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053 Creative Case Resolution

053 Creative Case Resolution

Lawyers in the House with Montlick

Attorneys in Podcast: Catherine Powell, Esq.

Who says lawyers have to be boring? Our attorneys know that being a fierce legal ally isn’t just about making a few calls and filing some paperwork. It takes guts, grit, determination…and sometimes a little creativity. Montlick attorney Cate Powell is back in the house with Veronica to talk about doing the hard work to get a client an amazing result.

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The purpose of this show is to provide general information about the law. Our guests will not provide any individualized legal advice. If you have a personal situation and need legal advice, contact us for your free legal consultation with a Montlick attorney.

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00:05	ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Lawyers in the House. With Montlick. Wish you had a lawyer in the family? Now you do. Here’s your host, Veronica Waters. VERONICA: Hey Friends, welcome to Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters. Happy to have you back sitting next to us today for another fabulous episode.
00:28	VERONICA: And today is gonna be another cool episode with just a solo, one-on-one with one of my favorite Montlick injury attorneys. Innovation, imagination, ingenuity, inventiveness, these might not be the first adjectives you think of when we are talking about the law. It’s true, we kind of think of the law as a really sort of rigid, locked down beast, something that’s hard to penetrate, something that’s buttoned up just so.
01:02	VERONICA: And we’re not thinking about just how wrong we might be. Because I think to us, we hear the soundtrack when we were talking about the law of, well, this is how we’ve always done it. But what if the way we’ve always done it has you between a rock and a hard place in your personal injury case? Today we’re talking to Montlick injury attorney Cate Powell about creatively resolving cases.
01:33	VERONICA: And I want to reintroduce you to Cate Powell. You may remember her. We had a fabulous show with her talking about mediation, which was one of the first steps that Cate took in her budding law career. Cate Powell graduated from Georgia State, right, for both undergrad and law school and became an attorney in 2015. But before that, she was under the tutelage of her attorney dad, whose name is… CATE: Doug Powell. VERONICA: Doug Powell, and you learned a lot about everything from him.
02:03	CATE: Yes. So he is also a trial attorney. So we did litigation together for years and through law school, and so I took everything he knows and I downloaded it into my brain and love to give him a shout out. He’s a great person and a great attorney. VERONICA: You were specializing in mediation for a very long time. And then you sort of… CATE: I was participating in mediation. VERONICA: Participating? CATE: Then I went through… VERONICA: You seem like a pro. CATE: Thank you. Thank you so much.
02:33	CATE: And then I went through mediation training where I became… I am now a trained mediator, but I have always been on the plaintiff side, doing litigation for personal injury cases. VERONICA: And tell us just in a nugget about what mediation is like. CATE: So mediation is most oftentimes part of the litigation process. And it happens… it can happen really at any point during litigation, but it typically will happen before a trial where the judge says, you got to get this case resolved between you.
03:08	CATE: Prior to us calling in a jury, let’s see if we can get this case resolved. So we have an independent mediator that would come in and kind of go back and forth between the parties to see if we can reach an agreement. VERONICA: Right. And the litigation is basically, that means we’re trying to go to trial, right? That’s what that means? CATE: That’s right. So the moment you file your lawsuit and you sue the other person that was involved in the accident, you are in litigation. VERONICA: Okay.
03:36	VERONICA: So I think that the reason that I loved our first episode, our solo together, was because you made me feel so smart. And I felt like that was part of the mediation thing. Like you probably learn, “yes and” so you don’t ever make the other person feel like, I don’t want to say an idiot, but like an idiot, right? You know, you find value in everything that the person says. And I was like, oh my gosh, she makes me feel like I’m doing such a good job over here in this host chair. I thought you were such a fabulous guest. CATE: Thank you.
04:06	VERONICA: You always have such… you have creative ways of thinking, creative ways of doing things. And I think that’s the perfect reason to have you as the guest here when we’re talking about creatively resolving cases. All right, little known fact about Cate, or you may, if you know… if you’re on Instagram, where we are also @Montlicklaw on Instagram. Check us out. But Cate has a huge yoga practice. And she has something called Moms of ATL, what’s that all about? CATE: So this is my passion project. I am a working mom.
04:37	CATE: So I have three children and just kind of getting through that working mom life, getting through postpartum has been a huge part of my life with three kids over the past ten years. And so I really want to support other moms, other working moms, other moms that are just coming off of having their first baby. Second, third, going through that postpartum experience. VERONICA: ‘Cause I’m sure it could be different every time. It might not be the same from kid to kid.
