Practice Areas
Experienced. Proven. Effective.
Mediation and Arbitration
Our decades-long experience with mediation and arbitration involving large and complex cases has made us a choice by other lawyers for help when they need to select an arbitrator or mediator. We are always happy to help in those capacities in complex or large cases that benefit from our expertise.
Consulting
Our extensive experience handling significant cases has also led many attorneys to hire us over the years to help them as co-counsel in some of their most challenging cases. We continue to work with other lawyers as co-counsel, as we have for over thirty years. Over the last ten or more years we have also served as consulting lawyers to other attorneys who want help with strategy or training issues but may not need actual co-counsel. We have done this on a case-by-case basis as well as for fixed periods of time and on an ongoing basis.
Expert Witness Training
Most recently we have started to work on finding and training excellent experts and will soon be launching ExpertsNC.
Insurance Claims
Most of our cases involve some type of insurance claim. These may be claims against personal or business auto policies in motor vehicle negligence claims, against homeowners’ policies for dog bites or premises liability claims, or against general liability policies or excess liability policies in third party claims.
Many of our cases involve uninsured or underinsured motorist provisions contained in personal or business auto policies. Arbitration can be elected as a remedy in these cases. We have extensive experience and success in UM/UIM arbitration cases. We were early adopters of alternative dispute resolution decades ago and have studied, used, and participated in mediation and arbitration extensively. Knowing how to effectively use the arbitration process and conduct arbitration hearings has helped us maximize our client’s recovery when the wrongdoer has no insurance or insufficient insurance coverage. We also have extensive experience finding additional insurance coverage and in handling bad faith claims, circumstances where an insurance company does not act in good faith when dealing with their own insured. We evaluate and consider both third- and first-party claims involving bad faith and unfair and deceptive practices, though we obviously have more experience with first party claims because the law is more favorable to those insureds. We also consider large life insurance claims that have been wrongfully denied.
Third Party Claims
If you are injured while doing your job and the injury is caused by someone other than your employer or co-worker, you may have a third-party claim. Commonly this happens in car wrecks (employee is driving when hit by another motorist), mishaps in the workplace (employee at usual workplace injured by outside contractors installing or repairing things), construction site injuries (where one contractor injures another, for example) but can involve a wide variety of circumstances. These claims give rise to several types of claims and insurance coverages that require investigation and coordination, such workers compensation, disability, commercial general liability, and excess liability policies. These cases can be challenging because establishing liability may involve complicated systems or machinery (cranes, loading or unloading machinery, factories, explosions, gas installations, piping and welding, elevators, power plants, trucking companies, hospitals, and supply chains) and many potential responsible entities. The investigation, analysis, and prosecution of these claims usually requires persistence, experience, and good expert witnesses. Knowing how to coordinate all the elements of these claims often makes a difference in maximizing the recovery for the injured person.
Personal injury cases
Bodily injury claims arise when one person is injured due to the carelessness of another, legally known as negligence. The focus of our practice is helping deserving people who have been badly injured because of someone else’s negligence. Many of our personal injury cases arise out of motor vehicle collisions (trucks, cars, motorcycles, ATVs, bicycles, and crashes involving pedestrians) or from premises liability (falls, fires, explosions, dog bites) where a landowner is negligent. Sometimes, the conduct is not just carelessness, but much worse, and involves drunken driving, pre-arranged racing, or reckless driving. In these circumstances, injury claims may lead to a recovery against other entities beside the driver, such as bars that unreasonably furnish alcohol or negligent employers who fail to reasonably train, hire, or supervise their employees. We also consider other negligence cases, such as the malicious keeping of animals, security breaches, medical negligence, products liability, advertising injuries, and other system failures.
UM/UIM
Most of our cases involve claims against an insurance company. We know insurance matters. Many of our cases involve uninsured or underinsured motorist (UM/UIM) coverage, provisions contained in personal or business auto policies. These insurance contracts provide additional coverage if the person responsible is not insured or has insufficient coverage to cover the loss. In these policies, arbitration may be available in lieu of trial to decide your case. This is something we literally wrote the book on. We have decades of experience and success in handling these claims. See our settlement and verdict results. We are also experienced at finding additional sources of insurance coverage and examining the conduct of insurance carriers to see if they are meeting their obligation to act in good faith.
CALL US
Please tell us about your case and we will let you know what we can do to help you.