This is not just me coming up with arbitrary rules to make your life difficult. I make $0 from doing that, so please believe me when I tell you I have ZERO incentive to make up random rules or argue with people about it. Let me explain why I need your certificate TWO DAYS BEFORE YOUR COURT DATE.

Let’s say your court date is on the 3rd. I will leave the office, normally around 2pm (I have little kids and there’s no reason for me to sit in the office when I can do stuff at home – hello, 21st century!), the day before your court date. My mail doesn’t run here until 3, so if something is coming to me in the mail, I WILL NOT GET IT ON THE DAY BEFORE YOUR COURT DATE.

Moreover, the day before your court date, you know what I’m doing? I’m getting ready for court for everyone else and you. It’s really a huge time suck for me to be planning on meeting you for a drop off or trying to print this late email at 10PM or having to leave my family and go BACK to the office just to check the mail to see if something got there.

And remember, I ALWAYS give clients TWO MONTHS to get driving schools done. For the most part, the counties I go to only require online driving schools that you can do at your leisure. For those rare folks who have to do an in-person school, I certainly give more leeway. If you don’t get that online school done in two months, it is 99.999999% a time-management problem on your part. This does not, as much of a surprise as it might be to you, constitute an emergency on my part. I gave you plenty of time to help yourself out, so asking me to change my schedule, lose my family time, and have me run around in a tizzy because you couldn’t do an online course in 60 days is simply not a reasonable request to make of me.

If you took the time to read the Rep Agreement you filled out for me, you’ll note at the end that if you don’t get me your DS certificate two days prior to your court date then I can (and should!) charge you an extra fee. Remember, I have to appear in court for you and explain to the court why they offered you a plea deal and you’re dragging your feet. This is not necessarily always a simple thing. Then, instead of being able to send you a disposition email I have to send you an email explaining your deficit and the potential consequences of your failure. Your delay creates extra work and hassle on my part. You think you should get paid when you have to do extra work you shouldn’t have to do, right? Same here, friend.

The bottom line is this: You hired me to get you the best deal possible, but sometimes that requires some effort on your part. If you want the best deal, you have to expend the effort I ask of you, in the time-frame that I ask. There are deadlines in life, and definitely in court, and sometimes you just have to meet them, whatever your excuses might be. I don’t want this to be any more difficult than it already is, and trust me, I have NO desire whatsoever to argue with a client about why they should pay me more for making me do work because they sat on their homework. That’s no fun for me. If you want the best deal I can get you, jump through the hoops I give you in the time allotted and everything will be so much easier.

If you miss your court date on a speeding ticket in North Carolina, you can rapidly get into way more trouble than you think.

Missing your court date is referred to by court officials as “Failure to Appear” (often shortened to FTA). When you have an FTA, a clock starts running on a veritable time bomb. You have 20 days, generally, on Chapter 20 violations to get your matter resolved or get a new court date. If you do that in that amount of time, then you’re probably OK. But if you go past that 20 day window, DMV is notified and another clock starts ticking. Shortly, you’ll receive a letter from DMV notifying you that your license will be suspended if you don’t resolve the matter by a date that DMV sets. If you fail to do that, your license is suspended, meaning you can’t legally be driving, indefinitely until you resolve the underlying offense.

Indefinitely can mean forever if you don’t ever fix it! That’s a huge deal. Driving While License Revoked is a Class 2 Misdemeanor in NC and technically can result in jail time. Granted, if you don’t have an absolutely horrible criminal record, you almost certainly wouldn’t be sentenced to jail time for a DWLR, but it is possible. Moreover, you rarely get pulled for JUST a DWLR, but often for another moving violation at the same time. Even if you somehow get out of the DWLR but are convicted of ANY moving violation while you were in a state of revocation, that conviction revokes your license for a year. So even if you resolved the FTA and get the DWLR dismissed, if you don’t handle the subsequent charges correctly, you can end up revoked again!

This stuff gets complicated. Maybe needlessly so, but here it is. This is why having an attorney is generally worthwhile. If you missed your court date on your traffic ticket in NC, call me at 919-929-2992.