05:06	CATE: Absolutely. You have new and different challenges each time. And as the kids get older, you have new and different challenges with their ages and how to love them the best, but also how to love yourself in the process and take care of yourself as a mom. So yeah, Moms of ATL is a support group and we meet in person, but it’s also an Instagram page where… it’s just kind of an open forum, no judgment, all inclusive of every motherhood experience where we highlight reflections from moms about those real experiences and moments and challenges, but also triumphs of motherhood.
05:46	VERONICA: I love it. Thank you so much for sharing that. Cate Powell Montlick injury attorney in the house with us. Thanks for being in the house with me, CP. CATE: Thank you. VERONICA: We’re talking about creative case resolutions. So tell me a little bit about how wrong we are when we think that the law has to be a certain way all the time. And how did you figure out that you’re so good at this? CATE: You’re too much. You’re too much. Thank you.
06:13	CATE: So this is… the creative case resolution, I think, is one of my favorite parts of this career, of this passion, of this lifestyle of thinking how to work through cases. And you’re right. Before becoming a lawyer, and even in my first couple of years practicing law, it does seem like there’s a standard course that each case would take. And there’s… some of it is set in stone by Georgia law. You have to file the lawsuit this way.
06:42	CATE: And then the defendant answers. And then this happens and then the next thing happens. But then as you get… as I have gotten deeper into my career, you realize that each case is a special, unique set of facts that can be worked at different angles, there are ways to address conflicts that come up and I can talk about it kind of through some stories in some cases.
07:12	CATE: But then you realize that, yeah, each case is different. And to me, that is exciting. And that’s what I want to throw all of my energy and my resources into, that there are so many different ways to push that case as far as I possibly can and get the maximum recovery for my client. VERONICA: It’s not going down a checklist, okay? Like, okay, well, let me ask this. Let me ask that. Try this, scratch that out.
07:41	VERONICA: Okay, well, sorry, buddy, I can’t help you. They’re not going to come through with the settlement. So it’s not like that. I mean… and imagine if you, if you’re hurt through no fault of your own, you have an attorney and all they think that is necessary is make a couple of phone calls, fill out a couple of pieces of paper. Oh, well, that didn’t get the solution we wanted. Sorry. Thanks for, you know, thanks for playing. I mean… CATE: Right. And yeah, and that’s exactly what I found. And that’s what keeps me passionate and excited about this because I feel like an investigator.
08:12	CATE: I feel like a detective, I feel like, you know, I want to throw everything I possibly can at every angle of the case. And so like you were just saying, it’s not just making sure I get the pleadings, which is, you know, the paperwork sent to the court at the right time. And then we’re just kind of going through the motions on the case. It’s, well, how about this? Should I try this angle and see if that will push the case, push the adjuster, push the insurance company to offer more money?
08:38	CATE: Or preparing for trial, will that give the jury a new perspective that will open up the case in a new way? And help them see what my client has been through in a new way? VERONICA: Your brain is like a legal Rubik’s Cube. It’s always spinning the pieces to try to come up with, you know, the solution that looks the best, right?
09:04	VERONICA: So, tell me a little bit about something that one of the cases, let’s start off with a story, I always love to hear like your real-life examples of something. And I’m assuming this happens in cases big and small. It doesn’t have to be some big complex case all the time, right? It can be a little thing. CATE: Any case. VERONICA: Okay. CATE: Any case – I’m approaching it with this kind of knowledge and expertise on what I have kind of seen and done in the past.
09:29	CATE: But… so one of the cases was my client was at McDonald’s, and she was near the drink, the beverage area, and there was some ice that had spilled out and melted on the floor. So impossible to see. And so it was a slip and fall situation at McDonald’s where she really, she slipped with her right leg, really jarred herself and kind of injured herself as she was falling and then injured herself on the fall.
09:58	CATE: And so we had the case. We took it into litigation. We were in constant communication with McDonald’s attorneys. VERONICA: And let me just put a… let me pause. Going into litigation means McDonald’s wasn’t budging. CATE: That’s right. VERONICA: They were refusing to settle. Okay. CATE: Yes, yes. And so and just to, again, kind of give a little bit of background about… this type of case is called a premises liability case. They tend to be more challenging.
