As a compassionate and dedicated personal injury, medical negligence, and product liability lawyer, Erica Blume Slater provides...
Mary Simon is a devoted advocate of the injured, particularly those suffering from serious injuries related to...
Elizabeth Lenivy provides excellent, detailed representation in the areas of product liability, medical malpractice, and personal injury....
With a focus on personal injury cases, Amy Collignon Gunn is a caring, trial-tested lawyer serving clients...
Published: | January 15, 2025 |
Podcast: | Heels in the Courtroom |
Category: | Practice Management , Women in Law |
When, why and how should you make a pre-suit demand? Tune in for a realistic discussion on when they work, why sometimes they don’t, and tips on how to improve your chances of a positive outcome.
Special thanks to our sponsor Simon Law Firm.
Announcer:
Welcome to Heels in the Courtroom, a podcast about successfully navigating law and life featuring the women trial attorneys at the Simon Law Firm.
Erica Blume Slater:
Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of Heels in the Courtroom. This is Erica Slater, and today I’m joined by Mary Simon, Liz Lenivy and Amy Gunn. Hi ladies, how are you?
Amy Collignon Gunn:
Hello.
Erica Blume Slater:
Hello. So today we’re going to talk about pre-suit demands, and this is sharing out kind of what we have defined as one of our hard skills. Once in a while we take a break from our view style round table on any topic that is thrown at us and talk about real legal skills. And I’m going to go ahead and admit something to the group. Let’s hear it. I really enjoy arguing over $5,000 with an insurance claims adjuster once in a while. Same. Isn’t it fun. Love it. Fun love. And you know what? I will argue for that last $5,000 as if it is the difference of $5 million at a mediation in my biggest case of the year. And in my brain, there is no difference in how my body, mind, and soul is reacting to how much I am fighting for that client for that last little inch. And I’ll vouch for
Mary Simon:
That because I’ve seen the last email. Sometimes you’ll just send me the last email and say, I’m going to send this look. And I’m like, yep, go for it.
Erica Blume Slater:
And you know where that comes from at the end of a negotiation that could sometimes go on for quite some time. There will come a time, there will be an argument that will be, come on, it’s only $5,000 or better yet it’s only 500. And when I hear an insurance adjuster tell me that about my client’s claim, that is probably south of a hundred thousand dollars. If I’m arguing with a pre-suit insurance adjuster and they tell me that and I throw that argument back at them and say, well, that goes both ways. And then I remind them that they represent an extremely large, well-known insurance company that may have an emu as a mascot or a lizard. And I represent an individual with a family and utility bills, and that $500 buys groceries for, I don’t know, nowadays, probably a week. But that kind of thing brings me back to that innate advocacy that we fight tooth and nail to the end for our clients.
And it’s not the bread and butter of what we do. We don’t handle a bunch of smaller claims usually, but when I find myself in a situation where we’re making a pre-suit demand, it’s usually in a car accident claim that we, because of whatever reason, we can get it done quickly or efficiently before filing suit. And there’s a lot of efficient ways to do that. So I usually have a couple of these on my case list at a time. My paralegals are really wonderful and my law clerks are really wonderful at getting together the evidence and the content of a demand and helping put together the narrative and then letting me come in and finesse it and really working with knowing what an insurance adjuster is looking for to bring home this negotiation. So today with that intro today, we’re going to talk about some of the strategies that we use when writing demands some negotiation ideas, and also talk technically about some of the laws that exist in Missouri for one. And many states have similar demands, statutory demands that you can follow when making pre-suit demands in these types of cases. So Mary, tell me how when you’re in the situation where you’re going to make a pre-suit demand, how do you decide whether you’re going to make a time limited statutory demand based on our Missouri statute that allows us to do that or whether or not if
Mary Simon:
The timing seems appropriate to wait? I think the statute actually requires, I think it depend for 90 days if it’s an actual pre-suit demand versus you have a trial pending and you’re just going to make a shorter time limit demand. Normally if time allows, if you just get the case in and it’s so painstakingly clear on liability and damages, if the policy is a smaller policy, I don’t see any issue making a time limited demand and turning over kind of like your demand package to the adjuster. Most of the time, the reason that I’m doing that is because it takes time to get all the records in. So I might even talk to my client and I already know it’s worth more than the policy limits, so I’ll just get the demand ready. But knowing that the statute in Missouri requires me to turn over authorizations or the medical records to the adjuster, I just know that that’s going to take some time.
