January 29, 2009 by Zale.

I’m a gun owner.  I always have been.  Soon I will have my carry permit.  Here is a great comment from a Tennessee judge to a residential burglary victim,

“There should be a law that law abiding citizens with no felony convictions should own a gun.”

Way to go judge!  He went on to tell the defendant,

“If it had been my house you came in on, you would have wound up at Coulter Funeral Home.”

That would have been a good time to have been in court.  Here’s the whole story.  Check it out.

Posted in Gun Law, Criminal Law | 1 Comment »

January 6, 2009 by Zale.

Criminal law is not my biggest area to work, but I do some.  Its a bit of a fascination to me, since it has to do with the state’s taking away someone’s liberty, possessions and sometimes life.

Ever since my first Criminal Law class in law school, I remember there being a question as to whether or not Miranda warnings were still necessary and viable.  Why?  Because there all over TV.  Watch any given police show at least twice and you will be introduced to them.  Matter of fact, most frequent TV watchers can cite the warning better than any law student, because they hear it, or hear of it, all the time.

So, in Tennessee v. Dailey the question was raised in a Tennessee case as to when the officer’s should have Mirandized the accused.  The officers effectively used the “question first” technique on their target suspect, got him to confess, then Mirandized him.   So, it was not a question of whether or not he was Mirandized.  They did that.  It was a question of when.

It seems to me that this case is about changing the way interrogations have been conducted in Tennessee.  The “question first” technique was ruled against in 2004 by the US Supreme Court.  Apparently that memo didn’t make it to the officers.  Hence, a person who plead guilty to murder walks.  Man, that’s a hard lesson for society to swallow.

Posted in Criminal Law | No Comments »

January 3, 2009 by Zale.

The problem is lack of consistency.  In some instances, they will offer you money on cases that you never dreamed they would.  Those are good days.  In other instances, they make terrible offers or even denials on very viable cases.

They claim that this is due to every claim being different.  I think there are more subtle reasons like:

• How well the claims staff, including the manager and claims analyst, is trained. Many people would be amazed at how poorly and inconsistently claims operations are trained.
• How much the insurance company simply wants to close claims. Insurance company “sales” are a good thing for everyone.
• Whether or not the claimant or attorney has upset the adjuster. Don’t bite the hand that you want to feed you, if at all possible.  Sometimes its just unavoidable.
• The current trend of the company or industry regarding making fair offers or making a point.  Insurance companies watch and imitate each other.  Each one goes through trends of first, “look how much we are cutting claims costs” then “we need to reduce our number of claims”. Often, they never figure out that the two are related.
  
• Whether or not the company or adjuster is seeing every single claim as fraudulent.  Which was the culture at Allstate.  Everything to them seemed to be fraud.
• Or even matters as arbitrary as whether or not its the end of the month or the end of the year.  Often this is the best time to push for the closure of a claim, since insurance companies adjust their mandated reserves at the end of each month.

So what’s my point?  If you value your claim, you’ll talk to an attorney about it, before its too late.

Posted in Negotiations, Litigation, Injury Law, Insurance Practices, Insurance Law | No Comments »