As an attorney, I’m ethically prevented from discussing a particular gripe with a particular client, even if that particular client decided to make their gripe public. To me, that’s like picking a fight with an old lady with no arms, but this is sort of my point about negative reviews: They tend to be written by negative people.

Take a look at my reviews. At the time I’m writing this, it’s July 2022 and I have more than 230 reviews and a 4.9 star average. Not too shabby, right? That means the overwhelming – and I mean absurdly vast – majority of my reviews are stellar (see what I did there?) reviews from happy clients. I think this translates into a safe assumption that, for the most part, I’m good at my job and tend to leave mostly happy clients in my wake.

Of course, I have a couple of negative reviews. The frustrating part about those negative reviews is that, unlike virtually every other business out there, I am FORBIDDEN from defending myself from whatever they say about me. I have a friend with a screen printing and retail business who got a negative review from someone saying they experienced “bad customer service,” but they were there for a job interview to which they showed up late! My friend was able to counter this review very effectively and demonstrate that this was just a disappointed troll taking out her life frustrations on an easy target with 0 consequences likely. I can run into this, too, but without the ability to explain anything to potential customers reading the clap trap written about me.

To address this issue, I thought I’d point out the two main themes I’ve seen in negative reviews that I and other attorneys get. So in pointing these things out, Mrs. Bar Investigator, I’m NOT discussing any client information; I’m relaying generic examples.

Not Hearing What They Want to Hear

Believe it or not, several of us have reviews from people that didn’t. even. hire. us. That’s right. Some wack-job can write a negative review about an attorney without having actually used their service, and potentially cost them thousands of dollars in revenue because of the negative perception. Thanks, internet! But I’ve seen it. Person calls, you tell them that they’ve got a situation you can’t help with and they would be better off calling someone else, and then BOOM sour grapes review. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t want to waste someone’s time, or my own, talking to a professional that has explicitly stated that they are incapable of helping me. And I sure as hell wouldn’t go complaining to the internet at large about ME calling someone who couldn’t help me and being mad about the truth I was told. Maybe I’m the crazy one, though.

Unreasonable Expectations

You just can’t satisfy some people. If you’re charged with speeding over 90mph, it’s probably not going to just go away, at least in the counties that I go to. You’ll be very lucky if I can save your driver’s license. Surprisingly, sometimes when I do just that – I SAVE SOMEONE’S DRIVER’S LICENSE FROM BEING REVOKED DUE TO THEIR OWN STUPIDITY – and then I get yelled at. Even more frustrating, I would never tell someone that I could make a ticket “go away” anyway. In fact, I have a very good idea how every ticket I handle is going to work out, and I normally share that – making NO guarantees – with clients before they hire me. So nothing that I do for a client is a surprise. But some people just have unreasonable expectations and/or gross memory deficit and/or hallucination issues.

If I don’t tell you what you want to hear, that’s not my fault. First, it’s your fault because you probably put yourself in this predicament anyway. Second, it’s also your fault because you called a professional and asked that professional for their professional opinion and decided to pout about it like a petulant child because it wasn’t what you wanted to hear. OK, maybe that second bit is also partially your parents’ fault, so maybe write them a review instead of trying to make me look bad on the internet. If I tell you what to expect, and then I do that, and then you’re mad at me for fulfilling the prophecy I already warned you about, you should not waste anymore time on the internet and you should talk to a physician of some sort. That’s not a problem I can fix.

I know I’m destined for a couple more negative reviews in my time. I plan on practicing at least for 5 more years, maybe more, and so it’s statistically probable that I’ll run into one of these jackanapes again. So when/if they write whatever hogs wallop they choose to write, uncaring as to the inappropriateness of the accusations against me or the financial consequences to me and my family, I’m going to reply with a link to this article because it is more likely than not that their issues fall into one of those two categories above (maybe both) and at least future clients can understand that, for the most part, my real clients who are not insane people like me and trust me to do a good job.