So oftentimes what I’ll do is I will attach the authorizations for the records that I have put together that demand tell the client, I think your claim is worth more than what insurance is available, but by the statute it’s allowed to sit for 90 days if there’s not a trial pending. So we can just do that and normally the client’s fine with doing that. And in cases where it is, to your point, like a real clear liability auto case, that normally gets a pretty good return because the insurance company isn’t really interested in having that sit for too long. But every now and then you get the adjuster where you get to talk about the five grand for weeks do that.
Erica Blume Slater:
Yeah. Well, and let me headline for our listeners too. The statute that we’re talking about in Missouri is Missouri revised statute 5 3 7 0 5 8. So that’s what you would review if you were making a time limited demand. This particular statute went into effect in 2017 and it changed kind of the lay of the land and how these demands were made. So attorneys prior to this statute could make time limited demands, and there was case law out there about the requirements of that set on insurance companies. And usually that timeframe, the reasonable timeframe was 30 days and that there were plenty of complaints from the insurance side and especially defense attorney side when they’re involved in time limit and demand situations. That was too short, especially to coordinate what needed to be coordinated and to review the information. So the statute gives a list of requirements that a plaintiff and their attorney can follow, and in exchange, the demand has to stay open for 90 days.
And the benefit of using the statute, first of all, this is one of those you have to pay attention to the process if any of these statutory requirements are not followed exactly. You don’t get the benefits of the statute. And the reason why you might be using the statute is that if the insurance company fails to respond or does not pay potentially a policy limit demand and you continue on to litigation and you try your case and you get a larger verdict than what you demanded or than the policy, then you have created another claim against the insurance company for which they are on the hook. If you originally filed this statute correctly, if you didn’t follow this procedure, your chances of being successful on that type of claim if you didn’t make a statutory demand are much less in Missouri. And Amy, were you involved when this statute was put into place back in 2017 with some of the change in the language?
Amy Collignon Gunn:
Yes. It was very much an effort by the insurance industry to limit their own liability for bad faith claims, which is what you’ve described being that let’s say you’ve got a motor vehicle accident and there’s a $25,000 policy limit, your client may not have hundreds of thousands of dollars of damages, but they probably have close to that limit. And yet somehow largely because the insurance adjuster has plugged in the facts of the case and the medical bills into a program used by insurance adjusters, it has said, oh, the damages here are going to be less than $25,000, and so they don’t offer the $25,000. That seems crazy, but unless there’s a hammer to actually make the insurance company pay that $25,000 in the form of a bad faith claim, then a lot of times it doesn’t happen. And so that was happening on a regular basis.
So in 2017, the insurance industry says We need a way to get out of bad faith claims basically. And this was a way to try to do that by putting time limits on the demands and saying, we have to have enough time to figure this stuff out. And what happened actually in the 2024 session is they’ve tried again to limit it because what’s happened over these years since 2017 is that even the time limits and the time limited demand statute as written that you referenced Erica 5 37 0.058 is we’re finding ways around it just by not listing a time limit at all. And so the insurance companies came back in the 2024 session and said, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa. We didn’t do a good enough job in 2017 writing this to our sole benefit to protect ourselves, to protect ourselves. We didn’t ask for the right language because you guys have figured out a way around it.
