Rapid Legal Finance

Today, for many people, psychiatric drugs have become a popular solution to what ails them emotionally. Stress is at an all-time high, and these drugs seem to be a workable answer to handling it. Sadly, when misdiagnosed, the drugs don’t actually solve the underlying problem for the patient; they only cover it up by deadening the mind’s perceptions and in many cases causing  a new set of health problems for the patient.

But the FDA has chimed and set some recent regulations that may help. For example, in early 2009 then ruled that AstraZeneca cannot market Seroquel for depression.

AstraZeneca faces personal-injury claims from about 15,000 people who took Seroquel and say it caused diabetes. They allege the company failed to adequately warn patients about Seroquel side effects like severe weight gain, diabetes and pancreatitis. Read more of the story here.

Rapid Legal Finance offers lawsuit cash advances to plaintiffs who have been misdiagnosed and prescribed Seroquel and other psychiatric drugs.

Sometimes people contact my office before they’ve even hired an attorney. Unfortunately, that is a requirement for a lawsuit cash advance - having an attorney who has filed the suit.

If you have yet to hire an attorney, you may consider asking friends and people you know. A personal recommendation speaks volumes. Or you can contact your local Bar Association. Or you can visit Martindale.com and use their lawyer locator tool. If you still need help, we have access to a reputable network of attorneys. Send us an email with the type of case you have and the city and state where you’re located and we will help!

After you find an attorney, you will want to make sure the attorney will be right for you. First, ask the attorney upfront what education and experience they have that qualifies them to solve your situationt. Be specific: Years of divorce-court experience don’t matter if you need an expert in estate planning. More…

After you hire the attorney who will represent you, we here to help you get a lawsuit cash advance should you need cash while you are waiting for your lawsuit to settle.

With a lawsuit cash advance, a good case does not always mean that an approval for a cash advance is on the horizon. The reality is that most funding sources prefer motor vehicle accidents involving serious injuries, because the insurance company is very likely to pay (providing there is evidence of liability and adequate coverage) and this gives their investors a high degree of certainty on their investment. In other cases, it is not always so cut and dry. Liability may be harder to prove (i.e. “he said/she said” scenarios). So if a plaintiff gets denied, it is NOT because he has a “bad” case - it is just because the funding source/its investors are not interested in that case as in investment.

In addition, a funding source may have many options of where to spend investors’ money, with a certain amount of cash available to advance. So given 8 motor vehicle case cash requests for $10K and 2 “other” requests for $50K, the funding source is likely to prioritize the motor vehicle case requests. It is simpler for them to simply accept these cases (as they are sound investments) in order to keep their rates low.

So what does the plaintiff who has the “other” type of case do? He should first ask the question, “Does your company handle my type of case?” If the company does, he should be prepared for a possible rejection, given the above information, and if approved, he should be prepared for a higher-than-advertised rate, as the risk for the funding source/investor will be higher. Above all, he should not take any rejections as indications that he has a “bad” case.

Are you looking for a personal injury lawsuit loan? These “loans” given to personal injury plaintiffs are actually “cash advances”, because they are not repaid until settlement and are non-recourse in nature (the personal injury plaintiff does not have to pay the money back if he loses the case).

I came across this acrticle today and thought it presented personal injury loans very simply, as well as other types of cases that may qualify for lawsuit loans. Joel McLaughlin of OfficialWire writes, “The most frequent cause of personal injury is automobile accidents. Whether the person was driving under the influence, texting on a cell phone, or ran a stop sign does not matter. If they caused the accident because of negligence, you may suffer serious injury. Claims of this type are very common, and many plaintiffs apply for pre-settlement funding so that they won’t suffer financially while waiting for the case to settle.” Read the full article here.

In addition to personal injury cases, we help plaintiffs who have many other types of cases. If you are unsure whether you qualify, just email us with your question. Regardless of your case type, and given the fact that this lawsuit loan is non-recourse, your case needs to be fully evaluated by an underwriter at a funding source before you will be approved for a cash advance. Once we have the adequate paperwork from your attorney, we usually know within a couple days if you qualify for a lawsuit loan.

A week or so ago, I flipped through the cable channels and came across the movie Erin Brockovich. The movie came out in 2000 and I enjoyed it then, but this time it caught my attention for an altogether different reason.

The story goes: Erin Brockovich is an unemployed single mother, desperate to find a job, but is having no luck. This losing streak even extends to a failed lawsuit against a doctor in a car accident she was in. With no alternative, she successfully browbeats her lawyer to give her a job in compensation for the loss. While no one takes her seriously, with her trashy clothes and earthy manners, that soon changes when she begins to investigate a suspicious real estate case involving the Pacific Gas & Electric Company. What she discovers is that the company is trying quietly to buy land that was contaminated by hexavalent chromium, a deadly toxic waste that the company is improperly and illegally dumping and, in turn, poisoning the residents in the area. As she digs deeper, Erin finds herself leading point in a series of events that would involve her lawfirm in one of the biggest class action lawsuits in American history against a multi-billion dollar corporation (source: imdb).