All of us come to accidents with a compromised body. To some degree, we’re all already a bit messed up. But that doesn’t mean that your NC auto accident claim isn’t worth anything. Here is the best tip I can give you about your prior injuries as they relate to your NC auto accident claim:

The First Rule of Pre-Existing Injuries: The first rule of pre-existing injuries is that we do not talk about pre-existing injuries. That’s a little strongly worded, but the Fight Club reference was screaming to get out. My point is that there’s no need to spout on about your medical history when you’re reporting your accident. I had a client once who had some back pain 5 YEARS prior to her accident, and when she reported the accident (before hiring me) the first thing she said was, “Now my back hurts, but I also had back pain 5 years ago…” WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT? Look, I’d never tell a client to be dishonest. But bringing up conditions that you had (past tense) when discussing injuries that you just received is not being honest, it’s TMI (too much information). It’s just not relevant. Keep it simple. Did your back hurt when you were driving? No? Good. Then if your back hurts after the accident, it must have been caused by the accident. Right? Of course, it’s different if you just had surgery. I’ve had that case, too: A client had back surgery and a few months into his recovery was in an auto accident. That’s fine. Disclose that. It’s going to come out anyway so it’s best to get ahead of it.

Of course, every situation is somewhat unique, so there’s not a lot of one size fits all kind of advice to give here. Maybe the best advice is to call a lawyer after your accident. Call me at 919-929-2992.

The Prayer for Judgment Continued. The ole PJC. Anecdotally, I believe this might be the legal issue that is most misunderstood by non-lawyers and lawyers alike in North Carolina. Let’s talk briefly about what it is, why you might use it, and when you definitely shouldn’t plan on using.

WHAT IT IS

You know what PJC stands for already (see above), so let’s just analyze those words: A “prayer” in this context is just another word for “request.” “Judgment” in this context is the official entering of the court’s decision as to your culpability. “Continued” refers to a postponement in a legal proceeding. So perhaps you can gather what the PJC is: It’s a request to the court to postpone its judgment against you. More precisely, it’s a request that the court indefinitely postpone the entering of their guilty verdict. Under NC rules, this means that despite your guilty plea/verdict you’re asking the court to not officially enter the judgment against you. In most circumstances when a PJC is used on a North Carolina speeding ticket, it’s an indefinite one, meaning that they won’t ever enter that finding of guilt. However, there are some circumstances where the PJC is used in a definite time period, but that’s not important for this discussion. The effect of this indefinite lack of entry of the judgment is that this can’t be held as a conviction, so it essentially obliviates the potential consequences of an actual conviction (at least in theory). Pretty cool, huh?

WHY YOU MIGHT USE IT

You might use a PJC when a qualified attorney tells you to do so. That’s the best time. But if you want a deeper analysis of that, read on…

You might use a PJC when there’s simply no better deal. For most NC traffic tickets that I handle (not all, but most…) the PJC is generally the THIRD BEST OUTCOME (and is sometimes the FOURTH). A dismissal is always best (though not always attainable). A reduction to Improper Equipment is better. A reduction to 9 over the speed limit is better IF you have a clean record in the past three years.

Part of the problem of the PJC is that it’s often seen as a universal panacea for everything anywhere all the time. It’s just not. Sometimes you can’t use it (it’s statutorily disallowed) and sometimes it’s not going to help you anyway (a PJC has already been used by you or a member of your household). Back to the point, it’s not something that can or should be applied to every ticket in every situation and you should get the advice of a qualified attorney before you attempt to use it.

WHEN SHOULD YOU NOT PLAN ON USING A PJC

You only get 1 PJC PER HOUSEHOLD (any family member that lives with you) within a three year period for insurance purposes. You only get 1 PJC per person within a 5 year period for DMV purposes. Yes, insurance points and DMV points are separate, do different things, and are accounted by different entities. Yes, it would be way easier if all of this was consistent and we didn’t have 2 stupid systems. Welcome to the Anglo-Norman legal system. So if there’s been any PJC use by you or anyone in your household in recent memory, don’t count on this to save your bacon.

If you’re thinking about using it for a ticket that’s more than 25 mph over the limit, Passing a Stopped School Bus, or a DWI, that’s not going to fly because the law doesn’t allow judges to grant that in those circumstances.

If you’ve got a CDL, PJCs are seen as convictions anyway, so they may affect you and your work relationship adversely.

I’ve heard rumors that a PJC isn’t seen as a resolution of a legal matter by military organizations, so if you’re trying to enlist, talk to your recruiter about it. I don’t know about this personally.

