The End of the PI World

It appears that I picked a fine time to get out of the PI business in Florida. Last week a bill made it through committee, which will likely become a law: the essential end of bad faith law.

Bad faith is the hammer used by PI firms to get cases settled. Basically, an insurance company with a set policy limit knows that if it miscalculates and fails to settle (and therefore buy peace for the person or company with the policy), it can be taken to task later in the form of damages exponentially higher than its policy limits.

Once that fear is gone, there will NEVER be a policy that will be paid to a plaintiff, unless and until a judgment directs it. And, for PI lawyers, this is fatal. She me a PI lawyer who tries all his cases and settles few or none, and I'll show you a broke ass practitioner.

Years ago, we got a case where the aunt of a 4 year old placed her pretty little niece in the front seat of a car, right under the sign on the sun visor that said (in Enlish and Spanish): "Don't put your pretty little niece in the front seat, because in an accident the airbag will kill or paralyze her." Of course, the warning wasn't THAT specific, but it might as well have been.

Sure enough, Aunty Negligence drove through a light, crashed into another car, and, sure enough, lovely Ashley was Christopher Reeved. Tragic.

Aunty has a policy with limits of $10,000 --basically enough to pay for like 2 weeks of care for Ashley. Using big bad, bad faith law, I manipulated a settlement for the child of $2 million. Ashley died a few months later, and her mother got the remaining money. I don't know whether Mom still talks to Aunty Negligence...

Under coming law, Ashley would have gotten only the $10K. One can debate the ultimate fairness of either side, and like an ex smoker who becomes VERY anti -tobacco, as an ex PI lawyer I have a keener sense of the absurdity of what Plaintiffs' lawyers do, but in any event, the party is nearly over.

Dr. Barry has been unjustly and absurdly sued a few times over his career, the latest in a case where he, no kidding, saved a child's life, but in doing so cost the child a few toes. The good news for him is that immunity is coming for those who treat Medicaid patients --the majority of his flock.

Of course, as he points out, major Medicaid cuts are coming, so he won't get paid in the first place for treating those who can no longer sue him. Ah --life under Republican Florida legislators...

So I have to figure out something else to do. Wifey is putting out feelers to go back to work, too, and I'm thrilled. Both of us are too young to retire.

I'm getting a bit stir crazy --I'm even considering volunteering for a medical experiment, courtesy of my neuroscientist friend, in which they test my motor skills while applying a slight electrical charge (supposedly that I won't even feel). The research is supposed to help spinal cord injury patients, so I'd do it in Ashley's memory...

We'll see. But, PI work is dying, it appears, with or without me.