Growing up, my mother always told me that my body was a temple. Her purpose in saying that was to remind me that I should be carful of what I ate and drank. I’m sure she felt frustrated that my usual response was “temple of doom!”, but her point was driven home and I still remember her advice today.

Sometimes, however, even with the best intentions in mind, what we put into our bodies ends up harming us. Take health supplements, for example. There are many supplements that we consume in pill or powder form in order to lose weight or have more energy. The problem is that many of these substances are unregulated, making what we consume to make our lives better often has the opposite effect.

Last year the US Army pulled any and all products containing DMAA (dimethylamylamine), a powerful stimulant similar to ephedrine, from the stores on its bases. The reason? DMAA was found in the toxicology reports of two soldiers who had died while exercising. The Army also reported other soldiers who suffered from kidney failure, seizures, and loss of consciousness after taking supplements with DMAA. Other supplement ingredients that have caused injury include Kava (liver failure), synephrine (heart attack), chaparral (liver / kidney damage), and sibrutramine (stroke).

So, why do companies use harmful ingredients and what can you do if you’ve suffered because of it? First of all, many “dietary nutritional supplements” are not regulated by the FDA. In fact, any ingredient used in a supplement, whether effective or not, that existed prior to 1994 doesn’t even have to pass safety tests! Companies use what’s called a “structure/function claim” to skirt FDA testing and approval. These structure/function claims are aimed at describing their ingredients’ role in affecting the normal structure or function of a human being. For example, many of these types of pills for men may say “supports sexual health.” The one thing that all these supplements will have in common is the following disclaimer: “This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, prevent, or cure any disease.”

If you feel you have suffered because of an unregulated dietary supplement, call David Francis today. David and his team can navigate the complex legal issues surrounding regulatory and supplement negligence lawsuits. There are many of these unregulated products throughout Las Vegas. Remember, however, that your body is a temple and if that temple has been hurt by someone else’s negligence, you have someone on your side!

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

We’ve all heard the phrase “like taking candy from a baby,” right? Well, have you ever actually tried to take candy from an infant or toddler? You take that sucker or whatever away and it’s like their world has come to an end. There is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth! Taking candy from your child most often involves complicated negotiations in which you look for some sort of compromise. Some of those compromises include giving the candy back after the child has eaten something other than sugar, promising a toy or a trip to the park, or maybe even resorting to some sort of punishment if the candy isn’t relinquished. In this sense, working towards a settlement with an insurance company is a lot “like taking candy from a baby.”

There are several things that the insurance company will do in order to limit the amount of money it pays you for your injury. What follows are the four “D’s” of insurance company tactics accompanied by an explanation of how you and your attorney can combat them and get the maximum amount due.

Documentation: This is the biggest tactic used by insurance companies to limit the amount of money they will offer. The insurance company will ask you for detailed medical records, accident reports, witness statements, or even other insurance policies. Some of the information requested by insurance companies is certainly legitimate. They have an obligation to prove that your injuries are real and not fabricated. They will use your medical reports do to this, which is why it is very important to not only see a doctor about any injury you receive, but to also keep very concise records about treatment, etc. This documentation acts as written proof of your loss. However, having an insurance company continue to ask for every little thing can be frustrating and can lead some people to become too frustrated to continue with their medical treatments or to continue working towards a settlement. To combat this, your attorney will ask you to be patient. Some cases can take months to settle, but if you have provided proper documentation, then the settlement will be in your favor.

Dispute: Even though your insurance company did not go to medical school, it has no problem disputing your medical treatments or medical charges. As we’ve discussed previously, an insurance company can look at the damage to your car and then argue that the injury you received was not related to that wreck. The insurance company can also offer to pay the doctor a discounted rate for your medical bills. This has the unfortunate effect of making medical treatment more difficult to receive, because your doctor is not getting paid the full amount. You and your attorney can use detailed documentation to prove your medical treatments and charges are justified. Also, by letting your doctor know that you are working with an attorney on a case, your attorney and your doctor can begin to work together to manage any insurance company claim.

