Transcript
Mitch: Good morning and welcome in, to another episode of Ask the Experts here in the Big 920, thebig920.com, streaming nationwide and beyond by the iheartradio app. My name is Mitch “Thunder” Nelles, I am the host of Ask the Experts and we are joined once again by our friends from Groth Law Firm. Jon is here, Jon Groth is here this morning. Good Sunday morning to you, my friend.
Jon: Good Sunday morning to you, how are you?
Mitch: I’m ya know, ya know?
Jon: You sound great!
Mitch: I hope I’m great.
Jon: Good.
Mitch: Yeah. We’ll see how the Packers do later today. I may have picked them to lose.
Jon: Ohh, it was a close game last time. That was an exciting game because the spread was fourteen points, right?
Mitch: It was. So, we will see what happens. Alright, good to see you on this morning. And today you’ve brought with you another one of your friends and coworkers, Kyle Buss is here. Kyle, good to see you.
Kyle: Morning, good to see you.
Mitch: Yes, how are you doing this morning?
Kyle: I’m doing okay. I’m excited for kickoff in a little bit here.
Mitch: Yeah, ya know, we found out before the show that you’re a Yankees fan.
Kyle: I am a Yankees fan. I like teams that win and I hear that you’re a Red Socks fan, so I’m sorry to hear that.
Mitch: You like teams that win, historically. I mean, not in recent history, but historically.
Kyle: Historically.
Mitch: Which is cool.
Kyle: And next year, yes.
Mitch: Fair enough. We’ll leave it at that.
Jon: I like the Brewers, how’s that?
Mitch: You know what, I think we can all say that we like the Brewers, is that fair?
Jon: There we go. Go, Brewers, go.
Mitch: Absolutely. So, Jon, we’ve had you in a couple times now and you’ve been by yourself and you’ve been with guests and we’ve been talking about all the things that Groth Law Firm can do to help you. And really, making people whole again and how that whole process goes. And we’ve talked quite a bit about what happens when someone calls you and how that first call goes and what happens then. And today I think we want to dig a little bit deeper into the process and what happens both before that call, so what people need to do to protect themselves. But then, really what happens after that with the investigation, I know that Kyle is an expert at expert crash reconstruction and that process and so we’re going to get into that as well today. Does that sound like a good place to go?
Jon: Yeah, it does. Just digging into the next stage of the process, yeah.
Mitch: So, something happens. There’s a car accident or there’s a, or something, I don’t want to say catastrophic, but something bad.
Jon: We, for some reason, had a rash of dog bites. I don’t know if it was people were out more because of the weather or what the deal was, but there was, oh boy, a half dozen of dogs attacking kids.
Mitch: We’re gonna spend a whole segment of this show talking about that because I have, I have a situation that happened a few years with a dog that we owned at the time that I want to talk about with you guys.
Jon: Sure. Absolutely.
Mitch: It’s always nice to bring in personal history and stories and stuff like that.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: I would guess more common though, ya know, the car accident is kind of the classic case.
Jon: Yep, yep.
Mitch: So someone calls, there’s an investigation, ya know, you guys are really one of the things that you take pride in is helping relieve that stress immediately.
Jon: Yeah, I think its important. When we get potential clients, they call us up. Ya know, their lives are turned upside down. Their car is damaged, their back hurts, they don’t know how to go to work the next day. I mean what we do is, we make sure that more or less from beginning to end that they’re taken care of. We’ll get them to the right doctors, we’ll make sure their property damage is taken care of. I know personally and from working in the legal field for as long as I have, a lot of firms will say that you just deal with your property damage and oh, by the way, you gotta go to the hospital let me know when you’re done treating. We will contact these clients from beginning to end, see how they’re doing, make sure they get to the right doctors, make sure the vehicle is fixed, everything in between.
Mitch: So, it sounds like you guys are part of the process and people need to be careful because, to add to your point, Kyle, you could, I think so often people are harmed by what they don’t know. And so they don’t follow the right procedure.
Jon: Certainly.
Mitch: They don’t follow the right steps. They don’t document things the way they’re supposed to and I’d like to think that all law firms are, ya know, taking advantage of people, but all law firms are looking out for their client and on some level, I’m sure they are. But, it sounds like the connection that yo form and the way that you follow that process all along with the client is one of the things that sets you guys apart.