And listen, I know I sound a little uppity about it, but I as you know, spend time in Jefferson City and the nickel and diming that goes on there in terms of how much controlled insurance companies have and they get pretty much whatever language they want, and then to write it in 2017 exactly how they wanted it without negotiating with us at all. And then six years later, seven years later, want to change it again. We all really thought that was beyond the pale. And I testified actually, I don’t remember if I did or someone in Matta did, but I kind of have this recollection since I was the president this past session of testifying on the time limited demands in a way that was like, y’all had a choice to do this in 2017, didn’t quite do it right, and now you’re coming back for more. At what point is too much?
At what point is it too much? So we were able to stave it off for the 2024 session. This episode is airing in January, 2025. So session has started or is getting ready to start, and I fully expect to see another effort by the insurance industry to further limit our ability to set an insurance company up for bad faith. And the reason of course that it’s important to everybody on the road is because a lot of drivers, again, another problem, now y’all put me on my soapbox, but another problem is that Missouri has minimum limits of $25,000. That’s all you have to have in liability limits to drive a vehicle. We all know that some accidents are within a $25,000 box, but many, many, many aren’t. And if you’ve got a case and a client where you can’t even get the $25,000 or 50 or a hundred, whatever the policy limits are out of that insurance company because they want to save a few pennies and you don’t have any ability to hold their feet to the fire to even pay the policy limits and put their insured at risk for an excess judgment, then that’s problematic for society.
I mean, really, I think it’s ridiculous. And that’s the other side of it. Let’s say you’re not the injured person. We speak on behalf of injured people, our clients, but what about the folks that have caused the accident? They also need protecting. So if I only have a hundred thousand dollars limit and I’ve caused an accident, my insurance company isn’t paying it, and there’s an excess judgment and there’s no hammer in place for the insurance company to be on the hook for not paying the claim that they had the ability to pay within the policy limits, that hurts any and all of us. So again, and you again paying
Erica Blume Slater:
A premium for that insurance to protect you and pay when it’s needed.
Amy Collignon Gunn:
So to me, this falls under it’s very important discussion to have and it falls under the category of knowledge is power for the citizen, not only our clients and all of us driving vehicles, but just everyone needs to know what happens in Jefferson City and that this kind of stuff is the target every year of the insurance
Liz Lenivy:
Industry. Sorry, Amy. This story just makes me think about when I was at some sort of neighborhood meeting and someone had brought up the legislation, and I can’t remember if it was oh five eight or another one, but it led to me being the attorney in the room who had to explain insurance law and bad faith
Amy Collignon Gunn:
Claims.
Liz Lenivy:
And I saw people, their minds were blown when I explained to them, here’s how your insurance company who you have been a faithful customer of, you have been so good about your payments. You do everything right, here’s how they can screw you because they want to save some money. And people were shocked by it, but I’m sitting there, how did you guys not know about it? But at the same time, why would anybody think about this unless they are in our industry or if they are the unfortunate victim? So really I think this is also maybe a call to, if you are an attorney and you have an opportunity to educate your neighbors, to educate the people in your community, your family, your friends, whoever, about what exactly this language means and what exactly the legislator is doing, take that opportunity, hop on that soapbox, stay on that soapbox. People are interested by it, people want to know about it. And again, their minds were blown. I’ve been paying my premium for the last 40 years and this could happen to me. Yes, sir,
Announcer:
Sure
Amy Collignon Gunn:
Could. And just to put a bow on what happens, let’s say there isn’t a very effective time limited demand statute. And so of course what happens is insurance company doesn’t pay. The insured is at risk for an excess verdict. The injured person is not made whole, so to speak, and the insurance company has no incentive to continue to pay claims at the policy limit. Whereas with a robust statute in place, I’m setting out what we call a bad faith claim. If you do make a demand for the policy limits to say, okay, I want a hundred thousand, you’ve got a hundred thousand dollars, I’ll take it, and then the insurance company doesn’t pay, then bad faith law applies, which says if there is an excess verdict, the insurance company, even though it’s beyond the policy limits, the insurance company is responsible to pay it, then and only then will the insurance company say, well, maybe we should start paying policy limits.
