Legal Question in Personal Injury in Pennsylvania

Re: expences

Your contingent fee agreement with the lawayer will tell you whether the expenses get repaid to the lawyer before you split the money or from your share after you split the money. Both ways are permissible. The other guy's insurance never pays the expenses.

Re: expences

In some counties the defendant pays record costs and in other counties they don't. The insurance companies have been making an effort to refuse to pay record costs in all counties. Their release form may explicitly exclude payment of record costs in which case they won't pay them. What record costs include also varies from county to county. In some counties record costs include the costs of depositions and in some counties record costs only include filing fees and sheriff's costs.

As for the question about fees, the 80% determination has no bearing on the contingency fee. Most contingency fee agreements are written so that the percentage going to the attorney is from the gross recovery. So if the gross recovery is $100,000 and the contingency fee is 40%, the attorney recovers $40,000 and the client receives $60,000 from which any non-record costs (such as expert witness fees) are paid. Whether or not the insurance company pays record costs is not a big deal to most attorneys because those costs are generally less than $1,000 even with the costs of deposition transcripts but the costs of expert witnesses can be significant especially in medical malpractice cases.