Young Lawyer Gets 36.1 Million Dollar Verdict
Posted Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Ed Harper
The article that follows is a quick read ~ and a great example of why personal injury trial lawyers catch a bad “rap”. All that the media ever reports is the verdict! They don’t explain the precipitating facts ~ that the insurance company refused to offer a penny for years, leaving the injured person and his family to suffer in every way, including financially, simply because of their greed. THIS is why juries occasionally come back with huge verdicts. It’s because they WANT to punish the insurance companies for their greed. If the insurance companies would be remotely reasonable, paying injured people what they should from the massive premiums they take from all of us, cases wouldn’t even need to go to trial. Going (and even the preparation for going) to trial is a nasty, super expensive, horribly stressful situation – not something anyone, let alone an injured person, ever wants to endure. But the insurance companies typically leave no choice.
“Truth and love turned out to be a powerful 1-2 combination for trial attorney Nick Rowley. At the age of 32, Rowley has tried 59 cases and seen hundreds of settlements. In his most recent case, tried with colleagues Alejandro Blanco and Daniel Rodriguez, truth and love meant a $31.5 million verdict for a single plaintiff. Rocio Landeros, age 16, suffered a brain injury with resulting left sided hemi paresis (weakness and foot drop). The defendant driver was a farm worker who was drunk and admitted liability, but the insurer refused to pay out. For 25 months the insurer would not offer a penny. After years of battling, the insurer offered to settle the case for policy limits, but Rowley, Blanco & Rodriguez had other ideas. They turned the Insurer Fireman’s Fund down, saying “the settle-for-policy-limits-train left the station- we promised we would take you to trial.” They marched into a month-long trial knowing that the insurer risked a potential bad faith suit if the plaintiffs won in excess of the $10 million policy limit. The jury returned a more than triple verdict of $36.1 million for the plaintiffs.”
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