Free Q & A
 
 

Share Your
Experiences
about 
Predatory
Lawyers
 
 

Ask For A
Free
2nd Opinion
 
 

A Free Check up
For Your
Asset Protection
Plan
 

Comments
Are
Always
Welcome
 
 

LINKS Incorporating in Tax-Free  Nevada   Your Financial  Privacy: Offshore Corporation And Asset Protection

  Introduction: 

Predatory lawyers (contingent fee lawyers) view care providers as prey. However, they will not go after them before scanning their business behavior and assets. In a law suit, doctors who take on open business ventures such as product sales and has visible assets, become primary targets. In essence, doctors who sell their products to the public or by leaving their assets unprotected, are actually helping the lawyers to target them. On the other hand, a managed business such as on line and an asset protection plan, will drive lawyers away.

As a doctor, you may be wondering: Why should a lawyer target me? I didn't do anything!
Unfortunately, for care providers this statement is no longer valid. Just for being a care provider, you are labeled by predatory lawyers as “PREY”. However, predatory lawyers will only go after a “Worthy Prey” characterized by having visible assets and revenue starting at about $300,000/year. 

If you are thinking, "This doesn't make sense!". It certainly does not make anymore sense than the judgment $2.7 million awarded to Stella Liebeck (for her injuries from spilling hot McDonalds
coffee between her legs while driving). That's our legal system. A doctor have the options of acting like a deer and stare at the mesmerizing lights, or getting out of the way! 

Guilty by Association: 

When a jury award millions of dollars to a malpractice lawsuit, it is expected to find a list of names of doctors hit with this verdict. This list of defendants was generated by the lawyer(s) after careful review of the defendants assets. Clearly, not everyone on the defendants' list is guilty. But rest assured that everyone on the list, does have visible assets. In fact, being on the defendants’ list doesn't mean you did anything wrong in the public's eye. 

Example:
Your sales person was at your office and gave the
patient a glass of water, who became the plaintiff in a malpractice law suit against another doctor, and you have visible assets, you should expect to be on the defendants’ list “by Association”. The plaintiff's lawyer will find a way to prove that somehow, your sales person or your water contributed further to his client's irreparable damage and loss of future wages. 

Are you on the board of directors of a closely held corporation? If you have visible assets, you should expect that any time, this corporation is sued for any reason, your name will be on the list. 

Unfortunately, what you may consider as being unfair, does take place at USA courts on daily basis, and some doctors find themselves penniless because they took on product sales to the public or did not protect their assets from the sharks!

Left Holding the bag:

If  you believe the patient would benefit from a particular treatment, but the plan won't authorize it, and the patient suffers a bad outcome and sues both of you and the plan, you will be left holding the bag. The plan will not stand behind you.  Finding yourself in this bad situation, the bottom line will be how much this will cost you.  The answer is simple: Do you have visible assets? If your answer is “Yes”, then you are in a heap of trouble!

Lose a malpractice case once, get caught for life:

If you have lost a malpractice case in the past and the same patient suffer an aggravation of the original injury or additional injury caused by negligent medical or hospital treatment or care of the original injury, you will be liable again. In fact, you will be labeled as the “Original Wrongdoer”. (Ash v. Mortensen (1944) 24 Cal.2d 654, 657). This case had set a precedent to haunt doctors till the end of time.

Once you accept medicare, you accept open ended liability:

If you have accepted Medicare patients, take a deep breath, because you got caught in an open ended liability:

Medicare policy allows it to go back as long as it wish to impose claims regarding alleged overcharges for patient services. In essence, Medicare can place you in a “Worry Box” for possible gross billings to all of its Medicare/Medicaid patients for as long as you have been in practice.

You may say, I don't take Medicare patients, however, I have expanded my practice and added new partners. Well, if any of your partners accepted Medicare in the past, you are back to “Guilty By Association”. 

Also, you are faced with another problem: If you find a potential partner who used to accept Medicare, who will greatly help your practice, will you decline a partnership to avoid a possible Medicare investigation? Or should the answer be: Protect your assets and get the partner you need and like!
 

Doctors who settle out of court, they do that to keep certain information from coming out. If  this information was discovered by the predatory lawyer who forced you to settle out of court, you should know, he put you on a leach even if the information was sealed!

Rest assured, the next time you are sued this information will surface again. It is likely, you will settle out of court again, because the first predatory lawyer shared it with the new one for a fee. Keep in mind, you are labeled as "Willing to settle out of Court". All future predatory lawyers will somehow find access to the supposedly "sealed information".

A 1999 Medical Economics Malpractice Survey showed that about 45% of doctors cases settled out of court. Every year, this rate is likely to be higher for those doctors as long as their assets remain visible. 

Malpractice Insurance = False Sense of Security: 

Doctors assume by having malpractice insurance, they are protected against malpractice and have no reason to protect their assets. In today's litigious society, a malpractice insurance offer a false sense of security, and in some cases it is totally useless. Consider the following example:
“A doctor's malpractice insurance premium is 2 million dollars and loses a case for 10 million dollars. Clearly, the insurance company will only cover the premium, and the remaining 8 million dollars is the doctor's problem.”

In essence,  malpractice insurance is the same as living in a Japanese paper house and thinking that bullets will not reach you because you are living inside the house!
 

It is common practice by predatory lawyers to investigate a doctor whom they are considering for a surgery on their family members or their friends. So, if you were some how associated (directly or indirectly) with such a surgery and have visible assets, you may be taken to the cleaners!

 

A 1999 Medical Economics Malpractice Survey showed that 

1 out of 4 doctors (any specialty) have been sued at least twice.

In same above survey, when all doctors were asked do you expect to be sued? 69% answered “YES”. The ones who replied “NO” are not living in the real world!

The good news is that, you can avoid all this and even don't lose anything if you have an asset protection plan in place prior to a lawsuit.
 

Bottom Line:

• If you have money, predatory lawyers will find a way to separate your ass from your assets. This is not just about malpractice. It can be about anything and by anyone such as:
• Divorce: your spouse may hire a predatory lawyer. This happens everyday.
• Children, especially some teenagers are known to sue their parents and predatory lawyers will be there to screen your assets.
• Your Sales People: Regardless of how wonderful is your relationship with them, a day may come which you'd wish you had never got involved in product sales!
• Gardener, maid, delivery boy... etc. Clearly, the magnet to all this is your visible assets.

 
• If you have an asset protection plan, predatory lawyers will leave you alone and you will save a lot of time and money which include payments to your personal attorney.

Common Questions & Answers:
 

Do’s and Don'ts
 

We Welcome Your Questions:

Send us your questions and describe your experiences with predatory lawyers. 
Names are kept confidential at all times.

Ask for a FREE second opinion:

Before you agree to an asset protection plan, send us a copy. We would be happy to review it and send you a second opinion, Free of Charge.