Erica Blume Slater:
I think that beyond that, even understanding how all this works from the legislature side, even when I’ve sat down with new clients and their learning how their own auto insurance works, especially in the case where the person who hit them is either uninsured or has a $25,000 limit and they’re sitting there, well, I have $60,000 in medical bills. I’m like, well, our state minimum coverage is 25 now let’s look to your policy and see if you have what’s called underinsured motorist coverage, which is optional coverage in Missouri. And then they learn whether they’ve insured themselves for that situation. And I mean those conversations can be really tough to learn because a lot of people don’t learn how their insurance works or what the scenarios look like until they need it. And Liz, like you’re saying, people thinking like, oh, but my insurance company, I have a relationship with them.
It’s so often that people have a relationship with an insurance Embroker who are not the insurance companies. They may be a representative, but if you get in an accident and you move on to the claims process, you are no longer talking to your insurance Embroker agency, the mom and pop who are your neighbors, literally who are State Farm agents. They put you in touch with claims, and then you are in corporate state farm world, and that’s a very different experience than maybe they’ve had with people who are members of their community who have been the face of State Farm for them. So those can be really difficult conversations and quite frankly, those are the cases that we’re talking about where you have clients come and say, I didn’t think I needed an attorney. I got rear-ended and I was hurt, and that seemed like this should be cut and dry, and all of a sudden this was already in effect
Mary Simon:
When I started practicing. I remember looking this up when I sent out my first time limited demand, there was an attorney on the other side of the case and the attorney got so mad at me because I sent the demand directly to the insurance company and I didn’t. I just communicated directly with the insurance company because the statute said to do that and then
Erica Blume Slater:
You wouldn’t have to.
Mary Simon:
Well, yeah, and the lawyer got really mad. Now I’m understanding it’s probably when everything was changing. So the attorney was used to having control and that whatever and that circumstance, but he got really mad at me that I sent it directly to the insurance company and I just sent the statute and I was like, it says that I have to do that, and there’s a big caveat at the end that says, if I don’t follow every single one of these, I haven’t done my due diligence in
Erica Blume Slater:
Making the
Mary Simon:
Demand.
Erica Blume Slater:
That was intentional. The insurance companies made sure that they cut out the middleman.
Mary Simon:
Right,
Erica Blume Slater:
So what Mary is talking about is the statute requires that the attorney send the demand certified mail return receipt to the insurance company. The tor fees is
Liz Lenivy:
Liability insurance.
Erica Blume Slater:
It must go,
Liz Lenivy:
The plaintiff’s attorney has to
Erica Blume Slater:
Send it. Yes, right, send it directly to the insurance company. Now, of course, if there’s a defense attorney involved already that’s been hired by the insurance company, I’ll send it to both.
Mary Simon:
Yes, I’ll send it a copy,
Erica Blume Slater:
But there’s nothing, if I only sent it to the defense attorney and not the insurance company, I would think they’d have a damn good argument that I didn’t follow the statute if I get down the road.
Amy Collignon Gunn:
That’s why it’s so nitpicky.
Erica Blume Slater:
Yeah,
Amy Collignon Gunn:
Because I think the intent was, and again, they failed, but the intent was to make it so nitpicky that if you missed any one of these little requirements, you forgot to put the claim number on there or the date of the loss or got the location wrong, then they could deny it so to speak, and it wouldn’t trigger that bad faith. Now again, we’ve had some good decisions from reasonable judges who have not gone that way in particular, but again, they’ll be back. They’ll be back. This is just another one of the fun things that we get to deal with in Jefferson City. 90 days is so long, it’s so
Mary Simon:
Long for anyone. It’s really long for us and
Amy Collignon Gunn:
In the meantime, what are our clients doing?
Mary Simon:
Yes. That’s why I even think that this statute in many ways, especially hearing a lot of the history about it, in many ways it’s a deterrent for me from even sending it and just filing a lawsuit and then sending the demand that you can send that is still subject to bad faith. It’s not applicable. The statute wouldn’t be applicable to the way that you’re sending the demand with a trial setting, and in that time, 90 days you’re into discovery. You’re not just sitting twiddling your thumbs with your client calling you every week saying they can be simultaneous. How’s it going? Yeah. So it is, it’s almost like putting a stick in the wheels on advocacy of just trying to get your client’s claim resolved in many ways.
