4 of our Michigan personal injury attorneys named Best Lawyers in America

It’s a nice honor to announce that four of our partners at Michigan Auto Law have been named Best Lawyers in America. Last week, Super Lawyers listed nine of our attorneys as Michigan Super Lawyers in the personal injury category.

It’s especially pleasing because our firm does almost no marketing whatsoever. We have no billboards (anyone else amazed by how many there are these days?), bus ads, TV or Yellow Pages. Our entire marketing campaign is simply to try to have the very best car accident and truck accident verdicts and settlements in Michigan every year - and business will come.

Fortunately, with the top auto verdict in seven of the past 10 years in Michigan, and the top Michigan auto accident settlements every year, it has proved a sound strategy. And it keeps me off of billboards!

Now four of our Michigan personal injury attorneys were recently selected by their peers - other attorneys from across the country - for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America® 2012— in the personal injury litigation specialty.

Best Lawyers is based on an exhaustive peer-review survey of nearly 41,000 leading attorneys, who cast 3.9 million votes on the legal abilities of other lawyers. Those selected for Best Lawyers in America don’t pay a fee to be listed.

Our Best Lawyers include:

Lawrence Gursten: Larry is the founding partner of our law firm, and he has been one of the top car accident lawyers in the U.S. for more than 40 years.

Steven Gursten (me): I’ve been handling auto accident lawsuits for nearly two decades. I’m a Michigan Lawyers Weekly Lawyer of the Year, and a Leader in the Law for my work promoting truck safety. I’m also president of the  Motor Vehicle Trial Lawyers Association, and past-president of the American Association for Justice Truck Accident Litigation Group.

David Christensen – Dave is a partner of Michigan Auto Law, and President of the Negligence Law Section of the State Bar of Michigan (the organization of all personal injury attorneys in the state). Dave is known for for his expertise in brain injury lawsuits.

Robert Raitt: Bob is also a partner of Michigan Auto Law. He’s past-president of the Michigan Association for Justice – a victims’ rights organization comprised of more than 2,000 injury attorneys across the state. Bob is a tenacious trial lawyer who has multiple million-dollar verdicts and settlements.

Best Lawyers in America is considered the definitive guide to legal excellence in the United States. For more than 25 years, it has helped lawyers and clients find legal counsel in unfamiliar jurisdictions or specialties.

The lawyers listed in Best Lawyers in America don’t choose which practice areas they’re included in; they are voted into the practice areas from the votes they receive from their lawyer peers. Michigan Auto Law has been listed in the Personal Injury Litigation section this year and for the past several years.

Congratulations to our Michigan Auto Law Best Lawyers 2012.

- The Best Lawyers in America® 2012  is copyright 2011 by Woodward/White, Inc., of Aiken, S.C.

Related information:

What to do after a car accident in Michigan

Our clients and their stories

Michigan Auto Law in the news

Michigan Auto Law is the largest law firm exclusively handling car accident, truck accident and motorcycle accident cases throughout the entire state. Call (800) 777-0028 for a free consultation with one of our personal injury attorneys.

Michigan Auto Lawyers

Teaching voir dire for Michigan personal injury attorneys

Next week, I will be moderating and speaking to my fellow personal injury attorneys at a Michigan Association for Justice seminar. The topic is voir dire, or the questioning of prospective jurors.

Voir dire is conducted by lawyers and by a judge in court. It’s a process that’s used to determine if any juror is biased in a way that would tend to favor one side over another in a trial. Voir dire can be as simple as finding out if a juror already knows one of the parties or lawyers or it can be more complicated, like the insurance company executive who is asked to serve on a No-Fault insurance trial on overdue and owing insurance benefits.

In my opinion, voir dire is the most important part of trial.  It is far more important than the opening statement or closing argument. In this world today, with polarized opinions and strongly held views, if you cannot find six or eight people who can be fair to both sides equally, you’ve already failed your client.

For example, according to one study I read, as many as 25 percent of the population doesn’t believe that a person injured due to another person’s negligence should receive compensation for pain and suffering.  But in a car accident case, where medical bills and the first three years of wage loss are paid by a person’s own No-Fault insurance company, pain and suffering is the reason you are there in court.  If 25 percent of your jury doesn’t even believe the person should get this, despite what the court instructs (or for that matter the Constitution of the United States), you have a real problem.

Voir dire is where so many otherwise well-intentioned injury lawyers fail in court, because they never get a jury who can be fair to both sides.  It doesn’t matter if your case is just, or you present a stronger case in each phase of trial; if the people sitting on the jury are fundamentally predisposed before they hear any of the evidence to side against you, you are in big trouble.

And that makes this seminar so important for Michigan personal injury attorneys. If we can’t get a feel for the personalities and likely views of the people on the jury panel, than how can we properly protect our clients after they’ve been injured in auto accidents?

