Greetings,

I have been asked by several clients in the last week or so to summarize the trends I am seeing in litigation, so I will share with all.  

Basically, from the claimant’s attorneys I am seeing two distinctly different styles of practice.   The Miles case, which came out the week before Castellanos, allows the claimant’s attorneys to take a greater percentage than the guideline fee scale out of a settlement.  So, a lot of attorneys are going that route, especially the ones with the higher volume practices.   They are still settling their claims as before, albeit the exposure is now greater, but not drastically.  For example, what had been a $5,000-6,000 case is now taking  $7,500-10,000 in some cases because of the exposure of litigation over the smaller issues such as AWW, payment of medical bills, etc…. 

In Central Florida, I would say 2/3rds to 3/4ths of my cases are being handled this way.  Still settling, but at a slightly higher cost (not always, but often enough that it is worth mentioning).

The remaining 1/3^rd  to 1/4^th of my cases are being handled more similar to the pre-2003 cases.   These are typically handled by the solo attorneys or the ones that tended to litigate their claims prior to the 2003 changes.   What I am seeing on these claims is they are not settling, they are  setting adjuster and employer rep depositions, and litigating the smaller issues to secure a fee.  

And when we are seeing settlement demands on these, they are claiming PTD exposure.   A concern I have is that PTD is now easier for a claimant to prove than it was pre-2003. (spoiler alert, next week’s tip will be on PTD and how to combat it)

So I don’t think we have yet seen the full impact on these heavily litigated cases yet, but there is significant exposure.  We are 8 months into the post-Castellanos world (April 28, 2016, 10:58 am). Claims rarely get cheaper when they stick around longer.

If you know your claimant’s attorneys, you can predict in most cases which bucket the claim will be heading for in the long run.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,
Morgan Indek | Partner