Can the Lawyer take out his fees before medical expenses and leave us without funds to fix her face?

In a message.

Generally, it is possible for an attorney to take out his or her attorney fees and money for costs ("court fees") before medical expenses and leave a client without money for medical treatment. All fee agreements in personal injury cases must be in writing and must specify how much, usually a percentage, your attorney shall receive as a fee. The fee agreement should specify whether the fee is taken from the gross amount collected or from the net. If the fee is based on the net amount, the fee agreement should specify what items are deducted from the gross recovery to determine the net amount. Costs and expenses ("legal fees"), depending on the fee agreement, may be taken in addition to an attorney fee based on the gross amount recovered or may be an item that reduces the attorney fees (so the fee is based on a net recovery). Pursuant to Nebraska's Rules of Professional Conduct, Neb. Ct. R. ? 3-501.5, attorneys, despite what is contained within a fee agreement, may not charge or collect an "unreasonable fee or an unreasonable amount for expenses." This Rule lists a number of factors in determining whether a fee is reasonable. As to your specific case I cannot comment on whether it is appropriate for your attorney to take out his fee before medical expenses and leave you without money to pay for the plastic surgery your daughter needs without a lot more information. In addition, I cannot comment on the fact, for the same reason, about your attorney making a "a deal with the court not to testify to this (without letting us know) so that the opposition would admit fault in court." You might want to talk to your attorney and ask whether he would consider reducing his fees so your daughter can receive the plastic surgery. In addition, the Nebraska State Bar Association offers a "Legal Fee Arbitration Program," whose purpose is to "provide for the expeditious resolution through voluntary arbitration of disputes involving fees charged by attorneys." The program is voluntary meaning you and your attorney must agree to participate. Arbitration is a procedure in which a dispute is decided by an arbitrator, who is a neutral third party who is familiar with the type of case or dispute that is being arbitrated.

I think that you need to sit down with the lawyer and discuss it. I, personally, question the reason for rejecting the $125,000 offer. If the jury only awarded $63,000, they must not have thought that the day care was very much at fault; I wonder what his trial theory was? After you discuss these things with the lawyer, if the explanation does not make sense, you may want to discuss it with another lawyer, who handles legal malpractice cases. Under Michigan law, there is a basis for looking at this as: "I trusted the apparent expertise of these people who held themselves out as being experienced and competent in the care of young children, and while my child was totally within the care, custody and control of these supposed experts, she was seriously hurt. Did they have enough competent and trained staff on duty at all times?"

The lawyer's fee is based on the fee agreement you made with the lawyer. 25% is actual less than normal, which is either 1/3 and sometimes as much as 40%. The lawyer's % normally applies to the entire recovery, including medical bills. Any time you go to trial, there is a risk that you could get less than what you expect, and less than was offered. Often, individuals complain to me that their layer advised them to settle for too low an amount and want to know what can be done. Your story answers their question and theirs kind of answers yours. When you settle a case (or make the decision to reject an offer and go to trial), you are making a decision based on our best estimate of what a jury will do, but juries are unpredictable. Regarding the deal to exclude certain evidence based on an admission of liability, I would need more information to comment intelligently on it. However, this sounds like a case where liability could reasonably be disputed, and it sounds like a reasonable decision to agree to the exclusion or that evidence. Furthermore, if the defendant admits liability (which they can do regardless of whether you agree to it), the evidence that was excluded might be irrelevant and excluded whether you agree or not. Finally, that evidence was likely irrelevant to the issue of the amount of your damages ond should not have affected the amount of the verdict.

The short answer is yes an attorney can take his fee before paying medical bills. The medical bills are the client's responsibility and come out of the client's share of the judgment. If you are in doubt about the amount being taken out for costs, you can ask for an accounting of the litigation costs. However, going to trial is expensive and $15,000.00 doesn't sound like it is out of the range of normal, if there were experts who were called to testify, i.e. doctors. As for the "secret deals" with the Court, the Court doesn't make deals with lawyers. There could have been an admission of liability on the part of the defendant and the trial could have been only on the issue of damages. In addition, there are rules of evidence which make the police report inadmissible in Court and anything you hear people say is generally inadmissible hearsay, unless it falls under an exception to the rule. In other words it can be very complicated trying to get some evidence into the record. If the case was on damages only, then most anything about liability would be excluded, unless it was relevant to the harm done to your child.