Delay: Your kids use this one all the time and it’s just as effective when done by an insurance company. The insurance company adjuster may be unresponsive or may be very slow at returning calls. Their goal is to wear you out, but it is patience that will win the battle. It the demand letter, your attorney will set forth a reasonable timeframe for response. If that deadline is missed, then the insurance company begins down the path of bad faith.

Disservice: Your insurance company will offer you some very self-serving advice, doing you a great disservice. One such piece of advice you may receive is that you don’t need to hire an attorney. Without an attorney, however, there is a very high probability that your case will settle for much less if it settles at all. The insurance company has a team of lawyers and actuaries all running scenarios and looking out for the interests of the company. You need someone to look out for your interests. The insurance company may also try and make promises that are seemingly very generous. Remember, nothing is done until it has been written and signed. If your insurance company begins to make promises, ask for those to be in writing. Our guess is that you’ll never see them.

Working towards a fair settlement with an insurance company takes time and effort. David Francis and his team know how to combat the four D’s of insurance company settlement tactics and will get you the compensation you deserve for your Las Vegas personal injury. Call us today for a free consultation if you or someone you know has been injured in an accident. You need someone on your side!

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

Imagine it’s Christmas in the mid 1980′s. You’re 7 or 8 years old and all you want, the only thing you’ve been asking for day after day, driving your parents crazy, is a Nintendo. Now flash forward to Christmas morning. You wake up, run to the tree expecting to play Super Mario Bros. until the wee hours of the morning, but there is no Nintendo. Instead, your parents bought you (or was it Santa Claus?) an IBM XT 286 personal computer. Are you crushed, maybe devastated, ready to call Santa and give him a piece of your mind? Well, if you’re John Francis, you’ve just been handed the future.

What John’s parents knew then and what we here at The David Francis Law Firm know now is that John Francis is too smart and talented to limit his computer interaction to a game console. As the firm’s IT guru, John has done several things to truly enhance the client’s experience and set us apart from other personal injury law firms. When John started working here we were using Google Spreadsheets to track client progress and manage settlements. It was a fine process that allowed for a decent number of cases to be handled by each of our case managers. With Google Spreadsheets, however, there was a lot of redundancy and added data entry. There was also a fair amount of searching that had to be done each time a client called.

Because John and David are cousins, there were a number of family gatherings and opportunities to speak with each other over the years.  Their shared love for technology meant that most of their conversations were more about algorithms and open source code rather than sports or weather.  David became fascinated with the work that John was doing as the head of IT for the South Fremont School District in Southeast Idaho.  With limited resources, John was using the latest clustering network technology to bring new life to old computers that would otherwise be thrown away.  John wrote a program that made use of the processing power of an old desktop machine and added that power to the collective network cluster he had built for the school’s network.  The result was a faster, more powerful network with little added cost.  David was beyond impressed and began speaking with John about the ideas he had to build a custom client database that would not only track client case information, but help a client every step of the way and result in a better settlement for the client.  (During the three years that David worked as a defense attorney for insurance companies, he learned about the custom software that insurance companies use to devalue a case and eventually deny or minimize a clients claim for damages.  With a custom client database, we could combat the insurance companies software with better software.  Fight fire with fire.)   

Once John agreed to start working for the David Francis Law Firm, they spent many hours educating John on the legal process.  David and John went beyond information tracking and chose to build software that would ensure customer service from the ground up.  They wanted to make sure that the clients experience with the David Francis Law Firm was the most important factor in the software build.  David chose a specific database foundation that was Apple and iOS device friendly, and John was then able to customize an entirely new program aimed at increasing efficiency and enhancing customer service. David named the software “WAVE” because the idea came to him when he was walking along the beach near Surfer’s Paradise, Australia near where his mother was born and raised. The “wave” of information that is gathered and builds on each case is essential to a successful outcome. David and John knew they were on to something important that would optimize the labor-intensive data entry and categorization while at the same time deliver unmatched customer service. In a phrase, John has worked to remove the barriers of communication between the client and the case manager. By so doing, WAVE has created time savings which has allowed our lawyers to serve our clients better. 

