Legal Question in Personal Injury in Tennessee
personal injury mother & child
My sister and nephew were rear-ended by a drunk driver at about 45mph. They found out right away that she had a bulging disc at the C4-5 and C5-6 and that nephew and her cervical spines were reversed. She is self-employed and has paid medical expenses out of her pocket up to 9,000 her attorney will not help her get more med attention. She has been denied medical coverage to cover anything that has to do with the accident from med ins co. at 16wks pregnant she was forced to have emergency surgery to have an adhesion removed from her abdominal wall and found out a week before trial that her attorney decided without telling her that he had taken the claim out about the adhesion surgery.His reason was that he did not have the funds to hire a specialists to come to court. Now that he knows that my sister is upset he has decided to withdraw, but is asking for the fees he's put in thus far+35% of the last offer put on the table. Is this right in Tenn. Please Help not much time left.
2 Answers from Attorneys
Re: personal injury mother & child
If the attorney has filed suit for you (and probably even if he has not) the attorney has the right to assert an attorney's lien against the proceeds of the case and whoever agrees to assume representation will necessarily have to take the risk that the Court will agree with the withdrawing attorney and enforce his/her lien, which will then leave open the question of how the new attorney will get paid for his services.
This is not a problem that cannot be overcome and it is not something that should cause your family members a lot of stress. It is extraordinarily likely they will be able to find a good lawyer that will be willing to work out acceptable arrangements on the fee.
By the way, it is not certain that the former lawyer will get 35% of the last offer. That may be one way of valuing his service to your sister/nephew, but in TN there are cases on how to handle this and your family should not worry about this too much.
What is more troubling is that right now there may be deadlines passing and with the strained relationship between attorney and client, your sister either needs to take steps to make sure her current lawyer is moving forward or she needs to hire another attorney ASAP.
Please feel free to call me at 901.527.9600 if you would like our firm to consider taking over this case or if you would just like to speak about this further. Best of luck to you and your family. Thank you.
Re: personal injury mother & child
Unfortuanley, much delends on the retainer agreement entered into by client and attorney. Without looking at that document, i cannot provide a meaningful response.
Good luck.
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