Word: lawyering
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...California lawyer vs. the insurance industry...
Egan fought back by hiring William Shernoff, a Claremont, Calif., lawyer whose specialty is suing insurance companies for dealing in "bad faith" with their customers. In 1974 Shernoff not only persuaded a jury to award Egan $123,600 in damages for lost benefits and emotional distress, but he also won a whopping $5 million in punitive damages. That was a blow to Mutual's image as well as to its pocketbook: under California law, punitive damages are awarded to punish and deter "oppression, fraud or malice...
When the California court was ruling on the Egan case, Lawyer Shernoff was off in Mississippi instructing another jury in what he calls "the therapeutic concept of punitive damages." His client this tune was Wilfred Fayard, 58, a sheet metal worker, who had suffered a back injury while carrying a bathtub. Fayard lost his disability benefits because his injury was considered by his insurance company to be "nonconfining." That was because Fayard, on doctor's orders, managed to walk a few hundred yards every day for exercise. At the trial, a former claims adjuster for Fayard's insurers...
Insurance men grudgingly admire Shernoffs courtroom mastery. Says one: "He can get a jury really worked up." Yet Shernoff, who grew up in Wisconsin farm country, has none of the slickness of the stereotypical, California personal-injury lawyer. Says he: "My English isn't the greatest, but I know what I'm doing: the little guy against the insurance giant...
...radio subliminations. In the movie The Exorcist the image of a death mask was flashed before audiences to give them an extra scare. The tactic may have worked. Warner Bros, is being sued by an Indiana teenager who fainted during the movie, breaking his jawbone and several teeth. His lawyer contends that the fleeting death mask is "one of the major issues" in the case...