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In seventeen years I have never had to resort to a third party lawsuit funding group to complete a case. Personally I think these programs are a bad deal for plaintiffs and that clients and lawyers should avoid them. I have had a case or two where a client, against my strong advice otherwise, has gotten a cash advance on their case. Why do I think this is a bad idea? Because, it is a terrible interest rate, it ties up the closing of your case, and spends assets that should ultimately go to the client.

These services all essentially work the same. You are getting a loan, and your case is the collateral. The loan has a price tag in the form of a lien on the case that must be paid back before any money goes to the client. The companies rarely give a loan that is equal to any real value of the case, because they are not going to jeopardize their ability to recover. The structures vary from group to group, but they all expect to get more than the amount they give you up front.

When your case resolves your attorney must try to pay off all the medical bills, case expenses and attorneys fees, as well as the lien from your cash advance before the lawyer can give you any money. The problem is that the client usually wants more than is left over at that point. The client suffered the injury and the pain. The client feels like everyone is making money of the client’s pain, and that the client is getting nothing. It doesn’t matter to a client if they got a loan months or years ago, that money no longer exists in their mind. There is money from their case being parted out, and the client wants to be sure they got most of it. I don’t blame them. But the lien’s interest is in the accounting, messing up the final recovery to the client.

The problem only gets worse if the case hasn’t gone as hoped. Too often a fact comes up that nobody could foresee that changes a case’s expected outcome. The loan company isn’t going to care that your case went badly. If there was money paid on the case, the lender will want their contracted fee back.

You would avoid risky loans on your house, your car or anything else, avoid them on your case as well.

I get lots of calls from people who are trying to settle their own accident claims. Usually they call near the end of their negotiations with the insurance company. They are unhappy, frustrated and looking for advice as to how to wrap it up. At some point they all say something like, "I'm supposed to get three times my medical bills, right?"

When I started practicing personal injury law in 1991, you could still get a three times settlement with regularity. But, several waves of tort reform, the adoption of the Colossus adjusting program, the requirement of HICFA forms, and some just plain anti-lawyer and anti-lawsuit propaganda, later those days are gone.

I haven't looked at the statistics recently, but the last time I checked the average soft-tissue, non-DWI involved accident case was resolving for quite a bit under three times medical bills while in litigation. The odds are still rather high against petitioners at trial too. The last time I checked the "Blue Sheets" (a published list of all litigation settlements and judgments in Texas) some 63% of the people filing suits were getting zero to something less than their total claimed medical bills at trial.

I take these statistics with a grain of salt. I know that 90% or so of the claims made in Texas resolve without the filing of a lawsuit. The ones that get filed are usually ones where there is a problem with the facts of how the accident happened, a problem with the claimed injuries, the treatment or some other issue. If the problem cases are the ones most often filed, they are not a good statistical model of the non-problem cases being settled out of court. However, the insurance companies look at these statistics too. They know that the odds of trial are not good, and they have artificially inflated egos because of it. Unfortunately they take these statistics as a model of what should happen pre-trial.

What is the amount you can expect from a soft-tissue accident case? Everyone asks, and they get mad when I tell them there is no way to tell. Now, more than ever, each case is an individual matter. The facts of the accident, the amount of property damage, your age, your prior injuries, general health, mental health, living circumstances, job, treatment history, choice of doctors, use or non-use of health insurance can all affect the outcome. I can only guess where a case is going if I have been working it all the way through and we are several moves into the negotiations process. Sure, there is an average in there somewhere. Much like buying peaches, for example, if you weigh every one there is an average weight, but the best ones have that certain firmness, color, smell and ripeness that make a good peach. You have to look at each peach individually. The same is true with car wreck cases.

I wish I could just tell you what your case was worth and that you could just reach out and grab it. I can't.

What irks me more than that though is that often these callers have backed their case into a corner. With the adjuster entrenched in a position, hiring a lawyer that late in the game may not change anything. Often the caller has negotiated away all their bargaining room, and if they hire a lawyer there isn't much left for the lawyer to do except file suit. It is akin to them having tried to work out a deal with "the mob" in a movie, and now that everything is going wrong they are finally looking for help. Unlike the movies though, I can't put on a bullet proof vest and wade into battle with a pistol that never seems to run out of ammo.

If you came to this article because you have a case heading into negotiations, and you wanted to confirm what your case was worth, I'm sorry you aren't finding the answer you want. But, I encourage you to call for help before you get in so deep that only a movie hero could save you. If you are deep in negotiations and lost as to what to do, call a lawyer anyway. Maybe there is something you missed and the lawyer can still rescue you, even if he or she doesn't need a bullet proof vest to do it.