Lawsuit Loans Blog

Atlas!  We have had many inquiries in the past on Seroquel only to be turned down.  In the last few months, we have had numerous request on Seroquel funding and have approved at least 95% of them.  If you have a Seroquel case and want funding, please read on.

The maximum amount that my Funder will be able to approve Seroquel cases (if qualified), is $1,000.  According to my Funder, these cases are not settling for much therefore, the most they will advance on Seroquel cases is $1,000, no more.

Some clients have their settlement award letter already but are just waiting to get their settlement into their hands.  If you fall in this category and can’t wait for your settlement to come in, we can assist you.  We would just need for you to fax us your settlement award letter and apply with us online at www.get-lawsuit-loan.com.  At the very top right (right below the lady holding cash), hit the “Request Money Application” button and fill out the form.  Once we receive your information, we will go ahead and forward it to our underwriter for review.

If you are still waiting for your settlement award letter, don’t despair.  It will eventually come and we can still assist you in getting funding.  Just apply online www.get-lawsuit-loan.com and hit the “Request Money Application” button and fill out the form.  We will then contact your attorney for case documents (see below).  Once your case documents are received, we will forward your file for review.

My Funding company has a special relationship with Howard L. Nations.  What this means for Howard L. Nations’ clients is that we can get an answer on your case quicker.  Please apply online as well.  We have also working with many clients from The Miller Firm as they have been very cooperative, as well.

As in all pharmaceutical cases, below is a list that we will ask your attorney for (unless you already have your settlement award letter):

- Proof of Seroquel usuage

- Proof of injury (Diabetes)

- Complaint or Plaintiff Fact sheet

- Retainer agreement with your attorney (the contract you signed with your attorney, how much he/she will be taking from your settlement)

In addition, we are now also asking everyone to acknowledge a Disclosure agreement on Broker fees.  This will usually be done via email and just need a response from you.  I will be posting more on this in a seperate post.  In short, for Seroquel cases, we will be receiving $100 when you advance $1,000 from your Seroquel lawsuit.

Hope this post has been helpful and if you have any questions, feel free to contact us – erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

Have a great day!

Just wanted to let those of you who have pending Avandia legal claims know, we are now actively funding these Avandia cases.

As far as I know, we are the only outfit in the nation that is currently funding Avandia claims.

We have funded three Avandia clients in the last week.  On two of the claims we just funded, the clients were advanced $7,500 each and on the third funding we just did, we funded that client $5,000.  On all three of these recent Avandia lawsuit advances, the rate was 3.25% (compounded monthly).  And the total turn-around time has been about 5 days, with the main slow-down being getting a hold of your attorney to discuss the claim.

So fundings in the range of $5,000 to $7,500 will be the most common, but some of you with stronger claims, may be approved for more money.

As you may know, the problem with this pharmaceutical, Avandia, is that it has “allegedly” caused many people who were taking the medication to have heart attacks, heart failure and / or strokes.

In terms of the info we need to review, we like to see the following (which we usually get from your attorney’s office):

1. Copy of the filed lawsuit (complaint / petition) or copy of the “tolling agreement”

2. Copy of your agreement with your attorney, i.e. the agreement that says your attorney is representing you, this agreement is most commonly called the “fee agreement” or “retainer”.

3. Prescription history records, which should show that Avandia had been prescribed to you.

4. Medical records showing heart problems (heart attack) or stroke.

5. Settlement info (if known)

In any event, if you have a pending Avandia legal claim and you are interested in some funding, let us know and we’ll get working on it for you.

As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

Just yesterday I had two potential clients contact us requesting funding on their cases:  1) A guy bitten by a dog and he sued the defendant in small claims court and 2) a lady on a recently settled divorce case.  In both of these situations we could not help these people in getting a lawsuit cash advance, because in both scenarios they had handled their legal claims without the representation of an attorney / lawyer.  (FYI – If you are handling your own legal case on your own, we call this, “pro se”.)

