Victim Resources

Gayland Smith was a UPS driver from Manassa, extremely fine man. Worked for UPS, oh, pushing 30 years. Never missed a day of work, ever. It's the most incredible, you know, that came out at trial. Never missed a day at work. Lady from Texas hit him right out by the theater on highway 160, west of town. Once again, the insurance company said, not much.

The significance in my mind of the Gayland Smith case was that, Gayland had just seen local doctors. He had seen an Orthopedic surgeon, I think in Pueblo, but they couldn't do much in terms of surgery.

But he couldn't work anymore lifting all the boxes, you know, all the bending, stooping, lifting, in and out of his truck. It was over for him and he was 57 years old.

And the insurance company told him, "Well, you didn't see a specialist."...

I think early on in my career I was very lucky to be there and you know I've tried a number of cases with a man named Cass Garcia. I think Cass, along the lines of being one of the best trial attorneys in the state.

Mostly he did criminal cases, but he had an incredible group of people that trusted him.

He was kind enough to let me come there and try cases and I would be the personal injury attorney and he would help select jurors. That gave me an understanding of how things worked in the San Luis Valley. I'm not talking about five or ten cases, I'm talking about dozens of cases.

And those trials, I think I'd learned things here, when I'm in federal court and the courtroom is bigger, the judges sit way up on a great big platform. I see them...

I do slip and fall cases, premises liability cases, collapsed cases, where for instance parts of building collapse. Parts of buildings collapse and somebody is badly hurt. They're difficult cases.

The core of my practice has always been auto litigation, but I've certainly have tried slip and fall cases. I think I tried the biggest rotator cuff case in a slip and fall case in the state.

I had a older woman, a 71 year old, who was hurt in Loveland, Colorado at King Soopers.

A young man was pushing boxes, a stocker, and he pushed a box into this very nice older lady and he hurt her. And she went down and she had a torn rotator cuff.

The insurance company offered her $30,000. The jury gave her over $700,000.

When that happens, you know something is, one, somebody is very badly hurt. She did have surgery, she was...

Expenses are a critical issue in having any personal injury case in your firm. A criticism of a lot of attorneys would be that when they have a client come into their office and say "I will fight for you!"

The lawyers that are perennial winners, they are well funded and that comes from years too. The young lawyer coming out of school or the lawyer that's around for 5 or 10 years, he doesn't have the billfold. I excuse the expression, but it's that simple.

To be able to take on these cases, you have got to have the resources for those cases.

When they're trying to out spend you, you simply have to put the money up. And people that are hurt, people that are hurt, they don't have the money to hire an engineer or to even pay the doctors. You know, a lot of...

The work that I do is completely dependent on success and we work with contingent fees.

A contingent fee agreement, essentially, is a fee arrangement between the attorney and the client where the attorney is paid if he's successful. That's different, for instance than almost any other endeavor of the law because everything else is based upon percentage or flat rate.

So, if I'm not successful, first of all, my client isn't successful, but then, my firm isn't successful.

And so, we work with a standard contingent fee arrangement where I advance all costs and that is a huge, huge undertaking because in some cases, the costs may be as much as, well, certainly tens of thousands of dollars.

I've had case after case where they were over a hundred thousand dollars and I had to have the money to put into the case.

So, we work out a percentage,...