We here at the firm cannot imagine what work would be like without John. His love of technology is contagious (not to mention the super cool Hawaiian shirts his wife Michelle sews for him, and his killer mustache!) which has given us a greater appreciation for the tools we use. Essentially, we are John’s customers and he excels at keeping us happy. So, what’s next for John and The David Francis Law Firm? Aside from the development of WAVE, John has been instrumental in developing an iPhone and Android App for the firm. Keep your eyes open for even more direct lines of communication between clients and case managers by giving clients mobile access to their information online, from their phones and from tablet computers.

Now, we’re not saying that this will work out the same way as it did for John Francis, but if your kids are asking for the latest and greatest video game console for Christmas, you may want to “surprise” them with something that requires a bit more thought to operate. Who knows? That kid may just fulfill the dream of better living through technology!

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

As personal injury attorneys, our focus is on getting you the compensation you deserve for your injury. For that reason, you don’t hear us talk too much about vehicle damage in car accidents. However, vehicle damage is a key indicator in helping to prove the extent of the physical injuries you sustain in a crash. What follows is a summary of why damage to a car, even minor damage, should not be overlooked when working towards a settlement with an insurance company.

Contrary to popular belief, a car’s bumper is not designed as a safety feature. A bumper’s purpose, according to the NHTSA, is to “prevent or reduce physical damage to the front and rear ends of passenger motor vehicles in low-speed collisions. Automobile bumpers are not typically designed to be structural components that would significantly contribute to vehicle crashworthiness or occupant protection during front or rear collisions. It is not a safety feature intended to prevent or mitigate injury severity to occupants in the passenger cars. Bumpers are designed to protect the hood, trunk, grille, fuel, exhaust and cooling system as well as safety related equipment such as parking lights, headlamps and taillights in low speed collisions.”

Interestingly, insurance companies are adept at correlating minor bumper damage to minor personal injury. Their argument is that because there is little damage to the automobile, there must be little or no damage to the occupants. The truth, which insurance companies conveniently overlook, is just plain physics. Newton’s Second Law of Motion states that acceleration is dependent on two factors: force and mass. When a truck, for example, rear-ends your car the acceleration of your vehicle as a result of the accident is directly proportional to the force of the crash. Most of the time that acceleration is absorbed by your bones, tendons, muscles, etc. In short, the bumper may do a good job protecting the working parts of your car, but it does a lousy job protecting you.

So, how can your attorney truly assess and correlate the damage your vehicle sustains to the injury you sustain? Well, one way to do that is to inspect even the hidden parts of the vehicle. Removing the bumper, for example, is a great way to see the actual damage done in a rear-end collision. There are shock absorbers on most bumpers that are not visible until the bumper is removed. The distance those shocks are compressed can be used to calculate the force at which the car was hit. Experts can then quantify what the occupants’ bodies absorbed, which gives a clearer picture of why the injury sustained is justified.

In the event of a rear-end collision, we here at the David Francis Law Firm will have your body shop pull off the rear bumper to view the true extent of damage to your vehicle. A small visible dent or ding on your bumper can actually be much worse once a true picture of the crash is visible. This total picture is what we send to the insurance companies in companion with a detailed description of your injuries. It is difficult for an insurance company to argue a case when they’re presented with the whole truth!

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

We wrote the other day about liability minimums and limits with regards to your auto insurance. In that discussion we talked about why higher limits on your liability insurance were probably better and then we talked about how those limits affect you if you’ve been injured in an accident. During that discussion the phrase “bad faith” came up. Just what is bad faith and how does it relate to your personal injury case?

