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The Effective Lawyer teaches ambitious trial lawyers how to grow their skills and create a prosperous law firm. Using lessons learned by accomplished attorneys from around the country, we discuss lessons learned through their trials and tribulations. Our discussions cover a vast range of topics sought out by attorneys looking for advice, from depositions to how to market your law firm.
The show is hosted by Jack Zinda, Founder and Senior Trial Lawyer at Zinda Law Group. In less than 15 years, Jack and his team have grown Zinda Law Group from 3 attorneys to over 30, spanning several states and handling a variety of personal injury cases from gas explosions to truck accidents.
Jack and his guests share their knowledge and skills that they’ve acquired through the process of building one of the most successful plaintiff’s law firms in the country.
In each show we cover a new topic that an ambitious attorney would want to better understand, while providing practical skills to improve their legal practice.
For more information, visit https://www.zdfirm.com/the-effective-lawyer
00:00
Speaker 1
Welcome to the Effective Lawyer, a podcast for ambitious attorneys who want to improve their practice. My name is Jack Zenda and I'll be your host.
00:23
Speaker 2
Hello, I am Seth Alcoser, the VP of marketing at Zenda Law Group. Today on the Effective Lawyer, we have the Effective Lawyer himself, Jack Zinda. He is the founding partner, CEO and elite trial attorney for us at Zenda Law Group. Jack focuses his practice on 18 wheeler accidents, catastrophic injury accidents, and also any accident involving potentially a traumatic brain injury, TBI and other complex litigation. Jack has been recognized by, and I'm going to read this so that I get this correct, the National Trial Lawyers association, the highest designation from online law directory AVO Corporation, Super Lawyers, a publication of Thompson Reuters Corporation, and is a lifetime member of the multimillion Dollar Advocates forum. Without further ado, here is Jack discussing today on the Effective Lawyer how to identify the source of recovery for your client.
01:24
Speaker 1
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Effective Lawyer. I'm your host, Jack Zinda, and today I'm going to be talking to you about identifying sources of recovery. We're going to talk about those large cases that you get where maybe there's not enough money or there's clearly not enough money to go around to make your client whole for what happened. It may be a situation where it's a wrongful death case or maybe someone was paralyzed or a burn case where it looks like there may not be very many assets or money from an insurance company. That can happen a lot of times in our cases involving trucking or gas explosion, those types of things. So first let's talk about the scenarios you want to be on the lookout for when you're trying to figure out do I have enough money to go around?
02:03
Speaker 1
Of course, if you have a case where there's a million dollar policy but only $10,000 in medical bills and your clients made a full recovery, you're not going to have to worry about that. We're talking about the cases where maybe you have a trucking case and your client was killed by a truck driver and they have two kids and a spouse. Say there's only a $750,000 policy, you think that could go to the family. And that clearly is nowhere near enough of what a recovery you'd get from a jury or to make your clients hold. So let's talk about how we identify all the different sources of recovery. And a lot of times in those cases you're going to want to move quickly on this because the longer you wait to identify it, the Longer your strategy is affected.
02:45
Speaker 1
For example, if there's only $100,000 insurance available, I can't spend 30, $40,000 of the client's money on case expenses. And if there's a million to 10 million available, I have a lot more resources that I can use in an investigation, an expert, things like that. So it's not only part of what you get at the end, but it also affects how you're going to strategize and how you're going to litigate your case. So the first thing you want to do is you can identify the source of recovery amount a lot of times based on what insurance carrier and type of case it is.
03:18
Speaker 1
So if I have a situation where there's a motor vehicle and I see a progressive or GEICO policy or one of the more advertising insurance companies, and maybe it's an older car, odds are it's going to be a lower policy. But you have to be careful, that may not actually be the case. You want to make sure you're looking at all of the parties that are involved in that vehicle. So the first tip I want to give you is when you look at a car wreck and maybe it's a catastrophic case and it's a regular policy, you want to look at everybody who's touched or been involved with that car. Okay, was there any point in time when it was involved in the course and scope? Maybe they were delivering a pizza, maybe they were working for Uber.
03:56
Speaker 1
So you want to check that box, verify that's not the case. Who owned the vehicle? Was the person driving the owner? And does that driver live in a household with someone else? We had a case one time where it was a 1985 Ford F150 all rusted, and our client was a pedestrian. They were hit and at first it looked like there was only a minimum policy, but they actually were the child of someone who worked for a very large private equity firm and they actually had a million dollar insurance policy that covered the vehicle. And unfortunately, a lot of attorneys would have just taken that minimum limits and not gone the extra mile to verify what that policy. So the first rule is make sure that you verify there are no other sources of recovery.