Typically court costs are deducted first, then the attorney deducts his portion from that balance and you get the rest

Your question raises a very good question. Normally, an attorney is entitled to his attorney fee on the gross(or total amount of the verdict or settlement)recovery and his expenses before the client is paid. In your situation I have a question as to whether you rejected the $125,000.00 settlement offer and what you were told in order to make an informed decision to go to trial. If you refused to accept the offer and were made fully aware that the result could be more or less then the offer and the lawyer acted reasonably at trial, he is entitled to his fee. You would need to have a discussion with your attorney as normally an agreement to admit negligence in consideration of not offering certain evidence in at trial is a judgment call on the attorney's part and probably would not be malpractice. His fee is much less then is typical in a case of this nature so the 25% is extremely fair. Whether the total fee and expenses would be considered an excessive fee is questionable and would depend on the totality of the situation. I would suggest sitting down with your attorney and discussing the situation before you take any further action as the result that occurred at trial (while it was 50% of the amount you could have settled for)seems low, you always run the risk at trial of getting less then you want and expected. I don't know who your attorney is or whether there were any mistakes made at trial or in the communication with you that would constitute negligence but from what you described it sounds like he did a good job. You have to go to Probate Court to have the verdict amount approved so you might want to discuss this with the court when you go for approval, assuming there is not going to be an appeal of the verdict. Good luck.

Your tragedy proves a bird in the hand was twice in the bush.

This was your case, not the lawyers. You had to agree to leave the 125 on the table and you apparently did Now you are second guessing yourself. I don't know what the lawyer did or did not do or say about evidence. Usually the lawyer decides how a case proceeds and how it is tried If he did the job honestly he is entitled to his fee. Does not matter what net you get. That is not the issue. The issue is did he earn his fee. If he did, pay him and quit complaining. If he did something improper on the other hand, report the matter to the bar fee committee or ethics committee. When you roll the dice and try your cased to the jury you are stuck with what the jury says, not what you want or feel.

It sounds to me like your lawyer made a good-faith judgment call if he (or she) agreed not to put on evidence about the day care center lying to the police if the day care center admitted liability. Once a defendant admits liability, other circumstances surrounding how the accident occurred become irrelevant. As far as giving you advice not to accept the $125,000, a lawyer cannot guarantee a result for his client. It sounds to me that if your daughter's past medical bills were $18,000 and her anticipated future medical bills are $44,000, then $63,000 is an extremely low verdict. That's only giving your daughter $1,000 for pain and suffering. Unfortunately, extremely low verdicts occur with about the same frequency as extremely high verdicts, but the public only hears about the extremely high verdicts. Your lawyer cannot be held to be a guarantor of any kind of verdict, and settling cases at mediation is the only way to take the uncertainty out of jury verdicts. As far as what your lawyer charged you, that would be controlled by the contract you signed with the lawyer. While the vast majority of my practice involved suing lawyers for legal malpractice, this is not a case I would ever consider taking. Very, very unfortunately you just got an extremely bad verdict. If you carried health insurance on your daughter, perhaps it would cover the surgery.

Using the figures you gave, you start with the $63G then subtract the $15G court costs, which leaves $48G and 25% of that is $12G. With 20/20 hindsight, the $125G offer looks pretty good, but that's a judgment call. We can't predict or control the future. He gave his best advice, and you took it. Your lawyer got the opposition to admit fault in court. That was entirely his call and it was a good one, so you've got no gripe there. You report $62G in past and future medical expenses and an admission of fault, but the verdict was only $63G. Something's missing there. Have you talked to your lawyer about taking an appeal?