This is an immediate deal killer.  And not just for us, but for all funding companies in our entire industry.

If your case is not represented professionally by a licensed attorney, we cannot help you in getting an advance.

Typically when someone does handle their own legal claim without professional representation, they do so to save money, because attorneys are expensive!  As in the two examples above, this can be common.  It is normal for people involved in small claims to handle their own cases without any advice from an attorney.  And likewise, divorce attorneys are expensive, so many people will handle their divorces on their own, with no attorney, so save money.  And it may be fine for you to do the same, but if you ever need a lawsuit advance, and you have no attorney, you’ll be turned down again and again.

So why does our industry require you to have an attorney working on your case?

There are two main reasons and both have to do with making sure our investment into your case is protected.

First reason.  Let’s say you were going to invest your money into a pending lawsuit.  You have two cases to choose from, that are identical in all respects, except on one of the cases there is no attorney working the case and on the other case there is an attorney handling the case.  Which case would you invest in?  Most of us would choose to invest into the case which has an attorney working on it versus the other.  Why?  Because the case that has an attorney has a greater likelihood of a successful outcome.  There is a greater chance that the case without an attorney will be lost, merely on some technical court proceeding, simply because that case is not being handled by a professional.  Attorney’s are licensed by their respective state bars.  They must pass their state’s tough and grueling bar exams.  They have attended three to four years of full-time graduate level academic education just to earn their Juror’s Doctorate degrees.  They are required to maintain continuing education.  They are ethically and legally obligated to provide a fiduciary duty to their clients.  The bottom line is they are trained to handle legal claims correctly.   So from an investor’s perspective, we would much rather invest into cases that are being handled by trained professionals.  That helps to protect our investment and lowers our exposed risk.

Second reason.  Typically when lawsuits settle, the settlement money passes through the attorney’s client trust account.  This is a favorable situation for us, because it allows the attorney to pay-us back directly from the settlement money per the lien agreement.  On the other hand, if there was no attorney involved, the settlement money would go directly to the client, and we would merely have to trust that the client pays us back as promised.  There is no guarantee that the client would honor their agreement with us.  And that is simply way too risky for us.  It’s really the same idea as a mortgage lien on a home.  If the homeowner does not pay the mortgage, the bank per their lien, can foreclose on the home to get their money back.  In a similar manner, we place a lien on the case and get paid back once the case settles.  So in terms of repayment of the lawsuit advance, it is advantageous that there is an attorney involved, because settlement often passes through their client trust account.  The attorney basically acts like an escrow company, a third independent party, that makes sure we get paid back as promised.

In some legal situations, even if you have an attorney, things may be structured such that the settlement money does not go to the attorney’s client trust account.  And as you can probably guess, when that is the situation, we will not fund the case because it is too risky, in terms of our repayment.  For example, with California worker comp claims, there are two settlement checks, one check goes directly to the client and the other check goes to the attorney for his fees.  That is, California with regards to worker comp claims, is a “two check state”.  And guess what, for that reason, our entire industry does not fund state of California worker comp claims.  Because the settlement money goes directly to the client and we have no guarantee of getting paid back on our investment.

In summary, if you have a pending lawsuit of some sort and you are interested in obtaining a lawsuit cash advance, you’ll need to be represented by an attorney.  We want an attorney involved for two reasons:  1) to make sure the case is handled correctly, 2) because settlement money often passes through the attorney client trust account, which assists us with our repayment of the investment.   If you’re representing yourself, we will not be able to advance you funds per the above reasons.

As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

It is very common for us to receive requests for funding from clients who have already received a prior advance on their case.  And most of these folks have found that they are being declined for additional funding on their cases from other funders.

However, we can and have funded clients who have prior advances on their cases.  Sometimes we can fund these clients additional money on their cases and sometimes we cannot.  Each client/case are evaluated based on their own unique circumstances.

