Lawyers clamoring to represent those injured in Amtrak derailment

The scramble among personal-injury lawyers for clients in the catastrophic Amtrak crash is on.

Law firms have held news conferences, advertised on the Internet, and issued news releases. Others with long records of representing clients in train and car wrecks instead are relying on networks of lawyers who refer clients or simply waiting for clients to find them on their own.

"There is a lot of competition," said Nancy Winkler, of Eisenberg Rothweiler Winkler Eisenberg & Jeck P.C., and a past president of the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers Association. "When you are talking about a massive disaster like this, already there are lawyers out there competing ... to represent individuals who are in need."

Several firms already have signed clients and filed lawsuits. But Alan Feldman, a longtime Philadelphia plaintiffs' lawyer, said that in all likelihood many other injured people have not hired a lawyer yet.

"I would assume there are still plenty of people who are taking their time to work through a difficult period for them and their families," said Feldman, of the firm Feldman Shepherd. "We don't reach out directly to clients."

But he added, "We try to make it easy for people to find us."

Feldman's firm has posted a blog on its website with the headline "Catastrophic Train Accident Lawyers," urging passengers injured in the crash to contact Feldman Shepherd. Feldman Shepherd also highlights cases on its website in which it has achieved verdicts and settlements totaling more than $120 million, an approach employed by other prominent personal-injury firms.

For personal-injury lawyers who land clients, the Amtrak derailment will surely be a source of lucrative legal work. Attorney fees in personal-injury cases can range as high as 40 percent. And with 200 injured and eight dead, there likely will be scores, if not hundreds, of claims.

Such high fees typically are meant to compensate lawyers for the risk they assume by agreeing to be paid only if they win.

Several days after the Amtrak crash, Tom Kline of Kline & Specter, and Robert J. Mongeluzzi, of Saltz, Mongeluzzi Barrett & Bendesky, two of the best-known personal-injury lawyers in the city, announced at a news conference that they had filed suit on behalf of people injured in the crash.

Within a day of the crash, Mongeluzzi also issued a release saying that his firm had clients in the accident. That same day, the firm of Silvers, Langsam & Weitzman P.C., also known as My Philly Lawyer, issued its own news release, offering to represent injured Amtrak passengers.

"It is competitive and I think that is a good thing for the client," said Dean Weitzman, the firm's managing partner.

James Ronca, of the plaintiffs' firm of Anapol Schwartz, says the firm mostly relies on referrals. The firm, which has had discussions with one potential Amtrak client, played a lead role in the National Football League concussion lawsuit, representing about 250 former NFL players.

In this instance, the rail line's liability seems clear and the financial risk to lawyers with clients appears to be negligible, attorneys say. The National Transportation Safety Board has said the train was traveling 102 m.p.h. as it entered the Frankford Junction curve in Port Richmond, where it derailed and where the posted speed limit was 50 m.p.h. Amtrak also has acknowledged that it had failed to install safety equipment that would have prevented the crash.

And while personal-injury firms typically must do significant investigative work to support their clients' claims in advance of a trial, in this instance much work will be done by the National Transportation Safety Board.

"The NTSB is doing this incredible investigation, so it is not as if I have to hire an investigator to determine what the cause of the crash was," Narberth attorney Evan Aidman said.

Aidman, who has filed suit on behalf of one client, a musician named Mark Tulk who suffered injuries in the Amtrak wreck, is a solo practitioner. He says he gets many of his clients as a result of a book he authored called Winning Personal Injury Cases. Clients also happen upon his website, which is how he came to represent Tulk, whose wife had called Aidman after reading about him.

"I work hard on search engine optimization, and every once in a while it pays off," he said.

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