Las Vegas Personal Injury Attorney Explains Motorcycle Injury Cases & What Riders Can Do to Prepare

Hey everybody, its Attorney Justin lovely with Myrtle Beach biker lawyer.com powered by the lovely law firm injury lawyers. And I'm here at Red Rock, Harley Davidson here in Fabulous Las Vegas. Again, we're continuing our conversations from our Nammo meeting. And I'm going another awesome lawyer from Las Vegas. He's here. He's local, it's attorney Eric Blank, and he has been doing personal injury for the last 25 years. He's starting to really grow a really big motorcycle injury law practice. And he's doing some great work here in the community. And so Eric, how you doing, man? You're good. Yeah. Did you learn anything in this little mini meeting that we've had behind me?

Oh, I learned a lot. I mean, we had to, we had some presentations there. They're showing how to remove that helmet if someone is, as I wrote one of the comments down there shows, it's no good if they're dead. You know, a lot of people are afraid to move you if you're injured. Yeah. But one of the points made across was okay. But it doesn't hurt him if they're dead. So if you have to do it, we have to do it at times to get him safe. So

you're one of the newest members of national national academy motorcycle injury lawyers will glad to have you, man. And, you know, these accident scene management classes are very, very important. And you learn stuff just like that. And you got to what were your first thoughts? Because she taught you a little minute mini class? What do you think? Well,

I mean, it's, you know, my impression has always been in from clients that I've had, you know, when you're in a motorcycle accident, a motorcycle crash is generally pretty dire consequences, it's you in the ground, you know, so you don't have a lot of protection between that. So, you know, one of the big impression was that, even if that's happening, things you have to consider for yourself as, as someone who's rendering aid, as well as what you want to do with that person, you know, you got to get them to a safe area, even if it may be moving them know, a lot of times the thought is, don't move them right, let them stand still. But sometimes you have no choice but to move them rather than laying in the middle of a road where another vehicle could run over. Yeah,

so and so doing this outreach and teaching these classes sponsoring these to your firm. I mean, you're gonna be the go to lawyer and that education is priceless to people because I mean, what better education than how to save a fellow writer? Right?

For sure. I mean, that's tremendous. I mean, it's, you know, it's great to be out there and have the, you know, the open road and out there riding, but, you know, what can you do when something happens? You know, unfortunately, in the work we do, we see a lot of, you know, bad drivers or drivers aren't paying attention. And if you're on a motorcycle and you happen to be, you know, on the other end of that, you know, which is not an uncommon occurrence, you need to know what to do or be be able to render that aid to someone else who was injured,

right? What now we're in Nevada, what are the and obviously Nevada's laws are different from South Carolina's laws? And I've been having these podcast discussions, everybody's got a different story. It's wild how these laws vary from state to state. What are the minimum insurance requirements here in Nevada, and specifically touch on uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage? So great

question. So the mandatory insurance that you have to have here is 25,000. Liability 50,000. Total for a given accident. And that's the only requirement we have to have you're not required to have underinsured coverage, you're not required to have medical payments coverage here, you're not required to have that the only requirement is 2550. Now, unfortunately, we've seen more of and perhaps you see that in South Carolina, more and more people, they may get insurance to get their registration, and they'll drop it, we'll find more and more uninsured drivers out there. Wow.

It's so you I am Are you and it is not required at all. That's just so crazy. To me. That's part of this ASM training, you know, when we go my whole speech during lunchtime is guys get your debt paid right now I'm gonna look at it, you need to raise this you I am insurance. I mean, that's the most important coverage you can have on it as a motorcycle rider.

You know, what we find is that two things were very common, you probably hear this phrase too. When we ask clients, do you have underinsured or uninsured coverage? And if not, we'll look it up. They go well, I should have full coverage. Yeah. And what I've learned is that the definition of full coverage for people is I have the minimum liability required. That's your definition of full coverage.

Well that's that's the myth that's been propounded on everybody by the insurance companies, right? You've got full coverage so you know, you don't have shit if you think you have full coverage you don't you need to let us look at your policy and make sure that you're protected, right? For sure. Now, you're protecting the other guy with a minimum policy. Oh, for sure.

You're not protecting themselves. And I think unfortunately, there's a thought process and we've done videos mister trying to educate clients on that. But there's a thought process out there. There's some random pool of money out there that that pool of money will go towards someone if they're in an accident, like hey, I was in an accident, I should be compensated. Well, you know, the other side didn't have that insurance or they had this 25 minimum. You've unfortunately self insured yourself. You don't have the insurance you've taken the risk on if you've not paid uninsured policy limits or premiums in the past. You've gotten away with it right? You've you've done that. But now when you are paying now, here's a time when you need it. You've not paid for it. You self insured it so wow. I don't use it that much. Because it's too technical. Yeah.

And that's why you have to hire us. We can figure it out, right? Sure. Now we're in Las Vegas, obviously a lot of casinos are down here. A lot of tourists come down here. Now, what kind of cases do you see at these casinos?

Um, we see a fair number of slip and fall chip and fall type cases. You know, we have noticed requirements here. I know, probably a lot of states do as well, but, and depending on the jurisdiction of federal cases, they've kind of set sort of limits what that would be, you know, a lot of times people think just because they fell that the casino is on the hook, which we both know, I think it's not accurate, that they have some kind of notice, or they have a condition that was already dangerous that the introduction of some kind of moisture to it made it immediately dangerous. So we have clients like that, you know, casinos here will definitely push back, you know, a lot of people think, well, they don't want the negative publicity. And yeah, they're not looking for negative publicity. But that doesn't scare them, either. They know that there's so much going on so much news here that, you know, a slip and fall story is not going to they don't care. Yeah, essentially, they don't really care about it. So, you know, they will fight you on it. But we've been very successful, you know, working through the cases with merit and getting that the clients, getting them, you know, justice in those cases, what the casinos don't want, they don't want people thinking that they have a bad weekend at the tables, and they're going to make up for it by falling there and getting a quick payday. So that's why

What about his drunk driving victims? Is that a big issue out here? Because you know, people come down here to party? And maybe they make a mistake and don't take an Uber or Lyft? Do they? Are they hitting your clients? And do you have a good Dram Shop law?

