether it be ER, urgent care or your primary the next day, and those are referral made you follow the steps. Gerald Bekkerman: And physical therapy, [inaudible 00:17:16] conservative care if you will. Four to six weeks and that's what's recommended, you go. If you improve great, if you don't, they usually recommend you see a specialist either for spine, orthopedic sports injuries, or pain management, go to those appointments. Ultimately they may say, well, we need more imaging of your spine, or your shoulder, or your knee, or your ankle, go get that MRI. If you don't take the steps that are recommended, obviously it's adverse to your health A, and B, it's going to come back to bite you, because a common sense argument can be made that well, if they're hurt, why aren't they following doctor's orders? Jonathan Rosenfeld: That makes sense. I've seen personally firsthand, people, a lot of times, especially when they're doing physical therapy, they may feel some initial benefit, they may feel some initial pain relief, then they say, "All right, hey, I've been to two weeks of physical therapy, I've gotten some improvement, I've gotten some massage, I'm starting to feel better." And they decide, "Hey, all right, I'm done." And they decide to basically take a pause, and move on, and then life essentially gets in the way, and then a month or two months later, they really realize that they either plateaued out or actually regressed in terms of their healing. Jonathan Rosenfeld: And I've really seen that destroy a case in terms of a settlement for them, because they really do have a legitimate injury. And that's an unfortunate thing. So I really agree with you that, really seeing things through, is really the key in a case like this, because as a trial lawyer, you're basically limited to the evidence that you have. And you can be the best lawyer in the world, but if someone is not following doctor's orders, they're not doing the things that they need to do, there's only so much that you can do as a lawyer to really help improve the value of their case and position it for a good outcome. So- Gerald Bekkerman: We got to come up with excuses for you then. You're going to have to explain that you didn't have babysitting and you had too many errands or work would let you go. I mean, there's obviously common sense answers to the criticisms, but you're just creating more work, creating less credibility in your case and adversely potentially affecting your health. So, follow doctor's orders. Jonathan Rosenfeld: All right. That's good. Well, I mean, maybe my kids can contact you if they lose their homework or something, they'll get the Jerry Bekkerman, excuse- Gerald Bekkerman: Absolutely. We got all the excuses. Yeah, medical attention is really key. And the fifth thing in our five step process here, is consult with an attorney. That's kind of the last thing after you've done all these steps, I think we've covered it really well. The only other thing I think we didn't address besides collecting evidence with the phone, when the police come, do your best to find a witness. Do your best to give the police evidence. The officers that do traffic reports are typically, you're very level, entry level, new guys on the scene, the traffic cops, they do hundreds of these, and a lot of times they just don't, not all, sometimes when they're busy, they don't create very factually thorough reports, okay? Gerald Bekkerman: And you could have been in a bad accident where it's a green light, red light issue, and you got three people that were at the scene there, and they're going to be like, we'd love to give you our name and number, and you're going to assume the police took their info but a lot of times they're not going to. So, you know somebody that witnessed it, get a name, get a number, a witness to your case is big. Tell the police, this guy Joe over here gave me his name. He saw everything that happened. That's a non-interested party. That's also helpful. So that's the only thing I would add about the information gathering phase, with addition to the photographs, grab a witness if there is one on the scene, and tell the cops very good and thorough story. Jonathan Rosenfeld: I think that's excellent, excellent advice. In terms of contacting an attorney, and again, it sounds a little bit, self-serving obviously, two lawyers talking about contacting an attorney, but the truth is that getting some input from an attorney who has experience with the particular type of case, can go a long way, in terms of positioning your case for a better result down the road. Someone who waits over year after an accident, there's only so much that you can do at that point, in terms of giving advice or suggestions for them. So I would just add, sure if you would agree, but to basically reach out to an attorney before you're in a situation where, "Hey, I got to get the case settled, I'm sort of up against a Statute of Limitations deadline." And contact that attorney early on. So you can get some input, so to help position your case for a better result down the road. Gerald Bekkerman: Yeah. Earlier the better. I mean most states have two year Statute of Limitations, the state Illinois does, but Tennessee is one year. So a lot of people just don't know that some states have a one year statute, some have three, some have four, most have two, but even the Statute of Limitation, and that means that's your limit for filing a claim to get compensation. Even without that, the earlier you contact a lawyer is better because we're going to be able to make sure that these holes, that the fence pokes in your case don't exist. Gerald Bekkerman: So if you're not getting medical attention, the lawyers are going to remind you, "Hey, why aren't you going to see the neurologist that you were told to follow up with for your brain injury? Why aren't you seeing the orthopedic sports doctor for the knee that you can't walk on? Why aren't you going to therapy like you were recommended? Hey, help me out. You said, there's a witness on the scene. You said his name was Joe, and he lived in the neighborhood, what did he look like? We'll send an investigator to go him and make sure we get a recorded statement." Little things like that, that are so vital in the first couple of days, and weeks or even weeks at the latest after an accident are crucial, to making sure that the case is a sound as possible, for a potential trial or resolution, a year or two away. But any of those little gaps or mistakes, sometimes we can't catch up, if you call us a year later and tell us about your accident, and unfortunately you've lost out on an opportunity to get a compensable case. Jonathan Rosenfeld: Jerry, I appreciate your input, and your time, and I really think this was good dialogue and really hopefully helpful information for people who may have been involved in an accident recently, or may have a friend or family member who, who was. So, thank you and I appreciate it.  

In this episode, Jarrett Thomas hosts Gaetano Nino DiNardi, Director of Growth Marketing at Nextiva, & Jonathan Rosenfeld, Senior Demand Generation Manager at Twilio Inc. to discuss the topic "The Importance of Creativity in Marketing."