If you’re from outside of NC, I can’t say how a PJC will be viewed by another state. Will they see it as a non-conviction as NC does? Or will they see it as a guilty plea with some perfume on it? I don’t know. But for that reason, PJCs are probably unwise in an out of state ticket context.

Talk to an attorney if you have a ticket and are thinking about a PJC. No offense, but your ideas are probably wrong and you might end up doing yourself more harm than good, so get some help. Call me at 919-929-2992.

North Carolina is a liability state, which means if you’re in an auto accident, you’re going to make a claim (normally) against the at-fault party, whose liability insurance should cover it.

If you happen to reside in a state with PIP coverage, that can create a weird intersection between insurance coverages.

PIP (personal injury protection) coverage insures you against other people’s negligence as well as your own. So if you’re in an auto accident, regardless of who is at fault, your carrier takes care of your losses. Different states have varying versions of PIP coverage, none of which I’m an expert on, but you can imagine that if a PIP customer has an NC auto accident, they’re going to have some interesting questions to answer.

Sometimes the PIP won’t cover out of state accidents. Sometimes they’ll cover it, but expect to be paid back by the liability carrier. Sometimes they’ll cover it and not expect to be paid back. That last one is my favorite, so fingers crossed if you have this issue, you get that as your outcome!

The bottom line is this stuff is complicated, so seek competent legal representation. Call me at 919-929-2992.

Bicycle accidents can be devastating to all parties involved, particularly the bicyclists. With an almost total lack of protection from impact coupled with high speeds, the injuries from these accidents can really leave a mark. These accidents can also result in huge financial exposure to the at-fault party and maybe even criminal prosecution.

Before you set off on a bike ride, it’s a great idea to brush up on the law. No point reinventing the wheel, so just look here:

Knowing your rights and responsibilities can help reduce your risk out there, so in this case, knowledge is truly power…power to protect yourself.

If you’ve had a bicycle accident, call an attorney for help. Call me at 919-929-2992.

There is often a misconception that as a personal injury attorney part of my role is to make health care recommendations. This is absolutely not true.

I can understand why people think this, though. There are a lot of mixed messages sent through the media about what role personal injury attorneys play in health care. In other states I know that this is an even more blurred line, and even in this state that are many PI attorneys who get a little too deep in the accidental practice of medicine.

I try to constantly remind my clients that my job is NEVER to make healthcare decisions for them. I am not that kind of doctor, obviously (I have a J.D. not an M.D.), so I shouldn’t be making decisions or recommendations about healthcare; and neither should other unqualified attorneys. But there is a part of my job that is different, but only by a subtle distinction: One of my roles is to help you, the injured party, make healthcare decisions for yourself, knowing what the impact of those decisions might have on your claim.

It’s important to let that distinction marinate for a second. I don’t make healthcare decisions. I help you to understand how your decisions might impact your claim. Then YOU make those decisions, whether they help or hurt your claim, based on what’s best for your health. But you at least know the impact on your claim, for better or worse, before making that decision.

That is subtle, I get it. And it can be frustrating for clients who really just want someone to make decisions for them and solve their problems. I get it. I want to help. That’s why I’m here and that’s why you hired me! But it’s vital that a client should understand that I can’t make healthcare recommendations. I can help you understand what your options are and how those options might impact your claim. This, in my mind, is infinitely better than an unqualified person making healthcare recommendations. I’m making sure your healthcare remains where it should, in your hands, and at the same time empowering those decisions with knowledge about how you can help or hurt your claim with those decisions. I think that’s a big deal.

The take-home point is this: When you hire a personal injury attorney, you shouldn’t expect us to make healthcare decisions for you. But you should expect to get solid advice as to how your different options might impact your claim. So you can see how important it is that you constantly keep your attorney updated as to any changes/developments in your recovery and treatment so s/he can advise you.

Call me at 919-929-2992.

It’s never fun to break up, but sometimes it’s the right thing to do. If you’re not getting the service you want from your attorney you should try to have a candid conversation about your expectations and how they might be able to fulfil them. If you can’t talk it out and get on the same page, though, perhaps it’s time to “go in a different direction,” as they say.

If you have to fire your attorney, it really shouldn’t be that hard. Granted, there are different kind of contractual relationships that you might have with an attorney that might lead to a more complicated scenario, but let’s talk about the personal injury scenario exclusively.