When referencing insurance, bad faith simply means the refusal to perform a specific duty or contractual obligation. Think of the following scenario. You are driving along the Las Vegas Strip, enjoying the bumper to bumper traffic and endless waves of tourists. You stop at a stop light, but the person behind you, distracted by a water show or moving billboard or some sort of street vendor, rear ends you with enough force to cause some neck trauma. You are taken to the hospital and told that you will need surgery to repair the damage. You call a lawyer. You file a suit. You’re still with us, right?

Okay. Let’s now say that your attorney contacts the insurance company of the person who hit you. Their liability limits are $100,000 and you have $100,000 in injury costs. Based on what we wrote last week, the insurance company can agree to pay out the policy limit of $100,000. What if, however, the insurance company does not agree to pay out the entire $100,000? If that is the case, then your lawyer will sue the driver who hit you. If you’re asking where bad faith comes into play, pay attention to what happens next.

Since it was the insurance company of the negligent driver that refused to pay what it should have, the insurance company has essentially acted in “bad faith” against the insured. It has broken its own “good faith and fair dealing” portion of the contract it has with the insured. Therefore, it is now up to the negligent driver to sue his own insurance company for refusal to perform its contractual obligation. Finally, that contract is signed over to your attorney, who will step in to sue the negligent insurance company. It is the settlement from that suit that pays for your medical bills, pain and suffering, etc.

Bad faith lawsuits are not terribly uncommon and there are many other reasons than the one simple example listed above that they can occur. For that reason, it is important to deal directly with an attorney if you have been injured in an accident. David Francis and his team are standing by to help get you the compensation you deserve and make sure that you are treated fairly.

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

In Nevada the minimum amount of liability car insurance you can legally have is 15/30/10, which means $15,000 in injury coverage to one person, $30,000 in injury coverage to two or more people, and $10,000 in property damage coverage. Liability car insurance is that insurance used to pay for damages to another person, place or thing if you are at fault in an accident. If you are a Nevada driver, the questions  you should be asking yourself are, is minimum liability enough and if not, what should my liability insurance be?

Are the state required minimums sufficient for you? One way to answer that question is to look at what an average car accident costs in economic terms. According to the National Safety Council, the average car accident with a non-incapacitating injury costs $22,300 for the injury and $8,900 for property damage. As you can see, you are already $7,300 over your injury limits. In more severe injury cases, that average cost goes up to $70,200, leaving you $55,200 in the hole. If you have an “average” car accident, the state required minimum liability insurance is not enough to cover the costs you will be required to pay.

What should your liability insurance be? In a serious accident your financial responsibility could go well beyond the limits of your liability insurance, leaving you responsible for thousands of dollars in medical bills, lost income, etc. It most often makes sense to purchase the maximum auto liability insurance you can reasonably afford. This will be money well-spent if you are ever in a serious accident.

The next question you are probably asking is, what if I am the victim in the accident? How do I make sure I receive compensation commensurate to my injuries? As Las Vegas personal injury attorneys, David Francis and his team work with you and your medical providers to assess you past, present and future medical needs. The dollar figure assigned to those needs as well as any lost time away from work or other lost income is what is pursued by your lawyer. In most cases, that figure is within the policy limits of the at-fault party.

The next logical question is, of course, what if those limits aren’t sufficient? What if my medical needs go beyond what the at-fault individual is insured to cover? Sadly, if the insurance company has tendered its policy limits, the individual who caused the accident will most likely not have the means to pay for bills out of pocket. There is a reason many people choose to only purchase the minimum required liability insurance. They just don’t have the money. This is why uninsured motorist insurance exists and why it is a good reason to look into purchasing it. And then there’s “bad faith,” which is something we’ll look at in our next post. Stay tuned!

If you or a loved one have been injured in an accident, call the David Francis Law Firm today for a free consultation. It is only by filing a suit that you will know the true policy limits of the person who caused the accident and it is only by working with an attorney that you will receive the maximum compensation for your losses.

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

Imagine the following scenario: You’re in an automobile accident that injures your back; you need medical care, even maybe surgery; you contact your attorney and file a case against the negligent driver; you ask yourself the following question, “Who is going to pay my medical bills? Will I need to use the money I receive from my settlement to pay for the doctor visits?”