04:39
Speaker 1
Instead of assuming that's it, you want to have a checklist of all the things you're looking for to see that it's not there. So typically, course and scope of employment, that's one way. Who owns the vehicle? Uninsured motorists. So for your client, you want to look at their policy. Also look at the Policies of the people they lived with. Maybe they have a roommate, maybe they have a spouse, maybe they live at home part time with their parents. We had a case where our client was living part time at home and part time at college and were able to find an additional policy because their parents policy covered them in the state they were in. So if it's a multi state case, make sure you know the different rules of the policies of the different states where it's located.
05:21
Speaker 1
So that's one area you want to look at if you're involving a company or a commercial vehicle or something like that. Let's say it's a truck accident. You want to make sure that you look at who is the shipper broker in the case, they may have some accountability for what happened. You want to look at who owned the trailer, there might be an insurance policy there, of course, the driver and a few other resources as well.
05:48
Speaker 1
If you'd like a copy of any of the things you heard about here today, or to set up a time to talk about one of our team members about a case, please go to Zendalaw IO and we have amazing resources, downloads, guides and you can set up a time to talk to us if you want to talk about how we handle things or any case in particular. So let's say you've identified there are potential other source recovery or you're not sure how do you still collect that money to verify that your client's not going to be left out in the cold. You don't find out six months later there was a bigger policy, well, you can ask for what's called an affidavit of no other insurance that would come into play.
06:30
Speaker 1
Let's say it's a car wreck case and it appears that the defendant had no other insurance and it doesn't make a lot of sense to litigate it because it's just going to be using the client's resources. You can do an asset background check on the individual, see if it makes sense that he wouldn't have a larger policy. If I see a 2024 Tesla Model X, the Plaid edition and they have a minimum, odds are that's not the policy that's covering it. You can also look and see where do they live, what's the value of their home to get a sense of how much insurance they may or may not have.
07:02
Speaker 1
If you're dealing with a situation where homeowners insurance may or may not be part of the coverage, such as a dog bite, you can look at the deed of trust the mortgage records to see who the mortgage holders are. And if they have a bank as a mortgage holder, odds are they're going to have a homeowner's insurance policy there. And I've contacted the banks directly and got any insurance policies from them in different cases. So tip number two, look in the deed of records as well as the bank that has a mortgage on the house. Now, you don't want to take the affidavit of no other insurance for granted, but it just gives you one more leverage point to prove that they did not have insurance. So if it's a larger case almost every time, you're going to want to get into litigation.
07:42
Speaker 1
If there's a big source recovery, let's say it's a trucking case and there's only a 750 available. 750,000, which is the minimum for interstate trucking commerce. You're almost always going to have to file a lawsuit and you'll want to conduct written discoveries specifically asking about insurance policies. We recently resolved a case for about $30 million, and the defense found an additional $25 million insurance about three months from trial. And that's not uncommon where they try to hide the ball in those different types of cases. So you want to make sure you ask the question, get the objections removed, and verify that's all of the insurance available. You can also do a depositional written question or subpoena the records from the insurance company that may have the policy. You can also take the corporate rep deposition of the company you're suing.
08:28
Speaker 1
And you want to have an outline of all the different types of questions you would ask to cover respondents here. Did someone else. Were they entrusted with the vehicle? Did someone else have a copy of the policy? And again, with the companies as well, you may want to get an asset background check. If it's a catastrophic wreck, I would ask for the P and L of the company before you give them a release. We had a case recently where went to trial, and it's the first time we've had a jury trial against a defendant that did not have insurance. It was a company, it was a gas explosion case. And it turned out the company was making several million dollars a year, but for some reason didn't have a liability policy.
09:02
Speaker 1
And once we got discovery on their assets, were able to attest, yeah, we should actually bring this case. It was a pretty bad behavior by this company where it was causing a lot of injuries to people across the country. And they kind of thought they had a free ride because they didn't have insurance and sure enough we got a verdict and we got paid on it because they didn't want to go bankrupt and go out of business. So you don't always want to give up on the case. Just if there's no insurance there, that's probably 99% of the time. But you always want to go that extra mile if it's a company to get a P and L of it and also talk to anybody who is connected to the truck and things like that.
09:32
Speaker 1
So to recap, some of the things you want to think about are 1. An asset background check affidavit of no other insurance. You want to make sure you do written discovery that covers what policies may be available. Take a deposition of a corporate rep if you need to, but always make a checklist and you want to keep that in your hands and together so you've got it ready to go in any cases you're working on. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. You can always email me at jack@zindalaw.com or give us a call. Always free to share tips. We have checklists for all these things, processes, systems and love to talk to other trawlers. Till next time. Thanks. Thanks for listening today's episode of the Effective Lawyer.
10:14
Speaker 1
You can learn more about our team and find other episodes of our podcast at zindalaw.com as always, we'd appreciate that you subscribe, rate and review the pod. Thanks.