Craig Murphy, Esq. Las Vegas personal injury lawyer and accident attorney of Murphy & Murphy Law Offices in Las Vegas, Nevada asks if you have ever heard of a frivolous defense in a personal injury case? We have all heard of frivolous lawsuits. We hear about frivolous lawsuits all the time. My previous blog posts and the Murphy & Murphy Law Offices website at www.nvpilaw.com document my position about frivolous lawsuits in Las Vegas. To make my position clear, I am strongly against frivolous lawsuits. Frivolous lawsuits give Las Vegas personal injury and accident attorneys a bad name. More importantly, frivolous lawsuits hurt people with legitimate lawsuits who have been injured by the wrongful negligence of another person or company. Whenever a wrongfully injured person’s comes to trial in Las Vegas, the potential jurors are skeptical of that person. They doubt the injuries and are predisposed to thinking that the person is there just to get money. That predisposition is due to a multibillion dollar campaign by insurance companies and multinational corporations to assist in avoiding their responsibility to people they have negligently injured. That is also why in Las Vegas personal injury cases we never hear of frivolous defenses. The insurance companies and multinational companies do not publicize the frivolous defenses they raise everyday in Las Vegas personal injury cases and claims. That is why we never hear that the majority of Las Vegas personal injury cases are forced to trial by the insurance companies and multinational corporations refusing to accept responsibility for their negligence.
A Nevada personal injury and wrongful death case that captured national attention from the press and media is an excellent example of how insurance companies and corporations refuse to accept responsibility even in cases where there should be no question about the insurance companies and corporation’s responsibility. On June 24, 2011 a Nevada semi-truck driver slammed his loaded semi-tractor-trailer into an Amtrak train in Reno, Nevada killing six people and injuring many more. The semi-truck driver ignored the flashing red lights and the crossing gates before skidding more than the length of a football field before slamming into the side of the Amtrak train killing the six people and injuring numerous other victims.
Given the facts, could anyone argue that the semi-truck driver and the trucking company that employed him were not negligent? Could anyone argue that the truck driver and the trucking company that employed him should not be held responsible for the six deaths and multiple other injured people? If someone were to try and argue that the truck driver and the trucking company were not responsible, wouldn’t that be a frivolous defense that should not be made?
In my opinion, denying responsibility under the circumstances would be frivolous. But that is not how insurance companies, multi-national corporations and their lawyers work. They are all about deny, deny, deny. Accepting responsibility is not part of their tactics. In talking about this case, the Nevada trucking company’s lawyer said “I believe the evidence will show their conduct was defensible in all of this. I have a great deal of trust in the legal system, and if someday we go in front of a jury, I’m confident it will give us the chance to say we did everything right.”
This is what insurance companies and their lawyers do in Nevada and Las Vegas personal injury cases. In this case, the semi-truck ran through the red flashing lights, crashed through the warning gates, skidded more than the length of a football field before slamming into the side of the Amtrak train and killing six people in Reno, Nevada. Pretty clear fault, isn’t it? Yet the insurance defense lawyer for the trucking company says the “conduct was defensible” and that “we did everything right.”
And so that is how it goes in Las Vegas personal injury cases. The insurance defense lawyers, despite clear facts establishing that their corporate clients were negligent, deny liability and responsibility. They force innocent accident victims into court and then accuse them of trying to take advantage of the system. They accuse them of filing frivolous lawsuits. Isn’t it time that we start holding the defense lawyers and their corporate clients and insurance companies to the same standard and refuse to accept frivolous defenses?