It’s not uncommon for personal injury clients to have questions about paying their medical bills. However, many falsely assume that just because they have a pending legal case, they will not be responsible for paying their doctor’s invoices. If the client has health insurance, the client should most definitely use it to pay for his or her healthcare. Let us explain why.

Insured healthcare is significantly less expensive than uninsured healthcare, not to mention the fact that the whole reason you have health insurance is to help pay healthcare related costs. There are many doctors, chiropractors, and physical therapists who will take care of your injuries without insurance, but their costs will be high and you will pay them directly out of the settlement you receive. Insured health coverage is “re-priced,” meaning that the prices you pay for services are the prices that the insurance company pays, not necessarily what the doctors charge.

One question you may have is, how do I pay my health insurance premiums or out-of-network reimbursements? The short answer is that you will pay those bills with the settlement you receive. Again, those costs will be far less than the costs you would incur if you financed your medical expenses through a financing company or directly with the doctor.

If you have been injured in an accident, call The David Francis Law Firm today. We will help you navigate the sometimes tricky world of insurance and answer any questions you have.

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

Our day-to-day speech is riddled with expressions and metaphors whose provenience is mostly ignored. Just think of the baseball metaphors that are used in your daily business meetings. “Come on, guys. We really need to hit this proposal out of the park!” Lawyers are not immune to such terms. We’re fond of using Latin, for example, mostly just to make us sound smarter! There are several terms that we use, however, whose origens even stumped us. What follows are four words and phrases that are used quite commonly, but whose roots have long been somewhat hidden¹.

• Third Degree
•      Common Usage – A term that essentially means ‘to extract information’ or ‘interrogation.’
•      Used in a Sentence – They gave him the third degree and he still didn’t confess!
•      Origen – The highest degree within the Freemasons is the third degree, which is obtained after much
•                    interrogation. Since many of the 1800′s top brass on the New York City police force were
•                    Freemasons, the term ‘third degree’ was used after a particularly harsh interrogation.
• Boilerplate
•      Common Usage – A term that means formulaic or unvarying text. The generalized language in a real
•                                 estate contract, for example, is called the ”boilerplate.’
•      Used in a Sentence – We can start with the standard boilerplate template and then modify the legal
•                                       language from there.
•      Origen – In the early 1800′s steam boilers were made of thin plates of steel. As newspapers began to
•                    become more and more regional, similar thin sheets of steel were printed with stories that
•                    were then sold to multiple outlets. Since the steel sheets could not be changed, the stories
•                    were printed as written.
• Read the Riot Act:
•      Common Usage – A phrase that basically means ‘to scorn and/or warn someone that their actions
•                                 are unappreciated and worthy of punishment.’
•      Used in a Sentence – Man, she read me the riot act after I took her car without permission.
•      Origen – The Riot Act was a law put into effect in 1715 in England to protect the king from any kind of
•                    organized revolution. If a group of 12 or more people were gathered together, the authorities
•                    would literally read the Riot Act, which warned them that if they didn’t disperse, they would
•                    be arrested or hanged.
• Blackmail
•      Common Usage – Another word for extortion, meaning extracting something in exchange for not
•                                 revealing certain information.
•      Used in a Sentence – I was blackmailed into paying him so that he wouldn’t tell the boss that I was the
•                                       one who deleted those files.
•      Origen – In 16th century Scotland, the word for payment was maill and black was used to denote the
•                    sinister nature of an exchange (like black market). Black maill was literally an underhanded
•                    exchange.

Although far from scientific, we conducted a small survey here in the office and asked what image or thought first popped into the staffs’ heads when we said the words “Netherlands” or “Dutch.” Somewhat predictably, here is a summary: wooden clogs, blond pig tails (hair in braids), dykes, windmills, and tulips. David, of course, being a former member of USA Cycling’s junior team, said “cycling!”

