New Flair Emerges in Personal Injury Settlements
Posted by
Rick PattersonDecember 26, 2006 1:51 PMTags:
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A new flair is emerging in personal injury settlements. In some instances, creative settlements are being reached. Although, they are still relatively uncommon more and more attorneys are starting to see them.
For example, in October, a plaintiff who was accidently paralyzed, his family and lawyers in Tampa, Fla., pledged all of $100.1 million punitive damages award to the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine.
It seems, however, the public seldom hears about contributions because defendants do not want their payments to appear to be admissions of liability. Richard W. Mithoff of the Mithoff Law Firm in Houston said that he does about one settlement a year "for a client who really wants to make a difference in a way besides just trying to recover money."
"I've had clients set up scholarship funds, clients who lost a child in an accident and were awkward about recovering money for a dead child," he said. He also represented a surgeon in a medical malpractice case in which the surgeon was injured.
"Part of the settlement required the hospital to set up a teaching/research fund in the surgeon's name. He and the hospital had a real interest in a teaching fund and scholarship fund," Mithoff said, declining to identify his cases.