10:26	CATE: Because… for many reasons, but one big reason is you don’t have a police officer coming to the scene to do an accident report. I mean, when a jury sees a police report, that is pretty strong evidence, and then they have the police officer come and he can testify on what’s written in the police report. For a premises liability case, you have maybe and hopefully a manager who’s written an incident report. So you can bring the manager in to testify, but you don’t… The facts…
10:57	VERONICA: It doesn’t carry the same weight. CATE: It doesn’t carry the same weight. It’s very difficult. VERONICA: In a jury’s eyes, I should say. CATE: In a jury’s eyes. And it becomes more of “He said, she said.” Did she see the water before she walked into that area? Had she been in that area before? Was she walking carefully? Was she watching her step? You know, all of those things make it very challenging. So oftentimes for a premises liability case, we won’t even have an offer. VERONICA: Wow.
11:25	CATE: And then we’re approaching the two year on that case, we approached the two-year Georgia statute of limitations where if you don’t file suit before that two-year deadline, so exactly two years from the date of the accident, then you have no claim and you have no case anymore. VERONICA: So in the meantime, this has been almost two years, and she’s been in pain and going to the doctor. CATE: Absolutely. VERONICA: And nothing is… Nobody’s helping her with her bills. Okay. CATE: Yes. Great point. And this was a client that we got very close with.
11:55	CATE: And we treat all of our clients like family. So we were feeling the same way. And thinking that it was very unfair the way McDonald’s was kind of playing this claim out. So we filed suit. And we get into litigation. And we do depositions. And a lot of times when the case is in litigation, you will start negotiating a settlement. So we had made a demand and they did come back with an offer at that point, but it was very low.
12:25	CATE: And so it was not something that we would recommend for our client to accept and not something she wanted to accept, according to everything she had been through. VERONICA: I imagine she had a demand… or she had something in her head that she felt was fair. CATE: Yes. Absolutely. And that… you… we’re just rolling here with the story because that’s exactly how things played out where she did have a number in her mind of what she wanted.
12:52	CATE: And so we went through mediation and it was in DeKalb county, so it was a court ordered mediation. So the judge was very, very adamant that we should try to figure the case out and not have to go to trial, which ended up coming to our… being an advantage to us, that the judge was more actively involved with the case. VERONICA: Yeah, because the dockets are so chock full. CATE: Absolutely. VERONICA: Especially after the pandemic back up and everything, so. CATE: Absolutely correct.
13:20	CATE: And DeKalb County is a big county with a high population. VERONICA: Anyway, that is so true. All right, so let’s put a pin in that. And when we come back on Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB, we’re going to hear how this case turned out. How did Cate creatively get a solution for this woman who was hurt at Mickey D’s? And what doctor’s bills and doctor evidence have to do with how your case ends up? Stay with us.
13:52	You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Join us 8 a.m. every Sunday if you want to listen live on 95.5 WSB. VERONICA: And thanks for coming back with us on Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters here with Montlick injury attorney Cate Powell who has me enraptured with this story of a McDonald’s slip and fall and how you guys were getting ready to go to mediation because this client who had been in pain for two solid years wasn’t getting any offers of relief from McDonald’s.
14:26	VERONICA: Nothing fair, I would say? CATE: Absolutely. And we get into the mediation and they still were not giving us a fair offer. But we went there in good faith in an attempt to resolve the case, which we had committed to the court and the judge, but at the end of the day, and it was a long day of mediation, they were not putting a fair offer on the table. We as her attorneys didn’t think so. She didn’t think so. So she walked out of the mediation. VERONICA: Walked out. CATE: And we supported her in that.
14:55	VERONICA: Like, physically got up and walked away. CATE: Yes, she says, this is not… it’s not happening. I don’t think we’re going to get a resolution today, especially with the numbers that McDonald’s was bringing to the table, so she walked out. VERONICA: Okay. And we’re talking about creative case resolution. I don’t know where you go after that. CATE: Right. So then we’re thinking, okay, we’re still in a good place with her. She’s not mad at us, but mad at the process. And that McDonald’s really wasn’t budging.
15:21	CATE: And so we, as the attorneys, reconvene and we’re thinking of the creative ideas and brainstorming and what can we do here? And we thought, hey, we have an active judge here. Let’s call the judge’s office and see if he will have a meeting just with the attorneys prior to trial. And I’ll just say, as a side note, we were preparing for trial. We were ready to go to trial, but in a trial, we cannot guarantee what the jury is going to do.
15:52	CATE: We cannot guarantee a number that our client will get in pocket. From a trial, we have had success, high success rate in trials across Georgia, but you never know what a jury is going to do until they come back with the verdict. And she had in her mind an in-pocket take-home amount that she wanted to get, and we wanted to get her that. So the judge agreed, and we had a private conference with the judge and we didn’t know what was going to happen.
