Shane Life

Maybe I haven’t been paying attention…when did personal injury lawyers and ambulance chasers become cool again? You know who I’m talking about, don’t you? Those awful attorneys have managed to skim millions of dollars from unsuspecting clients by promising big payoffs for Vioxx usage and miscellaneous injuries. That’s the only explanation for the deluge of advertisements we’re subjected to on a daily basis.

One of the ones that makes me laugh every time is the one from ambulance chasers Peterson & Company. These are the guys who use the awful URL to pimp their class action lawsuits out to the masses. The ones with THIS GUY talking about 816lawfirm.com. Is there a more embarrassingly generic web address?

What they don’t tell you is that they get you to sign up for a larger class action lawsuit and then when they get millions and millions of dollars from the offending company, the reward is split up among the thousands of folks attached to the class action while the attorneys recoup their nice fat commission on the full amount.

Companies like this seem to be spreading like the plague. It seems like a new commercial pops up every other day.

However, the worst offender has to be Brown & Crouppen. You know them… A sophisticated legal weapon. The fat guys in their commercials just seem like mobsters. “I’m Terry Crouppen. I’m a lawyer. I fix problems.” “We kept our word. We made ‘em PAY!” That’s my favorite one…with the guys sitting around the table talking about how rich they made their client and all that. “He’s a good guy. He didn’t deserve this.” And you’re right. He didn’t deserve to be canonized on your cheesy TV commercial to boost your ego.

Now, Brown & Crouppen have a new awful ad with the Crouppen son talking about how they’ll call them back in 24 hours guarantee or they can call him personally. Just a question, though…how do they do that? You don’t put your number up there LifeLock-style. An empty promise, it seems.

I have a proposal. It can be like McCain-Feingold’s Campaign Finance Reform…the government should mandate that these lawyers are required to disclose the amounts that they themselves received for each winning case and put that on screen as a comparison to what their clients actually walked away with.

Maybe then we’ll be able to fast-forward through their awful commercials in peace.