I Almost Died: The Problem of the $14,000 referral fee !

In my late 20s I was in an auto accident.  I was a passenger in a Jeep.  The driver of the Jeep I was in ran a stop sign and we were clocked by another Jeep on my side.  I went out through the seem between the top of the door and the roof.  I was up and walking around at the scene, talking and making sense, apparently.  But an EMT put a pressure cuff on me and confirmed that I had substantially internal bleeding.

My liver had been severely lacerated. I was taken by ambulance to the local emergency department and had emergency surgery. 

I spent a week in the Intensive Care Unit and a total of 3 weeks in the hospital.  

I ultimately filed a claim against the driver of the Jeep I was in.  The case settled shortly before trial.

A couple of weeks after we settled the case, my attorney and I met to go over the settlement sheet. It was then that I noticed that a portion of the fee I agreed to pay my attorney was being distributed to another attorney as a “referral fee”.  

I knew that the referring attorney did not want any part of a referral fee.  I said as much to my attorney

Wasn’t a problem, he said. My attorney said he’d be just a minute, got up from the table and returned just a bit later with a revised settlement sheet showing that the referral fee was added to my recovery.  He also had a new, larger, check for me.

That drove home a lesson that has stuck with me since and drives my interest in helping other accident victims: the attorneys who actually do the work in a personal injury case are used to paying referral fees and retaining the rest of total fee for themselves as compensation for their work.  

A typical personal injury fee in my community is 33% of the total recovery.  Referral fees are typically 1/3 of the fee or 11% of the total recovery.  In my case, eliminating the referral fee increased my recovery by about $14,000.00.  It made a difference.