** Mike Sender is a fictional character, inspired by my experiences as a lawyer in solo practice. This story is fiction. All similarities to actual people is coincidental.
Part 1 of 2
“We think your clients are jump-ins.”
I had no idea what Jerry Pivinski was talking about. He’s one of the lawyers for Empire Bus Company. He initially said he was calling about my Walenda and Jonas cases. I knew them well. My two clients were Walter Walenda and Richard Jonas, passengers on a bus that had been in a nasty intersection collision with a Jeep. It was the best case in my office.
Walenda’s case was especially good. He was a bus passenger, so no negligence on his part, who had a broken leg with surgery—a really good injury. After 18 years in practice, I’d just started referring to these situations as “good” injuries. Guess I was finally becoming a real negligence lawyer.
The Jonas case wasn’t as good—soft tissue neck and back injuries, classic whiplash nonsense, a case I would not have accepted on its own. But since Jonas was a prior client and, more importantly, had brought me Walenda, I took his case too.
That was about three years ago. Now we were getting close to a trial date. We’d already had numerous depositions and other pre-trial motions. The trial date was about six weeks away.
My one-third contingency fee on Walenda’s case was going to be nice. We had already turned down an offer package (from the bus and Jeep) of $95,000. I thought the case would ultimately go for $450,000—maybe more if I had the nerve to try it to verdict. A $150,000 fee would solve a few problems.
“What’s a jump-in?” I asked.
“You really don’t know?” Jerry said. “We get these all the time. It’s incredible.”
“You get what all the time?”
“Jump-ins. You know, people see a big bus accident, and they jump in.”
He let loose a big belly laugh, which evolved into a coughing fit.
While he coughed, I tried to compose myself.
Could it be?
What should I say?
Stay cool. Stay calm.
Find out what they have. Don’t get dragged into trouble. Stay cool. Figure out what to do.
“You don’t think that I...”
But he interrupted me.
“Mike, we’ve known you a long time, and we don’t think you knew, but your two clients are some pieces of work.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “You’re telling me Walenda didn’t break his leg in this accident? How did he get there with a broken leg? He was taken from the scene by ambulance, wasn’t he?”
“Sure he was. That’s one of the best parts. He broke his leg earlier in the day playing soccer. Your Mr. Jonas took him to Coney Island Hospital. They put him in a soft cast, gave him some Demerol, and told him to come back the next day for the surgical evaluation. After he and Jonas left Coney Island, they saw this accident and jumped in. But I guess Walenda limped in.”
More laughing and coughing. Then Jerry continued, “Let me tell you the best part—how we found out about it.”
“Tell me.”
“A couple of months ago, one of the other plaintiffs was here with his attorney for a settlement conference. When he didn’t like our offer, he asked if we’d used up all our money paying the knucklehead who dragged his friend through the back door of the bus and then laid down next to him. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
Jerry’s a good attorney who’s been with the bus company a long time. He settles lots of cases. If a case has to go to trial, it goes, and at some point things get resolved.
I still needed more details, so Jerry told me everything. When the jump-in question came to light, the company hired an outside investigator who really dug into it. They thought it was strange that Walenda could actually have a freshly broken leg. “Most jump-ins have bullshit injuries, like Jonas,” Jerry said.
The investigator confirmed that from the bus accident, Walenda was taken to Brookdale Hospital by ambulance. He was X-rayed, admitted to the hospital, and had surgery to set the bones properly. Jerry had the investigator canvas local hospitals, looking for Walter Walenda with a tib-fib fracture that day or earlier. Sure enough, a little legwork around the ERs had given them the basics: Walter Walenda, 11 AM, tib-fib fracture, Coney Island Hospital. With this info, they got a court order and subpoenaed the Coney Island records, and there was my client, with ER records showing a broken leg six hours before he was supposedly in my bus accident.
And more, the investigator called one of the accident witnesses, who had been listed on the police report. He’d previously told the police what he’d seen: that the bus had entered the intersection of Kings Highway and the Jeep had blasted the left side of the bus. The witness thought the bus blew the light, but other witnesses had it the other way. When asked about people entering the bus after the accident, the witness gave a detailed account of Jonas helping Walenda peel off his soft cast and dragging him up into the bus as some of the other passengers were leaving. He remembered Jonas yelling that they were off-duty EMS workers and had to help the injured people. When asked why he hadn’t reported this before, the witness replied that nobody had asked.
“Jerry, I need to call you back.”
“Sure, Mike. I understand.”
End of Part 1
Back in the day I tried cases of counsel for Green Bus. Jack told me about “jump ins”. They could tell from the fare box how many people were supposed to be on the bus. Depending on where the accident happened there could have been as many as 15 more people on the bus than there was supposed to be. But there was no way at that time to tell which were legitimate and which weren’t.