Large Attorney’s Fee Recovery for Russell Dohan
Big Settlement For A Local Miami Personal Injury Lawyer
Board Certified Attorney Russell Dohan’s experience and Board Certification status paid off in a big way recently in recovering attorneys fees in a Miami-Dade Court, with the Judge awarding him $600 per hour, for a total fee due of almost $200,000.
Normally the rule is that each party pays their own attorney. In a personal injury case, we take a percentage of the award to our Client. However, there is a law in Florida that forces a Defendant to pay fees when the Plaintiff makes an offer to settle the case and the offer is not accepted by the Defendant. If the Plaintiff obtains a verdict at trial of 25% more than the final settlement demand, the Plaintiff’s lawyer receive fees from the Defendant.
In this case, such a result was had and in a big way. Our client suffered a simple sprain. We made a final settlement offer of $7,000, which the Defendant’s insurance company refused to pay. At trial, we recovered $11,000. Imagine the shock the Defendant and his insurance company had when the Court awarded $200,000 in attorneys fees on top of the $11,000 Verdict. To make matters worse, the Defendant was an individual who only had $100,000 in insurance coverage. Of course, the Defendant looked to his insurance company to pay the entire award, since their failure to pay the simple $7,000 in the first place led to this problem for him. State Farm, the Defendant’s insurance company, ended up paying the entire award. A case that could have and should have been settled for $7,000, ended up costing an insurance company well more than $200,000. Here at Goldberg & Dohan, no matter how big a case is or how insignificant a case may seem to others, we fight them all with everything we’ve got, and sometimes, that fight is well rewarded.
Posted by Goldberg Dohan, in Miami Personal Injury Lawyer, News & Press Releases