Insurance Claim1

Remember the OJ Simpson trial?  I do.  I was in law school at the time and it was such a big deal that the law library set up a television for students to watch the proceedings. I remember watching the 15 m.p.h. police chase down the 405 freeway as OJ led the police on the SLOWEST get-away chases in the history of get-away chases.   I remember the subsequent circus/criminal trial in which the prosecution regularly got handed their heads for screwing up simple procedural matters (like not Shepardizing key cases).   I remember the infamous "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit"  quote (that really was the stupidest line in the whole case).   I remember the day the verdict was handed down and OJ hugged his attorneys.  The persons OJ should have hugged was the prosecution.  They couldn't have bungled the case any worse than they did. Heck, I also remember thinking whether the prosecution had been bought off having just thrown the biggest trial in a long, long t

Do you know how much it costs to have a case be appealed in a federal court of appeal?   In accordance with 28 U.S.C. § 1913, that cost is $500.  Not a lot but when you don't have it, it's a whole lot of what you don't have. Now, with all that it costs to take a case to appeal, imagine, if you will, you are sitting in your house, door closed, and the police knock on your front door.  Little, piggie, little piggie, let me come in they shout.   You say, "No dice, go away."  Your roommate, who is outside the house, tells the police that they can go in.   You, again, insist that no, the police can't come in.  Police ignore you, they break a window to reach the inside lock, open the door, taser you to the floor and start to search for contraband inside your house. Sound like fun?  Well, Ryan Bonivert didn't and after the police did all that to him, he filed a case against the City of Clarkston , the County of Asotin and the police who broke down

Years ago, I worked as a law clerk.  One day I interviewed a client who had, for the last 10 years, been residing in prison for a double homicide.   What was interesting is that when I had parked my car and started walking toward the front gate, I met a number of parents of incarcerated people.   Every parent swore that their kid was innocent and had been set-up. Inside the prison, every single prisoner claimed they were innocent and had been set-up.  Our client had the same story.  Innocent and set-up.  Really? You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are innocent?  Smoking gun found two feet away with your fingerprints and gun powder residue on your hands!?  Still innocent?!?  Sad that everyone has the same story.  I didn't do it - it was the other guy (that they never found or caught).  The police set me up.  It couldn't be that they actually did the crime. Maybe the nature of the crime was so heinous that they can't accept the fact that th

If there is one thing that most everyone can agree, mistakes really slow things down.  In law and legal stuff, mistakes can really damage a person's calm.  Take court forms like the Petition for Divorce package.  It has about 967 boxes, lines, and places to screw it up (and yes, I counted them all).   Soooooo, if you mess up and either check a box that shouldn't be checked or fail to check a box that should have been checked, the court clerk will mark the mistake and send it back to you.  Of course, what they won't tell you is that if you made any more mistakes in the form - just that you made that one.  Now, if there is another mistake, and you don't have an attorney to help tell you what you did wrong, you will probably correct the mistake, send the form back only to have the form sent back to you with the next mistake identified so that you can re-submit that form over and over and over.  It's maddening, I tell you! This brings us to our word of the m