So? Well, let me hit that two parts. Number one, yeah, we do see a fair number of DUI, our clients are gonna be the victim of that. You know, sometimes they'll say that they believe the client was a drunk. But there's not been a test performed or anything like that. So that's not always obvious, that's not doesn't become evidence, we can throw that out. But we're in some kind of litigation setting. It's not really evidence. We don't have Dram Shop laws here. Because likely because of the casino influence. So, you know, I know, some people have tried to bring claims in the past that they were overserved and caused them to spend too much money in the casinos.

That's why we come to Vegas, right? Oh, boy.

Right. But as far as being liable for over serving, we don't have Dram Shop laws here.

So you have another we were talking before the podcast, you do a lot of workers comp we

do we do a fair amount of workers comp here. Absolutely. Is there a certain

type of field that you see a lot of your cases coming from? Is it? Do they come from the unions? Hospitality word? Are they more construction?

Well, I'd say probably that's a good point, probably hospitality and construction, we've had a fair number of people work in the cleaning departments at the casinos. We've had some construction cases, you know, it gets a little tricky with some of the places maybe not having coverages, which we've been able to go after, through our Department of Industrial Relations here to get penalties against them for our clients. You know, one of the things it's a lot of education work comp, we have to educate the clients that, you know, they're not this is not designed, they don't get pain and suffering work comp system is not designed to, it's just designed to get them the treatment that is been they've been deemed to need and to get them back working. And if they are not back to their full recovery level to possibly get what's called a permanent partial disability rating. But that's the system. It's not designed to, you know, make it a we're

having the same discussion to the South Carolina man saying like, how long does it take to settle workers compensation cases, on average? So y'all backed up pretty bad? Because we're, it's forever for? So

That's a great question. You know, it depends if there's a lot of appealing issues. Yeah, it can get backed up, you know, if they had treatment, and the, you know, the, if the work comp recently we had introduced here within the last couple of years, which is nice. We did not, we used to not be able to bring bad faith claim against work comp ensures we now can Okay, so that's helped even it out a little more, you know, there was not really enough of a mechanism to keep them on their game before, you know, other than appealing issues and stuff like that. So now, they have some more of that. So we've seen a little more evenhandedness through the process, and that clients can get treatment that they need and that they can get through. So we've had cases as short as you know, maybe three to five months up through a couple of years. Yeah.

Cool bill. That's about the same. So what are the practice areas you practice? We do it on workers comp, the main bread and butter the

main ones, you know, we've occasionally will have ones where people come to us with you know, we do some medical malpractice, but we work with a partner on that we will come with different employment issues, or one issue I Scott, we do a lot of more more like mass tort type work, you know, your cases, I think I saw that you're involved with that as well. You know, these hair relaxes the autism cases. Along those lines, we've started a CPAP case along those lines. We've done more and more work in those areas.

You can't lose June or the a triple F, a little bit of Camp

lose you and a little bit of a triple F. A little bit of those, you know, the Campbells, you once you're interesting. You're right next to it. Yeah. Having to have the North Carolina Council on there. So we've done a little of that, but, you know, that's an area that's growing, you know, you know, it's hard for clients to get an understanding of the time length it takes in the process of it. That's a, that's a, that's an error. We've had to work more and more to get clients comfortable with what you're doing there.

Yeah, it's not like a single event case, you're not going to close this case out, you know, in 12 to 16 months. I mean, this is three to five, seven year play, and, yeah, right. It's very, it's tough on the clients. It's very hard.

It's extremely difficult. You know, they want justice yesterday, and then when they come to find out, they actually they may not qualify for something that's even tougher, you know, because the criteria,

as you know, to change your wife, half the cases out in a sec, yes. Yeah,

I know, I had a case and then I didn't, so that became a real challenge for them.

For sure. Yeah. And we just gotta keep fighting the fight, man. Gotta keep fighting.

That's the thing. You know, the the these insurance companies don't, they're not multibillion dollar corporation by accident,

You know, they are making record profits, their CEOs are getting record bonuses, and they're raising rates. And their propaganda blames it on trial lawyers.

Absolutely. They don't, they don't lose, right. They, you know, they pay out claims and they figure though, they get it back through their premiums and raising rates or if a market is too much for them, they just pull out. Yeah, so they, they really leave it all on us as their consumers and for us to fight for those people who get disadvantaged by this process. Awesome,

man. Well, Eric, I'm glad to fight the fight with you, man. Shout it out. Thank you. So Eric, tell us how we can get in touch with you. Absolutely.

So it's Eric blank injury attorneys here in Las Vegas. Our site is http://www.ericblanklaw.com/  a number type thing? Yeah, sure. 702 There are 2222115. We are also on Instagram, Facebook, Eric Lang injury attorneys.

I hope to learn some more from Yeah, we had a closed door meeting tomorrow. And you know, throughout this year, we'll work together and I'll send you all my Vegas referrals, but literally likewise. Alright, cool deal, man. All right, this is signing off. Justin. Lovely. Myrtle Beach backer lawyer.com. Again, we're coming to fly from Red Rock Harley Davidson. So like, subscribe and consume us. We're everywhere you see your social media, and we'll see you next time.