This is not what American justice was meant to be.

Hi Alan. I'm amazed at what a moneymaking industry personal injury lawsuit business has become.

I was in LA this week. You see only two kinds of billboards there: Those advertising some movie/TV show/streaming series with the words FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION to get union members to vote for them for industry awards, and ads for personal injury lawyers.

For a long time, the Hollywood ads outdistanced everyone else, but now I think the PI lawyers are catching up. They're on every corner, and on TV. They even have subspecialties, like the ones how focus on motorcycle accidents, plus there are all the ones trying to take advantage of mesothelioma victims or those poor military folks who had the bad fortune to drink the water at Camp LeJeune. Even the fast food people have been displaced by all these lawyers.

Makes me want to pack up and head to New Zealand, where I don't think they even have the words "personal injury lawuit" in their vocabulary!

Linda, we're going through a personal injury situation with my fiancé right now. She was injured when she hit by another driver. Nobody involved disputes that the other driver was at fault. Over the past year:

• The other person's insurance company tried to push her into a settlement that wouldn't even touch the copays on medical bills - a settlement that would have also left us without any medical payments coverage from our auto insurer
• Doctors have outright refused to accept her health insurance for accident-related treatment. They want her to pay 100% out of pocket probably because....
• Her health insurance company has outright refused to pay accident-related medical bills

She has to have a lawyer in order to avoid being constantly hassled by the other party's insurance, and to force her own health insurance to behave like health insurance. That's to say nothing of actually getting her out of pocket costs reimbursed. We're told that can take over a year after the bills are all in.

I'm not particularly keen on the way the system works, but if she didn't have a lawyer she'd effectively have a part-time job fighting with insurance companies. And not just the other person's insurance - her own as well. I would love for there to be a workable alternative.

Hi Robert. So sorry to hear this. I'm with you--the system sucks. My sister has been in a series of severe auto accidents (none of which were her fault), and required a PI lawyer to handle this type of thing as well. But the lawyers get 30% off the top of whatever they negotiate!

There has to be a better way. Especially when there are injuries involved, the insurance companies, medical providers, and legal system just make all of this that much worse.

Hope she gets through all of this as expeditiously as possible (and that the settlement is what's needed to get her through this.

Linda, thanks! She's working through the process. We're fortunate that we had a decent amount of both medical payments coverage (auto policy) and reasonable health care coverage, as well as a lawyer that will fight it out with all of the insurance companies on our behalf.

But the fact that that's necessary - particularly the need to fight with our own insurance companies - is just frustrating. I agree that somebody should be able to find a better way. 

There's ALWAYS a problem generalizing from a specific issue that happened to you, a family member, a friend. Robert, your fiancé has lousy insurance.  PI attorneys get 30% or more because they charge no fee and put in a lot of time. That's the name of the game, so get used to it. They always try to settle, never go to court.

Ironically, yesterday, I received an invitation to be interviewed on a podcast for PI attorneys. I found that they had had Seth Godin on, as well.

When you find something distasteful exists, you have to ask yourself why it's successful.

Alan, no disagreement from me. In the current system, PI attorneys put in a ton of work and are worth every penny they charge. We'd be lost without ours, and we're thankful that we have them.

That said, doesn't "why it's successful" ultimately stem from the legal/regulatory environment? Politicians have talked about "tort reform," but that's a contingent action. It's just taken as given that almost anybody who is injured is going to need a lawyer.

Shouldn't there be some sort of preventive action that can obviate the need for so many expensive lawsuits?