In a country where bicycles outnumber people, the Netherlands sits as a model for bicycle-friendly policies. One such policy is that of Strict Liability being placed on the drivers of cars. This means that regardless of fault, a car’s driver is responsible for any accident between that car and a bicycle. The car’s driver is strictly liable even if he or she didn’t cause the accident. The reasoning behind this law is fairly simple; cars are larger and are capable of more harm.

How does this differ from laws here in the United States? Well, in summary, the burden of proof lies with the cyclist. The cyclist must prove that the driver of the car was negligent and that the cyclist was injured because of the driver’s negligence. There is no strict liability. It this case, even if you are injured, the driver of the car and his insurance company appointed attorney only have to create enough doubt about your case to win theirs. (This is one very good reason to hire an attorney if you’ve been injured in an accident.)

So, to the headlining question, would strict liability for car drivers work in the United States? We suppose that depends on who you ask. Almost any cyclist who shares the road with cars will be in favor of strict liability for motorists. As a driver, on the other hand, it may not be so simple. Few motorists would want to accept blanket liability for all cyclists they encounter on the road. What if a cyclist is wearing dark clothing at night with no lights? What if a cyclist is impaired in some way? And what if a cyclist disobeys a clearly marked traffic sign?

Perhaps a better question to ask would be, has the Dutch law of strict liability made cyclists safer? The reasoning is that strict liability “scares” the motorists into being more cautious and aware around cyclists. That is a question that is difficult to answer. Besides the strict liability law, the Netherlands has a sophisticated system of transportation that includes bike-only paths and roads that serve specific purposes based on the speed, direction, and even mass of the road user. This makes traffic more predictable and, therefore, safer.

Further complicating the question of strict liability and safety is the fact that just because a motorist is liable, doesn’t necessarily mean that the motorist will drive more carefully. Take rear-end collisions, for example. Here in the United States, a rear-end collision almost always finds fault with the driver who rear-ends the car in front. This fact has not caused a decrease in the number of rear-end collisions. Human fallibility will always be, well, human.

What conclusions, then, can we draw from the Dutch system? First of all, bikes aren’t going anywhere and neither are cars. Several cities, including Las Vegas, are incentivising the use of bicycles in urban settings, providing for an increase in motorist/cyclist interactions. Second, motorist strict liability alone won’t make our streets safer for cyclists. Like the Dutch, we need a sustainable avenue of safe passages for bikes. And finally, the law can be complicated. Both motorists and cyclists have rights that need to be represented. Legally fixing liability on one party will not necessarily fix the problem.

Our thoughts are these. We would love for motorists to take more responsibility by obeying traffic laws, paying attention, and telling the truth when there has been an accident. The same can also be said for cyclists! But until we operate more like the Netherlands, David Francis and his team are hear to help anyone who has been injured in an accident. Because of the laws that govern Nevada and other states, hiring an attorney is your best bet when looking for compensation for your injuries.

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys

This past weekend several members of the David Francis Law Firm participated in the Tour de Cure bicycle ride that raised money for the American Diabetes Association. We were among many riders from across the valley here in Las Vegas who turned out to show our support and help raise awareness for a disease that affects some 25.8 million people in the United States alone.

Many of our own clients and family members have this disease and we know how important it is to Stop Diabetes. By showing our support, we ended up being the fourth largest corporate donor and had riders in each of the four different distances: 15 miles, 40 miles, 60 miles, and 100 miles. The elements conspired against us and there were some cold toes at the finish line, but being a part of something greater certainly warmed us from the inside.

Supporting great causes like the Tour de Cure has always been a priority for the firm. Our own David Francis, having spent much of his youth traveling the world and racing his bicycle for the United States Cycling Team, has even started his own charity as a way to help children experience the joy, freedom and confidence of having a bicycle of their own. Every Kid a Bike works to give bicycles to underprivileged children who would not otherwise have access to one. It is a cause that we are passionate about and one that is certainly needed.

Tags: Las Vegas Accident Attorneys