16:19	CATE: And it was actually the, you know… in my practice, you don’t think of judges as being willing to do that. But you might as well ask. And the judge was willing to do that. VERONICA: He called, you asked, and the judge said, okay. CATE: Yes. So then the judge almost acted as a mediator for kind of a second mediation. And we presented all the facts kind of like giving an opening statement and the judge said to McDonald’s, pay the money.
16:49	CATE: And we weren’t expecting that, but to get that comment and that reinforcement from the judge, the very next day McDonald’s offered an amount that was acceptable to us. VERONICA: Creative Cate’s resolution by Cate Powell, Montlick injury attorney. Coming up on Lawyers in the House, car crashes are pretty run of the mill, right? So all those cases have to be kind of the same, right or wrong? Stay with us and find out. I’m Veronica Waters. You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Join us 8 a.m. every Sunday on 95.5 WSB.
17:20	VERONICA: Welcome back to Lawyers in the House with Montlick. I’m Veronica Waters here on WSB with Montlick injury attorney Cate Powell. We’re talking about creative case resolution today. Did you love that story about Mickey D’s in the first half of the show? Did you miss it? You know what? That’s all right. Check us out on your favorite podcast platform, Lawyers in the House. You can also see us online at Lawyers in the House dot com and on YouTube where you can look at our smiling faces.
17:50	VERONICA: But if you subscribe to the podcast, you know what? Every new episode will drop into your box as soon as it hits the web. So, you know what, don’t worry about it. And as always, find us everywhere on all platforms, social, @Montlicklaw. Cate Powell, we’re talking about creative case resolution. And I don’t think I’m going too far afield to say that you have found this to be your superpower. Is that fair? CATE: I have gained… I will say yes. I will take that. Yes.
18:21	VERONICA: I told you she- CATE: I have superpowers. VERONICA: Yes, and. You see how she does that? She just makes me feel so good. Yes and, Veronica. So yeah, yes, it’s your superpower. CATE: Yes, I will agree with that and I will say it is possibly what I love most about this work is it makes it always interesting, always fascinating, always pushing for the very best that I can do for my clients.
18:47	CATE: And so I had another story… because we do a lot of auto accident cases and this case… and everyone who drives and goes through a four-way red light intersection has that feeling of what’s going to happen? And my light is green, now it’s yellow and is somebody else coming through? And so, a lot of the accident cases we get are disputed light color cases.
19:15	VERONICA: Wow, okay. CATE: Which you can imagine. VERONICA: It was green! It was yellow! It was red! CATE: Yeah, my light was green. No, my light was green, and it’s impossible for obviously both of them to be green. VERONICA: I guess nobody’s claiming yellow. Everybody’s claiming green. CATE: Yeah, and a lot of people wouldn’t want to say yellow. Right. So it was one of the disputed traffic light color cases. And the difficult thing with those cases, too, is that once the officer arrives to the scene, they didn’t see the color of the light.
19:46	CATE: They’re doing their very best to interview witnesses to speak with everybody that was involved in the accident and really try to get to the bottom of what happened. They will look at how the damage is on the cars to see kind of where the cars might have been positioned. So in this case in particular, there were no citations given. VERONICA: Is it usually just two cars involved? Because I would imagine a lot of people try to race through those lights. So it’s typically just two cars? CATE: It typically is. And that’s a good point.
20:16	CATE: As opposed to a rear end where it might be multiple cars up against each other. Yes. So this is mostly one vehicle versus another vehicle, one driver versus the other driver in terms of what happened. And so on this accident report, which also makes it challenging for the case, there were no citations issued. So once a citation is issued, then you can pretty clearly put the fault on that driver and that really strengthens the other person’s case.
20:46	VERONICA: But I’ve learned from all of you at Montlick that that is really not always the end all be all. Like sometimes you have actually shown that the police report because it was based solely on what some witness who probably has their own best interest at heart, or some person involved, has to say for themselves, they’re just writing the narrative of what somebody else told them. And it’s not always accurate. You know, police can only go by what somebody on the scene has said. And if there’s somebody injured and gone to the, you know, to the hospital or something, they’re not there to tell their side of the story.
21:17	VERONICA: The police are only getting one side. It’s not their fault. CATE: Absolutely. Yeah, police officers, we have so much respect for police officers. They do so much. And these reports are so detailed, and they do actually… if someone goes to the hospital, they will go to the hospital and get a follow-up interview. Yeah. So, but in any case, you’re absolutely right. We will take a case whether or not a citation was issued to the other driver. For this very reason, creative case resolution.