Kyle: It is, and I don’t if it’s a, maybe you wanna call it the Groth difference.
Jon: Sure, we can call it that.
Mitch: I like that. I’m gonna write that down.
Kyle: Groth difference. But like I said, these people come to us and whether its a car accident, dog bite, slip and fall, they don’t where to turn to and its our job and obviously we’ve been doing this for quite some time to make sure that they talk to the right people, they get the right treatment, everything’s documented so at the end of the day we can not only maximize their settlement but also make sure they get their lives back to what it was before whatever happened.
Mitch: Absolutely. We’re talking today with Kyle Buss and with Job Groth form Groth Law Firm. Go to grothlawfirm.com, that’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com I’m just, I always back to this and I feel like I’m gonna back to this every month with you, Jon is that concept of making people whole and its, ya know, so often we, ya know, society’s hard right now. Ya know, America’s tough right now and there is so much debate about well is this a capitalistic thing or is this a socialist thing or is this a, ya know, and that the end of the day if somebody is hurt if somebody is in an accident and they hire you. It just makes sense to me that you’re invested in getting them back to whole because, Kyle, like you said, that’ll maximize their settlement, but even more than that, it’ll make them a whole human being again.
Kyle: Absolutely. And I don’t if Jon if you want to touch on this a little bit, but in most cases, they didn’t ask to get rear-ended they didn’t get asked to get bit by a dog. I mean, we’re not trying to run up the scores here. At the end of the day, we want to make sure these bills that have been incurred over the last six to twelve months are taken care of. That their car is back to normal, that they, any lost wages are taken care of. This isn’t some get rich scheme.
Mitch: Right.
Kyle. This is our clients who didn’t ask for a terrible situation to happen, but once it happened, they certainly give us a call and we make sure to take care of them.
Mitch: Sure.
Jon: And it’s a real-life situation. Ya know, you’re talking about something that occurred to somebody’s Mom or somebody’s kid or somebody’s aunt, uncle, whatever it is and whoever they are and it does kind of comeback to capitalistic, socialistic, or some kind of politics because our economic format, I guess I’ll say that instead of politics, because Progressive, Acuity, whichever insurance company, it’s their job. That’s their business and that’s fine, their job is to get as much as they can in premium and pay out as little as possible. That’s just the way it is.
Kyle: Right.
Jon: And that’s our job to fight against that and make them pay out more than they want to pay. There’s something that’s been happening more recent, sorry, more frequent than not in recent years with insurance companies is they are coming soon after a crash and saying hey, we’ll pay you, let’s say five hundred dollars right now and we’ll cover your medical expenses in the next thirty days and they’ll have you sign a document. You get your check for five hundred bucks and then you think you’re covered. And I’ve had…
Mitch: Can I give a PSA real quick here?
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: Don’t sign that paper!
Kyle: Absolutely not.
Mitch: Am I right with that?
Jon: Agreed. One hundred percent correct.
Mitch: I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page.
Jon: The problem is, people are in tough times and they have to pay for..
Mitch: They need that five hundred buck.
Jon: They need the five hundred bucks because they need to pay for their groceries and they may be off work for a couple days so they need to pay for it so they do it. And then, ya also, I’ve had a number of potential clients who we can’t help out because they did sign, have come and said well, the adjuster said I’ll be taken care of and while theoretically you were taken care of for that month.
Mitch: Right.
Jon: But once the thirty-first day or whatever day it is and you’re still going to the doctor and you call back the adjuster and you say, hey, you said I’d be taken care of that my medical bills would be taken care of and the adjuster says, sorry, what you signed cuts off on this day, I don’t care if you have more medical bills because that’s it.
Mitch: That’s it, Yeah, I’ve done physical therapy, not because of accidents or anything like that, but ya know, I play sports and ya know, you guys play sports as well. So, ya know, you get injured and gotta go to physical therapy. I don’t know any physical therapy that says, yeah come for three weeks and then you’re all healed. I mean, this is, so I’m guessing in an accident even more. This is a two, three-month process for some people, probably a lot longer for some people, knock on wood, they’re lucky. They’re not injured in an accident, but this isn’t a, ya know, it sounds like the insurance company treats everybody pretty much the same. Oh well we’ll look at this and every example I’m guessing is different.
