Personal Injury Law

After the Metrolink Crash?

By Edward Bills

Lawyers swooped in after the Metrolink crash, looking for clients and California State bar officials cite possible professional sanctions, but the aggressive attorneys note that time is limited and the stakes are expected to be very high.

Many relatives of victims, whose names sounded familiar to lawyers who’d spotted a name among those badly injured in the Sept. 12 Metrolink crash in Chatsworth quickly received calls from attorney’s they had never met; urging them to retain the lawyer to sue the government railroad for all it was worth.

In the weeks since Metrolink Train 111 crashed head-on with a Union Pacific freight train in Chatsworth, killing 25 and injuring at least 130 others, litigators have pursued clients so aggressively that the State Bar of California reminded lawyers of the professional sanctions they could face for initiating contact with accident victims.

Any unsolicited contact with a potential client either in person or by telephone (and perhaps even by mail) by an attorney or someone acting on his or her behalf is both illegal and unethical and it is especially serious when the contact or solicitation takes place at the scene of the accident or at the hospital where the injured person has been taken for care and treatment.

Some attorneys took out newspaper and purchased TV time to solicit or even track down the injured at hospitals, all seeking a piece of what is likely to be hundreds of millions of dollars in damage awards for the victims and their loved ones.

The state bar rightly cautioned potential claimants against agreeing to unsolicited representation or quick settlements, noting that the injured and distressed are often unable to exercise reasonable judgment in the immediate aftermath of a tragedy.

The stakes are high for both the families and the attorneys hoping to represent them. The damage claims are expected to exceed the $200-million statutory cap on liability from any single accident and that cap has never been challenged in court.

Being the first lawyer to publicly announce representation can be an advantage in drawing the attention of other potential plaintiffs who aren’t sure how to proceed and have little if any experience in retaining a lawyer.

Some in the legal community, including myself, are critical of the speed at which some firms acted.

I don’t chase, and most good lawyers don’t chase, business. The scramble by some to get business cards into the hands and firm names into the minds of those likely to sue for damages is, sadly, often the rule rather than the exception.

Some litigators, especially those with experience in suing railroads, might argue that lawyers must be proactive because few clients are aware of California’s six-month deadline for filing legal action over an accident. Even among litigants who filed suit on time after the 2005 Glendale Metrolink crash, dozens saw their cases dropped because lawyers didn’t fill out all the forms or jump through the hoops and hurdles correctly.

One of the methods used is to convene a meeting to advise potential claimants on how to proceed. Such meetings, considered a little different from contacting victims, and are called ‘educational.’

Legal referral specialists recommend that crash victims and their relatives find lawyers the way they would find doctors or dentists: by word of mouth or recommendation from a trusted friend or associate.

Full post as published by Bodily Injury Blog on October 05, 2008 (boomark / email).