For us to fund the case additional money, assuming you have a prior advance, we need to document and show the value of your case is large enough to support an additional funding.  In terms of the actual specifics of what we do, we have to get an official pay-off statement from your prior advance company.  Most of the time, that prior company will have to be paid-off first, because if they are not, they would have a priority lien in place on your case ahead of ours.  Which is not a situation we like to be in.  We want our lien to have priority and not another company.  So if we can fund you, we will need to pay-off that other company.  (Very rarely we will leave another companies lien in place and do a second funding behind theirs, i.e. this would be similar structurally as a second mortgage on a home.)

For example, let me put out some numbers to show how this could work.  Let’s say you have a prior $5,000 advance out on your case.  And you apply for funding with us, seeking an additional $5,000.  We contact your prior advance company and they fax us their pay-off statement, which shows the pay-off is $7,500.  We then evaluate your case and determine that we can approve you for $10,000.  However, from that $10,000, we must pay $7,500 to the prior company to pay them off and get their lien removed.  In this example, that would then only leave you with net advance of $2,500 cash going to you after the other company is paid off, enough though you were approved for a total of $10,000.  (By the way, if we were to approve your case for $10,000, that means we think your case is conservatively worth at least $100,000, i.e. we typically will approve a case for 10% of what the total case is worth/valued at.)

So as you can see from the above example, we can do additional advances, but only if the case is large enough to support the additional advance.  Alternatively, in the above example, if we had determined the case to be worth only $60,000 (and not $100,000), then we would have approved that client for $6,000 minus the pay-off.  But since the pay-off to the prior company was $7,500, an approval of $6,000 is not even enough to pay-off the other company.  So in this scenario, there is no room for any additional funding, because the case was too small.

Anyway, the moral of this blog post is this:  We are happy to review cases for funding consideration even if they have a prior advance on the case.  Just be prepared that for some of you, we will be able to approve you for additional money and for others, there may simply be no more room to fund the case.

What you can do to help us in this, is provide the correct name, phone and fax number of the prior advance company, so we are able to get the pay-off statement from them.

As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

From reading our website about how the lawsuit advance process works, you may have learned that our ability to approve you for funding has nothing to do with your credit.  We do not care if you have terrible credit or stellar credit.  Your credit is a non-issue when it comes to getting your approved for an advance.  And likewise, we do not care if you are employed or not.  Your income and credit are non-issues.

However, we do run background checks on clients before funding them.  And for that we do require your DOB (date of birth) and SSN (social security number).  With regards to the background check, we are mainly concerned if there are liens against you or the case that would prevent us from funding you.  The most common examples are:  IRS liens, state tax liens, child support liens, and an open bankruptcy.  Any of these could be a deal killer for us, as these types of liens take priority when they are to be satisfied when your case settles or pays out.  Medical liens can also be a problem.  And if your case is big enough and the liens small enough, then the liens may not be an issue.  Basically, we just need to make sure there will be enough settlement money to pay us back and to satisfy whatever liens are on the case, if any.

Additionally, often if you have an extensive criminal history, our underwriters will likely decline to offer funding on the case.  Here’s the reasoning why:  Assuming your case goes to a jury trial, the defendant’s attorney’s can use your criminal history against you to depict you not as a victim but as a criminal.  They will try to attack your creditability.  And people have actually lost their lawsuits because the defense has effectively used this technique.  Because often in court, it is not the truth that matters, but people’s perception of the truth.  And so from an investment perspective, client’s with extensive criminal histories are more risky to fund.

In any event, we will only ask you for your DOB and SSN when we are close to getting you approved or funded.  And if you are married, we often will need your spouse’s info as well.

Additionally, from our perspective, verifying your identity is important to minimize fraud.  And along those same lines, before we can fund you, by federal law, we actually have to verify your identity.  This is part of the Patriot Act, the law that resulted from the 9/11 terrorist attacks.  The federal government can often track terrorist or criminal activity through financial transactions and require all financial institutions to maintain client identity information.