Kyle: Well right, and to kind of touch on what Jon was talking about, especially this time of year. It seems like insurance companies are, ya know, people get into an accident or other incidents that happen, they will call them immediately. They will show up at their house, they’ll say sign on the dotted line, flash a little bit of money, and I’ve known too many people who’ve signed it and they’ve lost all of their rights to go after the insurance company.
Mitch: And there’s no recourse after that, right?
Kyle: There’s no recourse after that.
Jon: It’s shocking how fast..
Mitch: But you guys are lawyers! Can’t you get it past a legal document?
Jon: A contract’s a contract. Yeah.
Kyle: You sign on the dotted line at some point and that’s pretty much it.
Jon: That’s pretty much it. You could say its a contract of adhesion or unfair dealing or all that kind of stuff, but its been tries and its been lost.
Mitch: So don’t sign that contract?
Jon: Simply say that I wanna think about it, can I call somebody.
Mitch. Yeah.
Jon: What’s wrong with that? You want to get a second opinion when you can go online for anything. You’re looking to get on Amazon and on eBay..
Mitch: When I’m doing my basement or my roof or I’m buying a car or anything, I want to go to more than one, I want more than one option.
Jon: So why would you take the..
Mitch: The fandom of a baseball team, ya know.
Kyle: Yeah, well.
Jon: Why would you take, why would you take the one, or the first, or the only offer from the insurance company when it’s in their best interest to offer the lowest amount possible. It just doesn’t make any sense, but especially now, its the holiday season and you need that extra cash for something and that’s where it’s shocking to me how fast they have people available to swoop in and literally knock on your door with a check. That’s kind of shocking, but that’s the business they’re in. And they understand that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and people are going to fall for it.
Mitch: Right. Well and not only do they, it’s a holiday season, but its also at the end of the year and everybody’s budgets ya know. They probably have some money burning holes in their pockets because of the premiums they charge and all that sort of stuff.
Jon: Sure.
Mitch: So they, oh, we have some extra cash on hand right now. I’m not, and I would never suggest this and you guys would never suggest this when that person knocks and my door and says here’s five hundred bucks and we’ll cover your medical bills, can I negotiate with them? Not that I ever would, but just to kind of needle them I wanna say. Why don’t you give me a check for five hundred thousand dollars and then we’ll start talking.
Kyle: I mean certainly you..
Mitch: And then they’ll slam the door in my face.
Kyle: Yeah, I was gonna say that you could go with that approach and it’s likely the negotiations will end pretty quickly.
Mitch: But I assume I don’t, it’s not in my best interest to negotiate or anything. It’s in my best interest to say no thank you, I need to call my lawyer, I need a second opinion or something like that.
Kyle: Exactly, I mean at the end of the day what does it cost you to call Groth Law Firm? It’s free.
Jon: Its a free consultation.
Mitch: And it’s 414-375-2030. That’s 414-375-2030.
Kyle: So, if at the end of the day you have a question, just give us a call. If you decide to go with us, great. We’ll help you, like I said, from beginning to end. If not, what’s the worse that happens? It’s a free consultation. Give us a call.
Mitch: And as the name of the show is, Ask the Experts, when somebody calls you they can ask the expert in, and I know you guys aren’t allowed to call yourselves experts, but I’m allowed to call you experts.
Jon: Thank you.
Kyle: Appreciate that.
Mitch: But, you guys, I mean, this is what you do. Ya know, this is what you do for a living. You see, you’ve seen, I’d say you’ve seen everything, but then tomorrow you’re gonna get a call of something new, but you have all of this experience and you have all this knowledge and expertise. Where when somebody calls you and makes that phone call whether they are gonna talk to you for fifteen minutes and never talk to you again or whether they’re gonna hire you and it’s gonna be three to six-month process or however long it’s gonna be. You’re going to be able to act in their best interest. You’re gonna be able to give them legitimate advice. Ya know, you’re on their side. Ya know, I got in an accident and the insurance is not on my side. They may show up with hundred bucks and pretend like they’re on my side, but I’d like to think that we’re all smart enough that we know they’re not.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: You guys are.
