James R. Schwebel, Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben

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James (Jim) Schwebel has been practicing personal injury law at Schwebel, Goetz & Sieben since he founded the firm in 1972, and has seen verdicts and settlements increase along with the costs of medical care. The “chronic escalation” of medical expenses has been a major factor in the value of cases, Schwebel said, because juries tend to pay attention to the costs. Damages for pain and suffering are also affected by medical costs, he said.

Jurors want to make sure that plaintiffs are fully paid and do not want them to face uncompensated medical costs, Schwebel said. Jurors are also more skeptical of the insurance industry due to low-ball offers, he said.

A large amount of wealth in the American economy is attributable to insurance, Schwebel said.

“Years ago, insurers would set their reserves for millions of dollars, but now reserves are billions or trillions,” he said. They are trillion-dollar players in the economy.

When companies have such wealth, they want their money to make money, Schwebel said. Thus, they have investments worth billions of dollars.

Injured clients just want to be treated fairly. “You don’t want to be cheated and you want to be paid fairly under our system of justice. There’s enough data out there to predict what a fair result is,” Schwebel said.

He added, “if insurance companies treated insureds fairly, they would not get lawyers. They deny claims that should be paid, and trial lawyers become targets,” Schwebel said. But trial lawyers are becoming more and more rare as fewer cases are tried. “The whole system is skewed against getting into court.”