There was a point in a recent car accident case when Tom Pope could have kept going.
We could have scheduled doctors' depositions. We could have deposed experts. We could have taken corporate depositions and continued preparing the case for the next stage of litigation.
There was plenty of legal work left to do.
It also would have cost our client somewhere between $30,000 and $50,000.
Tom decided not to do it.
Instead, he picked up the phone.
Two weeks later, the other side offered the full $950,000 available policy limits.
There's No Shortcut to Experience
Tom has a simple way of putting it:
"There's no other way to create experience other than time."
That experience doesn't always reveal itself in a dramatic courtroom moment.
Sometimes it's recognizing when you've done enough.
In this case, our client had been seriously injured in a car crash. Tom understood the injuries, the evidence and what he believed the case was worth.
He also knew what would come next if the litigation continued.
Doctor depositions aren't free.
Experts aren't free.
Corporate depositions, transcripts and the other work required to prepare a serious injury case can add substantial expense.
Those costs can absolutely be necessary. We've spent that money when we believed it was needed to prove a client's case.
This time, Tom wasn't convinced it was.
The Question Wasn't Whether We Could Keep Litigating
We could.
The better question was:
Would spending another $30,000 to $50,000 put our client in a better position?
That's a very different calculation.
Tom decided to call the lawyer representing the other side before beginning the next expensive phase of the case.
He laid out the facts.
He explained what he believed the case was worth.
Then he gave the other side one more opportunity to resolve it for the available policy limits.
Those limits were $950,000.
Within approximately two weeks, the call came back.
They were offering the limits.
A Canton Car Accident Attorney Should Care About What the Client Actually Takes Home
Settlement numbers get attention.
We understand why.
"$950,000 settlement" makes a much better headline than "lawyer decided not to take several depositions."
But the second part of this story may have mattered just as much to our client.
Case expenses generally affect what remains from a recovery after a case is resolved.
So when we're deciding whether to spend another dollar developing a case, there needs to be a reason for it.
Sometimes spending $30,000 on experts could help create hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in additional value. In the right case, we'd make that investment without hesitation.
But spending money simply because it's the next item on the litigation checklist doesn't make sense to us.
An experienced Canton Car Accident Attorney should constantly be asking whether the next step is likely to improve the client's position.
In this case, Tom believed a conversation might accomplish more than another round of depositions.
It did.
The Cheapest Strategy Isn't Always the Right Strategy Either
There's an important distinction here.
The lesson from this case is not that lawyers should avoid spending money on cases.
Quite the opposite.
We've handled cases where uncovering the truth required extensive investigation.
In one head-on collision case, we obtained medical records belonging to the defendant driver. Buried in those records was a lab report indicating a controlled substance was in the driver's system when she was treated after the crash.
The insurance adjuster hadn't found it.
The defense attorney hadn't found it.
We did.
That case went to trial, and the evidence became an important part of presenting our client's case to the jury.
In another case, a trucking company blamed our clients after they were rear-ended by a tractor trailer. We continued investigating and obtained video that showed the truck driver looking down at a phone before the collision.
Those were cases where digging deeper mattered.
This $950,000 case presented a different problem.
Tom believed we had already reached the point where the other side should understand its exposure.
Experience meant recognizing the difference.
Sometimes You Spend the Money. Sometimes You Make the Call.
That's probably the part of personal injury litigation that's hardest to explain from the outside.
There isn't one playbook.
If there were, you wouldn't need decades of experience. You could simply follow the checklist.
Take this deposition.
Hire this expert.
Order this record.
File this motion.
Go to mediation.
But every one of those decisions has consequences.
A deposition might uncover evidence that transforms the case.
It might also cost thousands of dollars and tell us something we already know.
An expert might be essential.
Or that expert might add very little to evidence that's already strong.
The job isn't to do the most work possible.
The job is to know which work matters.
We Were Prepared to Do the Heavy Lifting
There's another reason Tom's phone call worked.
The other side needed to understand what would happen if the answer was no.
Tom wasn't calling because we wanted to avoid preparing the case.
He was calling before we did it.
If the policy limits weren't offered, we were prepared to move forward with the doctors, experts, depositions and other work Tom believed would be necessary.
That distinction matters.
You can't create meaningful leverage by threatening to do something everyone knows you're unwilling or unable to do.
Tom and Jon Pope have spent decades trying cases.
The lawyer on the other end of that phone call knew the conversation wasn't necessarily the end of the case.
It was an opportunity to resolve it before both sides spent considerably more time and money.
Two weeks later, the case was offered at the limits.
The Headline Number Isn't the Only Number That Matters
We talk a lot at Hasty Pope about what settlement numbers actually mean.
There's the gross recovery.
Then there are the costs required to obtain it.
Those are not the same thing.
If two strategies can produce the same $950,000 recovery, but one requires an additional $40,000 in case expenses, that difference matters to the injured person.
That's money.
Real money.
And it's one reason we don't think the job ends with asking, "How much can we recover?"
We also have to ask:
What will it cost our client to get there?
Experience Can Mean Knowing When to Slow Down
We've written before about cases where experience told us not to settle yet.
We've had clients who were still treating and didn't know whether their injuries would become permanent.
In those cases, slowing down can protect the client.
This case was almost the reverse.
We knew enough.
The evidence was developed enough.
The other side had an opportunity to understand the risk.
Continuing to spend money before having one direct conversation didn't make sense to Tom.
That's what makes these cases interesting after all these years.
Experience doesn't always tell you to push harder.
Sometimes it tells you to wait.
Sometimes it tells you to investigate one more document.
Sometimes it tells you to prepare for trial.
And occasionally, it tells you to pick up the phone.
What Decades of Handling Car Accident Cases Actually Gives You
People often describe an attorney as "experienced" by listing the number of years they've practiced law.
That's useful information, but it doesn't explain much.
The value isn't simply that another year passed.
It's having seen enough cases to recognize patterns while still understanding that the next case may be different.
It's remembering the deposition that turned out to be unnecessary.
The expert who changed a case.
The medical record everyone else overlooked.
The settlement offer that should have been rejected.
And the case where one conversation saved the client tens of thousands of dollars.
Those experiences accumulate.
Eventually they affect the decisions you make before you ever walk into a courtroom.
That's what Tom means when he says there is no other way to create experience than time.
What We Want Our Clients to Understand
Hiring a Canton Car Accident Attorney shouldn't simply mean hiring someone who knows how to make a claim and negotiate a settlement.
Serious injury cases involve judgment calls all the way through.
When should we investigate further?
When should we wait?
When should we spend money?
When should we refuse an offer?
When should we try the case?
And when has the other side finally put enough money on the table that continuing to litigate no longer serves the client?
In this case, our client was seriously injured.
The available limits were $950,000.
Tom gave the other lawyer one final opportunity to resolve the case at those limits before we incurred another $30,000 to $50,000 in expenses.
Two weeks later, they did.
We're proud of the recovery.
But we're equally proud of what we didn't have to spend to obtain it.
That's experience too.
Past results do not guarantee similar outcomes. Every case is different and must be evaluated based on its individual facts and circumstances.