Vega$

Vega$

Welcome_to_Las_Vegas_signEvery attorney who tries cases to juries has lost cases they should have won, and won cases they should have lost. One local judge told me once that he figured this out years ago when he was served with a paternity suit one morning and a divorce on the grounds of impotency that same afternoon…and lost both cases. So every trial is a gamble. No good attorney will ever guaranty a result. What a good attorney can do is to give you an idea of the likelihood of a victory at trial and the range of damages that could be recovered. A good attorney will also get the best settlement offer possible on the table. Then you have the information you need to make the best decision for you. Do you take the certainty of the settlement? Or do you take a calculated risk hoping to get more, but knowing there is the possibility of getting less?

As an attorney I am fine either way as long as I know my client understands the risks and benefits. On rare occasions I have had a client who will not listen to me and insists that his case is a certain victory or vastly overestimates the value of his damages. They simply refuse to acknowledge the risks and benefits I give them. My final strategy to those clients is to tell them that the best odds to get the huge amount of money they want is to take the settlement amount and fly to Las Vegas. That way they will at least have a little fun if they lose it all. Sometimes this gets their head in the right place to think about their case logically and not emotionally and they make an informed decision. One client even did what I said and actually won in the casino. (and he didn’t even have to pay me a contingency fee on the winnings).

-Bradley A. Coxe is a practicing attorney in Wilmington, NC who practices in Personal Injury, Car Accidents, Medical Malpractice, Contract and Real Estate disputes, and all forms of Civil Litigation. Please contact him at (910) 772-1678.