Erica Blume Slater:
Okay, so let’s move on a little bit to the substance of a demand,
Mary Simon:
And you’re talking pre-suit demands in particular.
Erica Blume Slater:
Yeah, I think, yeah. Give me your top two things that are your stylistic things that you put in a demand that you think are effective or even dos or don’ts, top two dos or don’ts in demands that you think are effective with insurance companies.
Liz Lenivy:
I’ve seen it done both ways, but something I personally like to do is if I have photographs and they are particularly gnarly pictures, I don’t want to just send it as an attachment or see enc close photographs and things like that. If I know I have a picture and it fits exactly where I have built my narrative, so for example, if I’m, I’m thinking of a case where a woman was given a wrong medication and I sent a demand letter in this particular case and I had some photos of her from the hospital. Now could I have attached those or could I have included those into the narrative? Almost like a picture book a little bit. I really like including photos into my letters. I think it draws attention to it, but also there is something I think a little bit more visceral about reading about someone’s horrible experience near death experience and then seeing a photograph of that person in that moment.
I don’t know if that’s what you were going for, Erica, as far as something you like to do, but that’s something that I’ve done is trying to incorporate photographs. So if I have pictures from the accident, the car accident, here’s the damage that I’m talking about. I think that is something I like, but additionally, I’ve gotten really into just charts following a medical record summary. So instead of just writing a narrative out necessarily of on this date, then they had this appointment on this date, then they had this appointment. I think just kind of creating a chart that is faster to read, but also highlights, here’s how many doctor’s appointment, here’s how many times they’ve had to go to a chiropractor, all of their physical therapy, all of the medications that they’re on, and just it kind of lays it out of this is how much this has affected this person.
It is a quick way to do it, but also I think a more effective way because I’m trying to think about how do I have the biggest impact on the reader, and I hope I’m not being too cynical, but honestly I realize I’m sending this to a person who I can definitely state does not care about my client as much as I care about my client. But at the same time, sometimes the conversations I have with these adjusters, I’m like, I don’t know if you care about people at all. Yes. So I think sometimes just having to lay it out in black and white as clearly and as simply and quickly as possible has been. I don’t know if it’s effective or not, but I think it’s a more powerful demand letters. So I think charts and pictures, I feel like I’m simplifying things like here’s how you explain to a child what’s going on, but that’s something that I’ve tried to move on from
Mary Simon:
When I started practicing. I read the first demand letter I ever sent. I looked at templates, so I looked at different lawyers and different demands and everyone kind of does it in a different way, but I remember pulling a letter up and I read it and it was kind of a longer demand, and I remember reading it, thinking to myself, this reads as if this defendant personally harmed this attorney and their family, and I think that it’s a testament to kind of the advocacy at this firm and the way that the writing is, and that always stuck with me of just, you don’t have to think about the other person’s feelings when you’re writing this. It is solely about your client and advocacy and getting for them what they deserve, probably even part of what they deserve because there can be limits. Something that I really like to do, and I’ve learned this just from different attorneys in this office as well, is I just start immediately by saying what the insured did wrong.
I’ll just put the first sentence of Dear adjuster, blah, blah, blah, your insured blew through a stop sign and caused my client lifelong injuries. I represent so-and-so for their claims. And so I’ll just start out by saying just as small of a summary as I can as to what the whole purpose of it is and then kind of go into the facts and I’ll do that most of the time. Sometimes I’ll change it up just depending on circumstance, but I just like to starting out with a sentence that I hope gets the person’s attention who I think maybe isn’t going to give it the attention that I want it to give. Right.
Liz Lenivy:
It’s also a good way to ensure that they, even if they don’t read your entire letter, or maybe they’re skimming it, at least that first line’s going to get their attention, they’re going
Mary Simon:
To
Liz Lenivy:
Be able to walk away from that letter saying, well, I know what the case is about.