The reason this story caught my attention this time is the fact that Brockovich’s attorney was quite stressed in a few of the scenes. In fact, he doubted his firm’s ability to handle the number of cases they would eventually take on. This attorney could have used an attorney loan! It would have relieved some stress, in addition to providing much-needed resources to handle that case load.

Rapid Legal Finance provides attorney loans to attorneys who need financial support while they are working on discovery for their portfolio of cases. While banks and traditional lending institutions consider such factors as credit worthiness and the cash flow of a law firm, we use the expected fees from pre-settlement or settled cases to determine financing. Because of our expertise in valuing contingency fee cases, our attorney funding programs are able to advance significantly higher amounts of capital than traditional institutions. And we do so in less time with little or no risk to the personal assets or credit of the attorney or firm. Read more here.

Of all the people requesting cash advances on their lawsuits, motor vehicle accident victims are the most common.

Typically the victim has been injured and therefore cannot work, so from the start, they are losing income. Add this loss of wages to medical bills that may not be readily covered by insurance and you have a financial strain on the victim. How serious this financial strain is depends in part on how long the victim’s recovery period is. If he/she has had surgery, it could be months. This can lead to unpaid bills (utilities turned off, car reposessed, house foreclosed, etc.).

To solve this financial strain, the victim may start using his/her own credit cards. Soon these bills come in, though, and they usually are not set up for deferred payments. Next he/she may turn to family and friends for some money. Nowadays many of us are strained by the overall economic climate so that is not typically a viable option.

For a victim of a motor vehicle accident, a cash advance on his/her lawsuit is an option that may alleviate a lot of stress. Bills can be paid and the victim can buy some time until he/she gets back to work. As an added benefit, it can afford the victim’s attorney to take the time to get the full value of the case, instead of accepting a lowball offer due to the victim’s financial desperation.

To qualify for a cash advance on a lawsuit, a person must have:

a lawsuit in progress. A plaintiff must have an attorney on retainer who is working on his behalf.

Once that qualification is met, there are a few things that are needed in order to evaluate the case. They are:

1. Complaint. This summarizes your grievance and is prepared by the attorney handling the case.
2. Evidence damages sustained by the plaintiff. For a motor vehicle accident, this would include medical records that depict the injury. If the plaintiff had surgery, the surgical reports should be included.
3. Evidence of liability of the defendant. This would include any documentation that showed the defendant is the one at fault and should therefore be the one taking responsibility. For a slip-and-fall case, this may include an accident report, photos of the accident site, a witness that saw the accident, etc.
4. Proof of the defendant’s ability to pay (insurance). A insurance policy declaration page usually is enough.

Sometimes additional documentation is needed for certain cases, but the above list includes the basics. Once these documents are supplied to a funder, the funder is able to evaluate the case and determine its merit. In short, a funder wants to have a strong expectation that the case will settle in the plaintiff’s favor, because if it does not, the plaintiff does not have to repay the money that is advanced to him/her.

People sometimes ask what I do, in social conversation, and I explain to them how I help people who are in the middle of litigation use the expected value of their lawsuit to get a cash advance.

This usually takes a minute to digest while the person tries to understand how that is done exactly. They have questions like: “Who lends the money?”, “What kinds of cases do you take”,”When does the money have to be paid back?” and “How much does something like that cost?”.

After answering these questions, the person is able to grasp what I do and usually thinks it is pretty remarkable that there is yet another means in our society to get immediate cash - beyond the typical route of going to a bank and/or using credit cards. They are right that it IS remarkable, because a cash advance can really help a person with no (or low) income stream get the cash they need for survival with repayment of that advance deferred. While it is remarkable, though, it does not come without a fee - it is also expensive. The interest rate on a lawsuit cash advance correlates to the risk of loss to the funder. Because plaintiffs are not required to pay back the money they are advanced if they lose a case, funding sources must account for this in their fee structures. Typically a lawsuit cash advance will cost a plaintiff upwards of 2% monthly compound interest or a flat interest rate if the case settles within a certain time frame.

So yes, lawsuit cash advances are expensive. But since everything is relative, we can ask: “Expensive compared to what?” Compared to having a car reposessed? Compared to losing a house? Compared to taking on another credit card with fear of being able to make the monthly minimum payment? The bottom line is that a cash advance is only considered too expensive by someone who does not need the money.

A good broker will make sure the plaintiff understands these fees so the plaintiff can make the right decision for himself/herself and there are no surprises when the case settles and it is time to repay the advance.