The topics of the seminar, which will be held in Redford, Michigan, as are follows:
•    What tools today can  assist you in jury selection?
•    Tips and strategies to de-select the anti-plaintiff juror
•    A helpful panel discussion with several well-respected Michigan  judges.

The Michigan Association for Justice (formerly the Michigan Trial Lawyers Association) is a state organization of more than 2,000 personal  injury attorneys who are dedicated to helping accident victims. Our lawyers are strong supporters of the Michigan Association for Justice, as past-presidents and current members of the MAJ Board.

I know this seminar will be a valuable resource to help our Michigan personal injury attorneys  protect their clients, and get fair results in car accident and truck accident cases.

Don’t forget to visit Facebook.com/MichiganAutoLaw this week to enter to win a $1,032 check as part of our distracted driving awareness campaign.

- Steve Gursten is one of the top personal injury attorneys in Michigan. He is head of Michigan Auto Law and has received the highest verdict or pain and suffering settlement in the state for a car accident or truck accident victim in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Michigan Lawyers Weekly. Steve is past chair of the Michigan Association for Justice executive board.

Related Information:

What’s the No. 1 thing attorneys can’t tell jurors in trial?

Tort “reform” - A failed experiment in legal-social engineering

Free book - Protecting your legal rights after an auto accident

Michigan Auto Law is the largest law firm exclusively handling car accident, truck accident and motorcycle accident cases throughout the entire state. Call (800) 777-0028 for a free consultation with one of our personal injury attorneys.

Michigan Auto Lawyers

What’s the No. 1 thing attorneys can’t tell the jury in car accident trials?

In my years trying car accident and truck accident injury cases, I’ve learned that there are many misconceptions that jurors have about our judicial system. Chief among these is that many people incorrectly believe they can file a lawsuit directly against the insurance company of the person who causes a car accident and injures them when they are unable to agree on a fair settlement.

But in Michigan, our law requires that the individual driver, NOT his or her auto insurance company, be named in any car accident lawsuit.

Why? The Michigan Rules of Evidence do not allow an accident attorney to tell the jury about insurance coverage. For this reason, you won’t hear any mention of insurance in almost all auto accident trials that involve personal injury.

The reality: It’s the insurance company that pays everything and makes all the decisions. The insurance company that you aren’t supposed to know about hires and pays the lawyer who is defending the lawsuit in court.  In fact, that lawyer is likely an insurance defense lawyer who works as house counsel for the insurance company involved.  The automobile insurance company — not the individual who causes the crash — will also pay any settlement or trial verdict if that auto accident case goes to a jury verdict.

This rule that lawyers cannot tell jurors about the existence of insurance causes unintended harms.  One example is insurance companies that use this rule (that was designed as a shield to make sure jurors treated insurance companies fairly), instead use it as a sword to unfairly reduce the amount they have to pay, see my blog: Dirtiest insurance company truck of all.

Also, despite the stereotypes - often created by PR and propaganda experts who work for insurance companies and that are behind much of the “tort reform” movement in America - I have found that almost no one really wants to go to trial. Often, it’s the insurance company that forces people to go to trial by refusing to accept responsibility or playing games, such as offering ridiculously low settlement offers and hoping people will collapse under the pressure and strain of trial and accept a low-ball settlement offer.

Read what Zurich Insurance did to a client of mine last year who had significant depression and a traumatic brain injury: Zurich Insurance forces case to trial.

So we have the situation where although the insurance company can never be named as a party to the lawsuit, that same insurance company is pulling all the strings and making all the decisions. This applies to any auto accident or truck injury case. Because of this law, sometimes there are absurd consequences — beyond deliberately misleading the jury that there is no auto insurance company involved.

For example, even if the policy holder who causes a car accident is a relative or close family friend of the person who is injured, that policy holder must still be named in the lawsuit to force their insurance company to pay the claim. The insurance company still defends the case and pays any verdict that is within the insurance policy limits.

But juries often are led to believe defense lawyers, who usually act as if the at-fault driver would be the one footing the bill for the verdict. This in turn misleads some juries to often award less pain and suffering compensation to the seriously injured auto accident victim for serious injuries.

Now you know about liability insurance and the law.

Next week, I’ll discuss how all of this ties in with the recent HBO documentary “Hot Coffee,” which covers what’s really behind “tort reform” and “frivolous” lawsuits.

- Steve Gursten is one of the nation’s top accident attorneys. He is head of Michigan Auto Law and has received the highest verdict or pain and suffering settlement in the state for a car accident or truck accident victim in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Michigan Lawyers Weekly.

