Unemployment benefits don't hit your bottom line.

A lawyer friend from a nearby firm popped his head in my office door a few days ago.

He wanted to know how his recently-former employee’s claim for unemployment was going to affect his firm’s finances.

This question comes up now and then, but not from other lawyers. In talking to him, it became obvious that, even though he was a lawyer, he had no clue about how the unemployment insurance system worked. Of course I have no idea how divorce proceedings work and he would know that process cold. To each their own.

His employee had been with the firm for years. She quit to take a new job. It didn’t work out, so she left that job and then filed for unemployment compensation. My friend got a notice from the Ohio Dept. Of Job and Family Services telling him that his former employee was going to be collecting benefits. He was worried that he would be paying her directly.

I assured him that the system doesn’t work that way. When she was working for him, and even now, he pays into the unemployment insurance program at least quarterly. His payments are based on the size of his payroll and the risk that his employees will need to partake in the system. If he laid off or fired more people than other industries or employers, then he was a higher risk, and paid a higher premium. Conversely, by keeping people at work for a long time, he would pay less.

He wondered aloud, again, if he’d get a bill for her claim.

No sir, I said. You have already paid your premiums. The DJFS was just letting you know that a claim was being applied to your account. Probably because she had not been with her most recent employer long enough to secure benefits from his policy. Her leaving his office earlier in the year wouldn’t change his risk rating; the DJFS doesn’t hold quits against employers, and her benefits will be paid to her from the insurance pool he had already paid into. Her benefits would not touch his bank account or bottom-line.

This satisfied my colleague. He bid me thanks and a good afternoon. I did my good deed for the day. Back to work.

Personal Injury

People get in car accidents all the time.  They get hurt, and then they sue the driver of the other car.  On a daily basis, thousands of lawyers are looking for the opportunity to represent someone who was injured.  They're known as trial lawyers, personal injury lawyers, accident lawyers, wrongful death lawyers, Plaintiff's lawyers, even ambulance chasers and shysters.  All are titles attached to those who work, usually on no more than the belief that they will prevail, to recover medical costs, lost wages and an amount of money to compensate an injured client for their pain and suffering.

I do not work in the personal injury area of law.  Almost never.  However, in the course of representing people fighting about their pay and employment rights, an occasional car accident affects my employee client and I am asked to help.

In a car accident, the driver doing the injuring is usually protected by an insurance company.  Insurance companies, contrary to their television commercials, are not good hands, problem solving, double check discounting, Aussie geckos.  They are businesses with ruthless, bottom line driven employees whose job is literally to keep an injured party's recovery to an absolute minimum.  Insurers seem to view every injured person as a fraud, cheat and liar.  They are out there, but the generalization has made the process painful.

Remember, insurance companies take money in from their customers and then invest that money, called a premium.  The less they pay out in losses, the more the insurance company and its employees get in profits, bonuses and perks.  I don't begrudge a business its profits, but you gotta understand insurance is designed to deny the existence or size of a loss. 

My client was recently reminded of that business purpose.  She was injured in a car accident.  She had no obvious injuries, but had pain for years.  She still does.  Sadly, her evidence and the location of the court and its stingy jury pool, along with the costs of medical testimony made the likelihood of her prevailing in a court case very small.  The neighborly insurance company that was there with a minimal amount of money and a big smirk knew the cost of litigation would outweigh the likely verdict.  So rather than pay a fair amount of compensation for the loss, the company bet the farm that my client would not risk her farm.  The insurer was right.

You can't see the pain of a toothache on an X-ray.  Nor can medicine say with certainty whether any other pain is present.  Doctors can't test grief and depression with an MRI.  Sometimes the pain and suffering and despair from an injury simply cannot be seen by modern medicine.  Is it any less real?  Is it any less painful for its camouflage?  No.  But to insurers, their captive and well paid doctors, and to many jury pools, it might as well be a big lie.

It may be a fight worth having.  The battle to show that pain is real even without shattered bones or lost blood.  But not by me.  I am back to my arena now.  Saddened, chastened and glad to not be a PI lawyer.