As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

Pharmaceutical cases are lawsuits against drug manufacturers.  They are a sub-category of a type of lawsuit known as product liability.  You’ll often see television commercials from various law-firms seeking new clients for these types of lawsuits.  Basically, if you believe a pharmaceutical drug has harmed you or killed a loved one, you may have a viable legal claim to seek compensation.  Unlike medical malpractice lawsuits, where you are suing the doctor for screwing up, in these types of cases you are suing the drug manufacturer.

Most funding companies shy away from funding these types of lawsuits.  Why?  For many reasons, but basically they can be really complex.  These types of cases often take 5 years or more to reach a conclusion!  As you can imagine, the drug manufacturing companies, who have tons of money, will fight these cases very hard, which ultimately just drags the cases out.  Often, what happens is that many different people who have pharmaceutical claims will have their individual claims lumped together, into what results is called “MDL” or multi-district litigation.  Basically, this is very similar to a class action lawsuit.  Sometimes these cases will make it all the way to trial and sometimes a settlement agreement will be reached.  Typically the attorney/law-firm that is handling your case is not local to you and is often even located in another state.  And if a settlement agreement is reached, there is often a third independent party, often called the settlement administer (or special masters or fund administrator, etc), which could be a judge or even another law-firm, whose job it is to review and approve or deny people’s claims, that are prepared and submitted by your attorney’s office.  The bottom-line is these cases are complex with many moving parts and for that reason, most funding companies will shy away from funding you.  We, however, have a pretty good track record at getting these done.

In general, if you have a type of case that has reached a settlement agreement or is near to reaching one, we can probably get the case approved for a lawsuit cash advance.  And if your type of case is not close to reaching a settlement, then it will be much harder to get approved.

And you may be wondering why you would need an advance if your case has reached a settlement?  Here’s why:  Because of the complexity and the number of claimants involved, actually getting paid your settlement money can take many months to over a year from the time the settlement agreement is actually reached and agreed to.  Why so long?  Part of problem has to do with notifying all the claimants and waiting for them to respond.  Often these cases will have 1,000’s of claimants and often the settlement money cannot begin to be disbursed until 90% or so of the claimants respond and agree to the settlement.  Then there is the issue of cutting 1,000 of checks.

Also, when the settlements are for big money, the settlement money is often split into two or more payments.  For example, many of the Vioxx settlements were split into two payments, an initial payment of 40% of your settlement and a final payment of 60% of the settlement.  And often, the timing between those two pay-outs was over a year in length.

This delay in payment explains why our services are often needed even if a settlement has been reached.

In the past here are some of the types of pharmaceutical cases we have provided lawsuit cash advances on:  fen-phen, Zyprexa, Guidant, Vioxx, Ortho Evra, Prempro (hormone replacement therapy), and Bextra/Celebrex.  The fen-phen and Zyprexa cases are all wrapped up.  And Vioxx cases have all pretty much wrapped up as well, with only a few remaining cases to be resolved.

Currently we are funding on Accutane, Fosamax, Gadolinium (MRI dye), Paxil, Prempro, Ortho Evra, Kugel Mesh (recalled hernia mesh), and Bextra/Celebrex claims.

And in the very near future we should also be funding on Avandia, Seroquel, and Propulsid claims.

In any event, if you are involved in some type of pharmaceutical (or medical device) product liability lawsuit, we are likely your only source for a possible lawsuit cash advance.  As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

Here is the list of documents we like to review on auto accident cases.

1. Traffic accident report

2. Your medical records

3. Vehicle insurance info for the at-fault driver

Typically we get these three items from your attorney’s office.  But if you have them directly in your possession, you’re welcome to submit them to us directly as well.  These are by far the three most important documents to review on motor vehicle accident cases.

Let me now discuss each of these three items in some detail.