Related Information:

FAQs - Filing an auto accident lawsuit in Michigan

17 mistakes that can ruin your car accident lawsuit

How a Michigan accident attorney can help you

Michigan Auto Law is the largest law firm exclusively handling car accident, truck accident and motorcycle accident cases throughout the entire state. We have offices in Farmington Hills, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Sterling Heights to better serve you. Call (800) 777-0028 for a free consultation with one of our accident attorneys.

Michigan Auto Lawyers

What’s the No. 1 thing attorneys can’t tell the jury in car accident trials?

In my years trying car accident and truck accident injury cases, I’ve learned that there are many misconceptions that jurors have about our judicial system. Chief among these is that many people incorrectly believe they can file a lawsuit directly against the insurance company of the person who causes a car accident and injures them when they are unable to agree on a fair settlement.

But in Michigan, our law requires that the individual driver, NOT his or her auto insurance company, be named in any car accident lawsuit.

Why? The Michigan Rules of Evidence do not allow an accident attorney to tell the jury about insurance coverage. For this reason, you won’t hear any mention of insurance in almost all auto accident trials that involve personal injury.

The reality: It’s the insurance company that pays everything and makes all the decisions. The insurance company that you aren’t supposed to know about hires and pays the lawyer who is defending the lawsuit in court.  In fact, that lawyer is likely an insurance defense lawyer who works as house counsel for the insurance company involved.  The automobile insurance company — not the individual who causes the crash — will also pay any settlement or trial verdict if that auto accident case goes to a jury verdict.

This rule that lawyers cannot tell jurors about the existence of insurance causes unintended harms.  One example is insurance companies that use this rule (that was designed as a shield to make sure jurors treated insurance companies fairly), instead use it as a sword to unfairly reduce the amount they have to pay, see my blog: Dirtiest insurance company truck of all.

Also, despite the stereotypes - often created by PR and propaganda experts who work for insurance companies and that are behind much of the “tort reform” movement in America - I have found that almost no one really wants to go to trial. Often, it’s the insurance company that forces people to go to trial by refusing to accept responsibility or playing games, such as offering ridiculously low settlement offers and hoping people will collapse under the pressure and strain of trial and accept a low-ball settlement offer.

Read what Zurich Insurance did to a client of mine last year who had significant depression and a traumatic brain injury: Zurich Insurance forces case to trial.

So we have the situation where although the insurance company can never be named as a party to the lawsuit, that same insurance company is pulling all the strings and making all the decisions. This applies to any auto accident or truck injury case. Because of this law, sometimes there are absurd consequences — beyond deliberately misleading the jury that there is no auto insurance company involved.

For example, even if the policy holder who causes a car accident is a relative or close family friend of the person who is injured, that policy holder must still be named in the lawsuit to force their insurance company to pay the claim. The insurance company still defends the case and pays any verdict that is within the insurance policy limits.

But juries often are led to believe defense lawyers, who usually act as if the at-fault driver would be the one footing the bill for the verdict. This in turn misleads some juries to often award less pain and suffering compensation to the seriously injured auto accident victim for serious injuries.

Now you know about liability insurance and the law.

Next week, I’ll discuss how all of this ties in with the recent HBO documentary “Hot Coffee,” which covers what’s really behind “tort reform” and “frivolous” lawsuits.

- Steve Gursten is one of the nation’s top accident attorneys. He is head of Michigan Auto Law and has received the highest verdict or pain and suffering settlement in the state for a car accident or truck accident victim in 2008, 2009 and 2010, according to Michigan Lawyers Weekly.

Related Information:

FAQs - Filing an auto accident lawsuit in Michigan

17 mistakes that can ruin your car accident lawsuit

How a Michigan accident attorney can help you

Michigan Auto Law is the largest law firm exclusively handling car accident, truck accident and motorcycle accident cases throughout the entire state. We have offices in Farmington Hills, Detroit, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids and Sterling Heights to better serve you. Call (800) 777-0028 for a free consultation with one of our accident attorneys.

Kansas City Auto Accident Blog

15-Passenger Van Accident Attorneys in San Diego

Home Posted On: March 2, 2011 by Ross Jurewitz

Churches, airports, clubs, schools and tours all use 15-passenger vans to transport groups of people around the city and to the airport. 15-passenger vans are commonly used in San Diego. However, some stunning statistics have been revealed about 15-passenger vans and people should not assume that they are safe. They are very accident prone, and especially susceptible to rollover accidents.

For this reason, the San Diego passenger van attorneys at the Jurewitz Law Group specialize in these types of accidents in order to warn others about the dangers of riding in passenger vans and we also provide current owners some tips to stay safe on the road. Please visit our law firm’s website at the link above, or call our office at 888-233-5020 for a free consultation and information.

Posted by Ross Jurewitz

View the Original article