21:47	CATE: We know what to do when we get that case in. So on that accident report, I saw two witnesses listed. And that is also a challenge, and this is kind of a public service announcement that if you witness an auto accident, it is very, very helpful to stick around. Talk to the police officer and then even beyond that, there may be a time where the attorneys for either side will be reaching out to you to ask some follow-up questions.
22:19	CATE: And it’s tough because people have their whole lives going on. And they’re busy and they don’t… They don’t want to participate or be involved, but my client here had very serious injuries. It was not their fault. The accident was not their fault, and they needed to be compensated for those… for the medical bills for the pain and suffering, for everything. And so sometimes I think even if you do stick around at an accident and you do give the police your name, you think that’s it. But really, sometimes there’s a little bit more.
22:48	VERONICA: They might need you. CATE: They might need you. It makes a huge difference, and I will tell you how it did in this case, which is that we’ll start off with sending a letter to whoever’s listed in the accident report. And 95% of the time don’t hear back. Then I will call once a week or so to try to get in touch with the witness. And again, maybe 80% of the time. So maybe there’s a 20% success rate with that.
23:17	CATE: But for this case, it was very important because we had a liability denial. The insurance company was saying, we’re not paying anything, because we don’t think it was our driver’s fault. And so we… so then that’s where I’m getting creative, what can we do? We really need to get this witness. That’s going to make or break the case. So we have investigators in-house, and we… I called on the investigator.
23:46	CATE: And this investigator is so good at what he does, that he will respectfully but persistently go to the witnesses’ house, knock on the door, speak with this person, which it must be a scary job too, because you never know. VERONICA: You don’t know how people are gonna… CATE: When you knock on someone’s door… It’s hard. And people don’t want a stranger knocking on their door. But luckily for us, we have this amazing investigator.
24:15	CATE: And then once he got to the witness’s door, the witness was willing to give a statement and participate. And he said, one bonus is if you give me a statement, I will never bother you again. And this statement is what made all the difference in the case. So once we had that statement, the insurance company completely changed their course and were willing to entertain settlement negotiations.
24:43	VERONICA: That’s incredible to think that we could play, just as bystanders, such an important role in somebody else’s personal injury case when somebody else is suffering. It’s like a little way that we could help along the way. And you didn’t throw up your hands. I think it’s worth, you know, it’s worth noting you didn’t throw up your hands and say, you know what? We can’t do anything, you know. They’re not budging. Again, creatively stepping in. How can we do this? What can we do? What else can we try? Let’s not give up.
25:13	VERONICA: You don’t give up. So car crashes are not always so cut and dry. CATE: Absolutely. VERONICA: They’re not so cut and dry. Give me another car crash story. CATE: So this is… VERONICA: I know y’all get a lot of car crashes, right?
25:39	CATE: Absolutely, absolutely. And I want to say one more thing about the witness while people are out there listening is if that witness hadn’t participated and hadn’t had their name on the accident report and then given us a statement, our client would have been over $40,000 in medical debt with an injury that created impairment for the, you know, probably the rest of their life. So it is really important. But I would say just kind of switching gears. VERONICA: What a selfless thing, too, for that witness to do. They didn’t throw up their hands either and say, leave me out of it. They came through.
26:09	CATE: It’s important. VERONICA: Shout out to you, witness. CATE: Yes, thank you all witnesses out there. And to switch gears a little bit and just say one more example of these creative solutions and ways to get out a case that I might not have or would never have thought of before going to law school and practicing law. You don’t think of these options until you get into the weeds of the case and think what can we do here?
26:38	CATE: So we had a case that was getting prepped for trial and we had a defendant that was clearly in the wrong and they did accept liability, but we also wanted to show the jury just how negligent she was, in a sense. So in… this is kind of about the speed that she was going. VERONICA: So it’s not enough to say you’re at fault. It’s like you’re really, really at fault. Like “shame on you” at fault.
27:08	CATE: Yes. And it’s multiple… She had done multiple things that kind of precipitated towards this horrific… she’s coming down a big street and our client is a pedestrian waiting at a crosswalk and he survived, but very, very traumatic injuries that permanently…
27:36	CATE: I mean, we’re talking fourth and fifth… I didn’t even think that was a thing before having this case, but degree burns. And so she knew it was her fault. And she did admit to that in her deposition, but she wasn’t giving us, and we felt in our hearts too, just knowing what our client had been through, seeing the accident report, she was not accurately giving us the speed that she was going before the accident. And so we did research, looked into it, and we have the resource of an accident reconstruction expert.