First, the traffic accident report is most often prepared by law enforcement, such as police, sheriff, etc.  In general, this report will tell us who was at-fault in the accident (i.e. liability) and provides an independent third-party verification that the accident did actually happen (minimizes fraud).  Ideally, the traffic accident report will state someone other than you was at fault, and will list you a driver, passenger, or pedestrian in the report that was injured.

Second, your medical records as they pertain to the injuries caused by the accident, provide us with verification of how you were injured and what is being done to treat you.  Your medical injuries are important because the severity of your injuries is directly proportional to how valuable your legal claim is.  For example, in general, if you have had surgery, your claim will likely be more valuable than if you did not have surgery.

And third, the vehicle insurance coverage (insurance policy limits) of the at-fault vehicle driver, shows us potentially how much money is readily available to collect, should your legal claim be successful.  That is, for our purposes the available insurance policy limits set the maximum value a case could be worth.  So for the most part, if you are suing for more than the policy limits, we would only consider the amount up to the policy limits.  As any amount past the policy limits would likely be difficult to collect on.  Most policy limits for individuals are either $50K, $100K, or $300K (some people have bigger or smaller policies).  Commercial and business policies are often much larger.  Most states require minimum requirements of what they require drivers to have in the terms of insurance coverage.  And should the at-fault driver’s coverage not be sufficient, we will also take into account under-insured motorist coverage, should you have it.  And if the insurance info is unknown when you apply for funding with us, sometimes we may only be able to approve you for a smaller advance, until the insurance info can be verified.

Other documents we typically ask to review (though they are not necessarily as important to us on motor vehicle accident cases) are: demand letters, settlement offers, and documents filed with the court (such as the lawsuit, defendant’s answer to your lawsuit, etc.).

Note:  Auto accidents are also commonly called “motor vehicle accidents”, and include car, truck, motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents.

As always, please contact us with any questions.

- Eric

erick@get-lawsuit-loan.com

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of our competitors advertising some very low rates.  And the simple truth is, most of what you are seeing are nothing more than good old fashioned “bait and switch” tactics to get your business in the door.  It’s the exact same type of advertising garbage you’re used to seeing with car loans and home loans.  The reason companies use this bait and switch tactic is not so much to screw you the consumer, but more because we are operating in a competitive marketplace and price cutting offers are historically a great way to get new customers, even if the offers do not pan out for most consumers.

While all of us funding companies can and do offer low rates (us included), those low rate offers are only applicable to a very small segment of the population.  While in comparison the vast majority of cases that do get approved for funding have a much higher rate.  So buyer beware!  Be very careful about getting sucked into a funding company because of their low rate offers.  The low rate/pricing offers are really only applicable to cases that are exceptionally strong with exceptionally low risk.  And this is what creates trouble for many people, because just about every client I have ever talked to, believes his case to be great and low risk, when in fact from our perspective that is simply not true (I can go into that in a later post).  So the issue that arises is one of expectations.

Also, here’s the real truth about pricing within our industry.  The pricing all of us funding companies offer, is very similar.  What we are offering you, money, is pretty much a commodity type transaction for us the funders.  It’s not much different than other commodities traded at the institutional level like corn or coffee or oil.  That is, the price will not differ much from one supplier to the next.  Or for another example of a commodity type transaction, consider getting a home loan.  If you have a given credit score and given debt-to-income ratio, your home loan mortgage rate offers will not vary much at all from one lender to the next.  Similarly, when applying for lawsuit cash advance, the pricing you’ll actually receive on your advance does not vary much from one company to the next.  (The reason why these transactions behave like commodities, has do with the primary way our capital markets are structured on a global level, i.e. with the cost of capital and our models for ascertaining risk.)  So when comparing different funding companies, pricing is really the last criteria you should be using to pick a company to go with.

