I waited a while before writing this in order to let the emotions of the situation die down.
In 2009 I was involved in an auto accident. Shortly after I had an aortic disection. Originally my cardiologist felt the accident was the most likely cause of the disection.
Over the course of a couple y...ears the case finally came to arbitration with both sides agreeing to a low payout of $20,000 and a high of $100,000.
It was not until testimony started that I found out that my cardiologist had changed his view of causation based on pathology reports. He went from a likely cause to an 50/50 causation He stated this In deposition but I was not involved in this deposition. Our whole case was based on his original opinion and his change of opinion esentialy killed our case. The arbitrator even cited the 50/50 statement from my cardiologist as the reason for not meeting the preponderance of evedence.
My issue here is not winning or losing. It comes down to withholding pertinent information that became available. Instead of telling me what the cardiologist had said they hired an expensive expert witness who unlike my own cardiologist had never personally examined me and actually had little credibility with the arbitrator due to my own cardiologist being such a much more credible witness.
Had this information been properly presented to me we could of chosen to take the $20,000. The attorney instead opted to withhold this information from me until arbitration I believe looking to try to win the long shot ruling.
Out of the $20,000 paid out the law office received $6666 of it with $10,960 going to expert witnesses and the arbitrator leaving me just over $2000. Had the law office been exercising their fiduciary responsibility to me the case would of been over months earlier, they still would of received the same $6,666 and after expenses I would of received about $10,000 at a time that I could of really used it and stopped my mortgage from going into default . This law firm knows the law and is good at what it does but when deciding between the clients interests and theirs it became obvious which is of higher priority