28:11	CATE: And so a lot of cars will have, especially newer models. In newer models, it’s more computerized, but even older model cars will have this black box. The black box that you can… that a reconstruction expert can extract from the car, and they can actually find these speed that the car was going just prior to impact.
28:37	CATE: And once we got that, it turns out her speed was 20 mph over what she had admitted to. And so we needed that extra piece of evidence to fully describe to the jury. And this case ended up going through a mediation as well.
29:03	CATE: But to fully describe the trauma of that accident and that impact and the resulting injuries to our client. So yeah, as I approach a case… and again, it doesn’t have to be a huge case.
29:23	CATE: Any case, at the very beginning, I’m immediately thinking, right when I speak with the client for the first time, when I look at the accident report for the first time, in my mind, the cogs start turning, and I think what creative ideas am I going to need to pull together here?
29:45	CATE: What resources, investigator, accident reconstruction expert, whatever we might need to build this case up? And my next case could be a case that shows me a different, new creative resolution to a case. And that’s when you go out to lunch with an attorney or when I have a lunch with an attorney at the firm, that’s sometimes what we talk about – is kind of brainstorming and putting all of our heads together to think, well, what have you seen that I could address this issue?
30:16	VERONICA: You have the benefit of like hundreds of years’ worth of collective experience in the halls at Montlick. Coming up next, the Montlick Closing Argument is straight ahead. Don’t miss it on Lawyers in the House. You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick.
30:43	If you want to listen to our radio show live, you can hear it every Sunday, 8 a.m. on 95.5 WSB. VERONICA: And it’s time for the Montlick Closing Argument here on Lawyers in the House with Montlick on WSB. I’m Veronica Waters here with the stupendous… the stupendous effervescent Montlick injury attorney Cate Powell. You’ve been hearing her talk about her superpower, creative case resolution, all hour long and now the floor is Cate’s for the Montlick Closing Argument.
31:15	CATE: So I would just say briefly and in closing that a lot of people think that practicing law is all about the paperwork or it’s just all about the process, which it is, and it’s about knowing the laws, but it’s also about at the very beginning of the case, thinking about the strategy for the case, thinking about what will be needed and what resources I will need to bring in to creatively bring the case forward and maximize the result for my client.
31:45	VERONICA: And I think it’s worth noting that the guy you just told us about, who was injured with fourth- and fifth-degree burns, which to your point is something brand new to me -how horrific for him – that he was referred to you, like, from the beginning of his case. You didn’t have to come in and try to catch up. CATE: Right. So then we knew at the get-go what we were preparing for and at each phase of the case, every possible creative solution that we had to push that forward. VERONICA: And we all can play a part sometimes. CATE: Absolutely. So my second closing point, second and final point is to all of you out there listening is that being a witness to an accident and committing to speaking to the police officer about it and possibly some more time after that for follow up makes a world of difference in the lives of the people that were involved in the accident. VERONICA: And I said earlier that we were going to talk about the importance of the medical information, what the doctors say what the tests say, how crucial that is in actually figuring out how to get a creative solution going. CATE: So that’s a big part of the case, obviously, is the injury aspect. And the treating doctor, their participation in the case, being willing to give a statement for the case.
32:09	CATE: To testify for the case is incredibly important and we’ve had to use that as a creative solution on so many cases to say, hey, look, the doctor backs up what our client is saying about injuries and how those injuries were caused by the accident. VERONICA: I’m not just pulling this out of thin air. This is documented here. So that’s another reason why if you are hurt through no fault of your own or if you’re hurt period, you’ve got to go get the medical treatment. You’ve got to go get the diagnosis, the prognosis, so folks know what to do.
32:39	VERONICA: And if it’s an accident that you didn’t cause, you need a lawyer on your side. Make sure that the one that you get is somebody who knows how to think outside the box, who doesn’t just treat you like a sheet of boxes to check off, but who treats you like the injured and valuable person that you are to make you whole again. Thank you so much to Montlick injury attorney Cate Powell, who’s stupendous. I’m Veronica Waters here on Lawyers in the House with Montlick and we will see you next time.
33:11	You’re listening to our podcast, Lawyers in the House with Montlick. Catch us live every Sunday, 8 a.m. on 95.5 WSB.

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