Therefore, your primary concern should be whether the funding company you’re working with can get your case approved for funding.  Because if they cannot get you approved, then any concerns about pricing and rates are simply a moot point.  So while pricing does not vary much from one company to the next, a companies ability to get you approved does vary from one company to the next.  That’s why it’s so critical for you to work with a company like ours, that has tons of experience at getting a diverse array of cases approved for funding and that has a large rolodex of potential investors.  Because we have so many investors, we can greatly increase your probability of a successful approval decision.  Even better, we can often provide you with multiple funding offers from our different investors and you can pick the funding offer you like best, which is typically the one offering you the most money (since pricing is usually similar).

The point of this post is to encourage you to stop worrying about pricing issues and to be more concerned with a company’s ability to actually get you approved.  Worry about get approved first and then pricing afterwards.

- Eric

www.Get-Lawsuit-Loan.com

Please read carefully: This is a special note addressing why the lawsuit funding industry as a whole (including our company) rarely funds cases that involve minors.

If you have a lawsuit involving a minor and you are seeking funding on the case, you likely have been declined for funding and do not understand why.  We will try to explain why here.

For the most part, minors are those who are under the age of 18 years.  And, legally speaking, minors are not able to enter into binding written contracts.   That is one of the legal characteristics defining a minor.  Therefore, if we were to approve a lawsuit for funding where the plaintiff was a minor, that contract would NOT be legally binding.  So for example, if the minor broke the signed contract with us and refused to pay-us back, there would nothing we could do about it, because minors are not legally able to enter into binding contracts in the first place.  So any contract agreed to, would not be legally binding.  Therefore any such contract would be worthless.  This is why for example, minors cannot purchase real estate, because they cannot enter into meaningful contracts.  So for this reason, companies within our industry will not invest into cases where the injured party (plaintiff) is a minor.  Why?  Because minors are not legally able to enter into binding contracts.

Also depending upon the age of the minor, it can also be argued that the minor does not have enough real life experience to completely understand a contract.  And therefore has no real business entering into a contract.

And the main counter argument to the above point, that parents of minors often bring up, is the following:  parents often will say to us, “as parents of the injured child, we understand that our child is not legally able to enter any binding agreements, but that’s OK, because as the parents, we are also named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, that is, we the parents are named in the lawsuit as plaintiffs, in addition to our injured child, so you can just advance us the money based on us and not our child’s part of the case.”  We get hear that reasoning all the time.

While this if often true in these types of lawsuits, we still CANNOT fund the parents.  And here’s the reason why:  when these types of cases go to trial, the child will often be awarded a significant judgment but the parent’s claims are often not awarded a judgment at all or their judgment is very small in comparison to what is awarded the child.   Therefore, investing into the parent’s claims is just way too risky for us the investor.

Additionally, to make matter even more complicated, even if the parent was to be awarded a significant judgment amount, the court almost always restricts the parent in how they can use the judgment proceeds.  That is, the court will often restrict the judgment proceeds to be used only for the benefit of the child.  Such as paying for college, food, clothes, etc.   And such a restriction for us the investor, is a deal killer for us, because it makes investing into the case too risky.

There is potentially one way around this issue.  And this is to have a probate / family court judge approve the details of any prospective funding agreement (contract) between the parents and us.  So if a judge approves our funding agreement, such that we feel comfortable that we will be repaid back when the case wins, we can in theory fund cases involving minors.

But in reality, this almost never happens for several reasons.  First, for this to occur, your attorney would have to prepare a motion to present to the judge.  Your attorney would charge you extra fees for doing this and your attorney will rarely agree to do this.  Secondly, this adds considerable time to the funding process, typically between 30 and 90 days (time to prepare the documents, and time to be heard in front of the judge).  And this possible solution does involve risk as well, because there is no guarantee the judge will approve the funding agreement.  So it’s possible to jump through these extra hoops just to have the motion denied by the judge.

Note:  Adults with severe mental limitations are often regarded in a similar fashion as minors.  That is, if your case involves an adult who is mentally handicap, we often cannot fund such cases, for the same reasons we cannot fund cases involving minors.