Mary Simon:
Yeah, I had a mediator once and I wasn’t in Missouri. I sent my demand letter to, he just told us to send us the demands. We didn’t need to send briefs, and I sent it and he called me and said, you don’t actually believe this, do you by the way? I wrote it and I was like, okay, I think we might need a different mediator. But yeah, it’s like you got to write it to get someone’s attention.
Amy Collignon Gunn:
What about you, Amy? I would say my do may not have anything to do with the content of the letter, but rather making sure to remind everybody to have a very thorough conversation with your client. Obviously we all know we have to have authority to settle a case or to even make a demand on a case. I don’t like pre-suit negotiation because I think it allows the client early on in the case to think this could happen early and get their hopes up. And so often those are dashed by no response at all from an insurance company or a very small response, and it just makes everybody mad. So I have to have a really good feeling that either there’s a policy limit at risk and it’s way beyond it and they’re just going to pay. In that case, you just send the police report and a couple of medical bills and you’re going to get it, but if we’re really trying to settle a case that should be litigated or likely will be litigated, but let’s just see if we can get this done. I don’t like to do that largely because in my experience it doesn’t help, but if circumstances present where it could happen, talk to your client and set those expectations because I find it very difficult to get a client’s mind set on settling and then pulling the rug out.
It’s very hard and it’s not your fault, it’s not their fault. It’s just the idea of having a resolution to this terrible situation in their life feels good. And if you float it out there and then can’t deliver on it, it’s just not a very satisfying situation. And so number one, I don’t like ’em, but if the circumstances present and I think I could probably get somewhere, then just have a very thorough conversation with your client and say things like, look, I don’t think this is going to get done, but it doesn’t hurt us to throw it out there, but just know that more likely than not, there’s not going to be a response or it’s going to be a small response and we are doing everything we can to get this case going to the best resolution possible, which is almost always after suit is filed and after you’ve done all the work that way, if in fact something miraculous does happen and there is a good response from the insurance company, then it’s just all the better.
Erica Blume Slater:
And what’s your do not
Amy Collignon Gunn:
My do not is not miss the opportunity to really lay out your case. And Mary and Liz, you all both have talked about that. I think if you’re going to take the time to send a demand, then it needs to be persuasive. And Mary, I love your story about that fool that called you and said that to you because obviously you were doing your job
And to the point where he thought it was over the top, but why not? I mean, you can only go, you should start it over the top. I mean obviously in a legitimate way you’re not creating injuries that aren’t there or scenarios that didn’t happen, but sometimes we’re the only ones that actually give life to these accidents that are words on a page or narration or diagrams and where our clients only spokespeople sometimes, and you are dealing with insurance companies that by their nature don’t want to treat people like treat people. And I’m not even mad about that’s just the industry, but we are the only opportunity oftentimes that our clients have for advocacy. And so don’t miss that opportunity even in a pre-suit demand letter.
Erica Blume Slater:
The two things I’m going to add to what you guys have already said because I follow all those things when I’m writing my own demands, is thinking about your audience and knowing that you’re usually presenting your case and writing to a claims adjuster. They have supervisors and there’s levels of claims adjusters and levels of supervisors, and the best thing that you can do other than advocate for your client is to help them help you and to do that, that means don’t skip corners, don’t send them a demand package, have the medical bills and half the medical records because you think it’s obvious, even if something is obvious where you decide to make a pre-suit demand because you have someone who is air evaced and there’s a $50,000 policy and you just need to get that so you can move on to their, that’s a lot of how these come up.
