Tuesday, June 27, 2006

How To Increase Insurance Premiums

More a disappointment than a surprise:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has ordered the disbarment of a Philadelphia attorney who served time in prison after pleading guilty to charges he defrauded a slew of insurers on behalf of personal injury plaintiffs who in reality had not needed medical attention.

During a disciplinary hearing Michael Radbill suggested that the practice of representing clients who are "not really injured" is endemic across the state, according to the report from the Supreme Court's Disciplinary Board.


He also indicated that over the course of a 30-year career, 80 percent of his practice had been centered on the representation of uninjured personal injury clients. ...

The federal investigation also produced evidence that Radbill had employed people to recruit personal injury clients, help stage slip-and-falls for his clients and oversee his clients' treatment by medical providers willing to falsify records and insurance claims, according to the report....

According to the report, Radbill said at a disciplinary hearing that "I got into personal injury cases and ... when I was a young lawyer, [people told me], 'You're going to get accident cases of people that aren't really hurt, you say they're hurt and you send them to the doctor.'

"That's not right, OK?" Radbill continued, according to the report. "And I did it for 30 years and there's a thousand more here in this state that do it, and I told [the investigators] that, and they said, 'Yeah, but you got caught,' [for] which I served my time, I didn't make excuses, so that's true."

Meaning there's about 1,000 more disbarments to go...

Not exactly a Milberg, Weiss Moment, but we're getting there...

My father, who was an attorney, would rather have spit on my mother than utter the words "Personal Injury Lawyer." That was 40 years ago--nothing seems to have changed, eh?

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