However, emancipated minors, CAN legally enter into binding written contracts and we CAN potentially fund a case, where the minor has been emancipated.  An emancipated minor is a minor who has the legal rights of an adult, typically through approval of a court or if the minor was married and divorced before age 18.

Also, if an incident occurred while the plaintiff was a minor, but now the plaintiff is an adult, we can and often do fund such cases.  For example, we just funded a case where the plaintiff was assaulted in shop class in high school but is now an adult.

In any event, if you have a case that involves a minor, we and everyone else within our industry likely cannot help you and we are terribly sorry for that.  Please contact us with any further questions.

- Eric

As you can imagine this is one of most common and basic questions we get on a daily basis.

And the most basic answer is probably yes your case will qualify for funding, if we can document three main items:

1. Do you have documented damages?
2. Is liability established?
3. Does the defendant have the ability to pay?

Let’s look at these three items in a bit more detail.

1. What are documented damages? The type of damages will depend upon the type of lawsuit your involved in. Damages essentially means how the other party has harmed you, whether it was physical harm or financial. For example, documenting damages in an automobile accident would be your medical records describing your injuries and treatment. In an unpaid wages case, it would be your wage statements from your employer showing you worked overtime but were only paid straight time. Or in an employment discrimination / wrongful termination lawsuit, documented damages might include some instance of your employer violating Federal or state laws, such as using racial or sexually inappropriate comments in the workplace. So depending upon the type of case you have, your damages can and will be documented in different ways. But for personal injury cases, the most common way is through medical records.

2. Is liability established? This is nothing more than a fancy way of saying is it clear who was at fault? Except for automobile accidents, is fairly typical for liability to be disputed between the two opposing parties. However, with automobile accidents, liability can often be readily established by a police traffic accident report, which will often pinpoint who was specifically at fault for causing the accident. Which is why when we review an automobile accident for funding, we always request to review a copy of the police traffic accident report. In contrast, on a slip-n-fall lawsuit, where there are often no witnesses, the injured person (the plaintiff) and the landlord will often disagree as to was at fault because there is often a lack of a third independent party (i.e. the police) to corroborate a story of how someone got hurt. Every client who has ever applied for funding with us, always believes they are in the right and the other party is in the wrong. But for us to approve you, we need to proof that believe with some type of documentation. The best example, is when the opposing parties insurance carrier formally accepts liability in writing. Unfortunately, that best case scenario is not that common, the insurance carriers typically try to drag their feet.

3. And the last general criteria we want to evaluate is: does the opposing party have the ability to pay a settlement or judgment? And this is a super critical point to make. Just because you can win your lawsuit, does not mean you’ll see a dime of any money. And one of the best examples of this issue, is the now infamous civil wrongful death case of O.J. Simpson’s murdered wife, Nicole Simpson. In that civil lawsuit, O.J. Simpson lost and judgment was ordered for millions of dollars to the family of Nicole Simpson. But to my knowledge, her family has never collected a dime on that judgment, because the defendant (O.J.) has been very effective in hiding or transferring assets. So in terms of lawsuits advances, we need to know that the defendant (the party you are suing) has the ability to pay a settlement or judgment. The most ideal situation is when the defendant has insurance coverage, as is often the situation in motor vehicle accident cases. Or if the defendant is a large publicly traded company, such as Wal-Mart, as these large institutional organizations are often self-insured and have plenty of money to pay a settlement / judgment. But on the other hand, if the party you are suing has no insurance coverage and they are an individual or small company, you will likely not get approved for funding, because they likely cannot pay a settlement or judgment, even if you do win your case.

So in summary, if you have a pending lawsuit and you can document the three above items, then it’s highly likely we can approve you very quickly for an advance based solely on the quality of your case. In future blog posts we’ll go in detail of what’s specifically needed per type of lawsuit you may have.

- Eric