That’s going to be probably a shorter presentation because you want to be efficient about it, but you need to give them all the information so they are armed with what they need when they go into meetings and say, I need authority to pay X on this claim. The other thing that I would recommend is to stay as credible as you can because when you get into those negotiations, so if you have a soft tissue injury case that you may end up settling for $15,000, don’t call it a severe impact if it was a fender bender, you know what I mean? Just don’t do it. And there are ways to maintain that credibility while still, if that person went to the ER and had however many physical therapy or whatever appointments and it affected their life in a certain way, that’s still their story and you can communicate that without having to embellish. So those are the two things I would add to our discussion
Mary Simon:
Today, and that reminded me of what Liz was saying. It just seems so factual, like when you were talking about doing a chart or doing a timeline, it’s not just saying this really bad thing happened. It’s actually laying out as foolproof as you can to say What I’m saying is all reflected right here. Just look right here. Exactly.
Liz Lenivy:
I’ve done this a handful of times because I’ve gotten good responses where I know my client had a surgery. I know the insurance company’s going to debate whether or not that surgery is related to the accident. And so I will, with my client’s permission, obviously reach out to the surgeon and say, Hey, I’ve got this situation. Were in a car accident. You treated ’em afterwards. Do you think the car accident caused them to need that neck surgery or do you need that shoulder surgery? Well, every now and then they will talk to me and they say, yeah, I’ll write you a little letter and say, I’m a board certified orthopedic surgeon and this surgery is as a result of this collision from this date. I can confirm that. And I said, great, thank you so much. And sometimes they don’t bill me for it, they’ll just be like, I’ll do it to help my patient out, which is wonderful.
Love those doctors. And I can think of one time where a doctor did that for me and it got my case settled for the policy limits that we had been argue. He had had another attorney before me and that went nowhere. Then he hired us. I got this letter from the doctor and we got the policy limits and he was over the moon happy. I was so pleased with that result. And then I am now thinking of another case where same situation, I got the board certified orthopedic surgeon to say, yep, my client needed this, or I’m sorry, my patient needed this surgery because of this accident. I can confirm that. And I sent the report to the insurance company and they are still denying that the collision is related to the accident. I go, I’m sorry, did you go to medical school now or were you in the or? And it makes me, because Erica, your point about maintain credibility if it’s a soft tissue accident, don’t say severe impact. And now it’s so frustrating. It feels like such a burden on us. We have to maintain credibility
Mary Simon:
Adjusters that it’s like, do you think in anvil fell on her head and caused this problem? Or do you think it was the fact she was slammed into by a vehicle on the
Erica Blume Slater:
Highway last week? Well, and I think that’s the problem too. We’ve been through that experience too many times where we know if there’s any argument that can be made on the other side, don’t bother. And that’s what Amy’s talking about. There’s so many cases that aren’t appropriate for this type of handling. So either don’t make a presuit demand, don’t waste your time or file the case, make a demand simultaneous and they can do it what they want and you haven’t lost any time. Understand and identify those cases where this certainly is the way to handle it, and you are very confident of the outcome and won’t disappoint your client. So with that, thank you everyone for this discussion on a topic that may not be, it’s not reporting nine figure jury verdicts, but it’s an important part of our practice. So we’re happy to share that with you today and share our strategies for dealing with demands and how we approach it. If you have questions or suggestions for our topics or this one, reach out to us at comments at heels in the Courtroom law and we’ll see you next time. Thanks.
Announcer:
Heels in the Courtroom is brought to you by the Simon Law Firm at the Simon Law Firm pc. We believe in the power of pooling resources in order to create powerful results. We often lend our trial skills and experience to lawyers around the country to achieve better results for their clients. Our attorneys welcome the opportunity to work with you on your case, offering vast resources, seasoned litigators, and a sterling reputation. You can contact us at 3 1 4 2 4 1 2 9 2 9. And if you enjoyed the podcast, feel free to share your thoughts with Amy, Liz, Erica, Mary Elizabeth at heels in the Courtroom law, and subscribe today because the best lawyers never stop learning.
Notify me when there’s a new episode!
![]() |
Heels in the Courtroom |
Heels in the Courtroom is a fresh and insightful podcast offering the female lawyer's perspective of trial work with six wonderful hosts Amy Gunn, Erica Slater, Liz Lenivy, Mary Simon and Elizabeth McNulty.