You probably have what’s called a contingency fee agreement, which means that your attorney doesn’t earn a fee unless and until they get a recovery for you. So up until then, you don’t owe them a fee. Of course, if they spent a lot of time on your case they might have what’s called a Quantum Meruit claim, but then we’re talking about the hourly efforts they put into your case and depending on the stage at which you fire them, they may not have put in enough hours to make the pursuit of such a claim profitable. So chances are firing your attorney will not have a hugely adverse financial impact on you, though your particular situation may vary.

So how do you go about firing them? Rule 1.16 (a) states that a lawyer shall withdraw (that means they are compelled to do so) when they are “discharged.” My reading of that is that if you tell them, in whatever format you might choose – text, email, phone call, voicemail, snail mail, whatever – that they’re fired, then they’re fired. Period. I recently had a client come to me after discharging her previous attorney and they gave her a whole rigmarole about not being able to fire them without her actually speaking to the attorney to discharge them. I think that’s a violation of the above-stated rule. If the client says you’re fired, you’re fired. Now, if the attorney wants to talk to you about it, then that’s up to the attorney to seek you out and if you agree then you can have that dialog. But I don’t think they can make any sort of requirement on their own. Once you give them notice that you don’t want them on the case anymore, then they can’t be on the case anymore.

One of the things you learn in law school is that the best way to win an argument is to know the rules of the conflict. Here is a great article for lawyers about firing clients and disengagement in general. If you understand the attorneys’ point of view on this, then that will help you get your way all the more easily.

Hopefully you don’t ever have to fire an attorney, but if you do, good luck. And make sure you find an attorney that you can work with ASAP!

If you’re injured by a drunk driver in North Carolina, your claim should be taken VERY seriously by everyone involved.

Obviously, drinking and driving is bad. But there’s more to it than that. From an injury claim perspective, the value of the claim is significantly enhanced. Here’s the scoop: In a negligence claim you can seek to recover from the tortfeasor what are called “compensatory” damages.  That essentially means reimbursement for what you lost: medical treatment costs, lost wages, and something for pain and suffering are the traditional big three items we are looking for (what I call the Holy Trinity of personal injury law).

Every state is different, but n North Carolina you can, under very limited circumstances, ask a court to award you not simply the compensatory damages (paying you back for what you lost) but you can also ask the court for punitive damages. Those are damages that have NOTHING to do with your losses; they are simply there as a possibility to deter that sort of behavior.

What’s more, in the VERY limited circumstances that you can request punitive damages, the amount you can request is limited in North Carolina to the greater of three times compensatory damages or $250,000. However, there is ONE exception:  In DWI injury claims, there is NO LIMIT TO PUNITIVE DAMAGES.

This is an IMMENSELY important fact. In NO OTHER instance in NC can you ask a jury to just make up a punitive number that they think is warranted under the circumstances. It’s bananas.

But there’s always a catch, right?  Where does that money come from? Granted, some of the people driving drunk and smashing into folks have deep pockets, but certainly that’s not the majority of them. How are you going to actually GET the money from a punitive damages award?

The good news is that automobile liability policies are responsible for punitive damages in NC (this is not the case in some states, I’m told). So that means that if you get a punitive damages award, the at-fault carrier is on the hook!  This is good, but the fact is that most people in NC have a minimum limits policy which at the time of this writing is $30,000 per person.  That means that the total amount that any one plaintiff could recover from that kind of policy, whether it’s just compensatory or compensatory AND punitive damages, would be $30,000.

So what do you do then?

If you have Underinsured (UIM) motorist coverage AND your recovery exceeds the limits of the at fault party, you might be able to recover against your own policy.  Don’t hesitate to do this by the way, regardless of it being your own policy. This is PRECISELY what you’ve been paying for all these years so it would be the height of foolishness not to use it. While UIM policies are there to help fill in the blanks left by lower limits policies, they are not on the hook for punitive damage verdicts, so you shouldn’t be willing to try your case on the hopes that you’ll get punitives covered by your own carrier.

This is weird and complicated stuff. All the more reason to talk to an attorney. Talk to me! 919-929-2992