Kyle: Yeah, and this is what we do. This is seven days a week. Ya know, we talked to hundreds of adjusters, doctors, obviously…
Mitch: Just not during the Packers game today.
Kyle: Possibly.
Mitch: Even during the Packers game today?
Jon: I’ve taken phone calls during a Packers game.
Mitch: I believe that.
Jon: I have yeah, but you never know.
Kyle: But it’s what we do. We take pride in it. At the end of the day, ya know, clients, like I said, you want to give us a call for a free consultation. We are more than happy to speak to anyone.
Jon: Ya know, something about that with the doctors and such and just the expert discussion, was it last week or probably two weeks ago now, we went to lunch with a couple different doctors, a couple different experts because we want to know, kind of get into that part of the process for what’s new in the world of medicine,
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Visit pain management and rehab doctors or specialists or things like that, that we can keep in touch with their side so we know whether it is gonna be a three-week process for this kind of injury to heal or that kind of injury or I had on Thursday last week, I had one of my paralegals say hey, one of our clients is having some issues. It’s a crush injury to her foot. Who do you we know? Her doctor doesn’t have a referral for a specialist.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: That’s something that we are in the know, I guess I’ll say because we’re going to lunch, ya know, we are keeping in touch with these kinds of specialists to know who to get clients to so we can help with the process.
Mitch: I actually want to get more into that when we get back because I think that brings a ton of value that people really need to know about. Kyle Buss and Jon Groth are with us today on Ask the Experts from Groth Law Firm. Go to grothlawfirm.com. That’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. They’re at 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. You can call them at 414-375-2030. That’s 375-2020. More coming up, this is Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts, The Big 920, thebig920.com, streaming nationwide and beyond by the iheartradio app. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles here with you with Ask the Experts, and if you’ve had a chance to pick up the most recent copy of Milwaukee Magazine, which has the title on the cover, “Milwaukee Cheers,” and has a delicious looking glass of some sort of spirit. I will assume it’s scotch, but it’s probably bourbon or, people are into bourbon these days, I’m a scotch guy, that’s okay. But, if you open up, there’s a section on Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyers and I didn’t even have to thumb through it. I opened right to the page and I’ve got a picture of Jon Groth, I’ve got a picture of last month’s guest, Melissa Fischer, and I’ve got a, in the picture as well, today’s guest, Kyle Buss. So Groth Law Firm, skilled, dedicated, proven. Is featured in the Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyers section as Jon, you were named a Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyer, were you not?
Jon: I was lucky to get that designation, yes, thank you.
Mitch: Well congratulations!
Jon: Thank you, thank you.
Mitch: And the picture looks great. Kyle you gotta big smile going on.
Kyle: I do what I can.
Mitch: Yep. Absolutely.
Jon: Nice tie.
Mitch: Not that everybody doesn’t, but ya know, Ryan doesn’t smile with teeth. And you smile with teeth and I like that. I like showing, ya know, if you’ve got the pearly whites, you show them off.
Kyle: Well Ryan takes it so seriously that sometimes he just doesn’t smile, but that’s okay. He’s incredible at what he does too.
Mitch: Sure, absolutely. So, Ask the Experts. Today we’re talking to Groth Law Firm and we’re talking about becoming whole again and the process that we go through and we’ve talked to Jon. We’ve talked to you throughout the months about the entire process and something that you brought up last segment really connected with me for some reason. You talked about how you, from time to time, have lunch with doctors, or physical therapists or people in other fields and you can fill in more of those that you talk about the process and what’s hot and what’s the big deal right now. Is it rehab? Is it pain management? And what’s the process if somebody comes to you with whiplash, which I’m guessing is a big deal in car accidents.
Jon: Sure.
Mitch: You know, what is that, is it physical therapy? Or is it, do you need a neurosurgeon sometimes or how does that, tell us more that you’re not insulated in your bubble. You’re out there, you’re doing what’s right and I think both of you could probably touch on this. How important it is to talk to professionals in other professions to have a full well-rounded idea of how you can help people.
Jon: And that’s what Kyle, I know Kyle has set up lunches in the past couple week, with different pain management and rehab specialists, doctors, a primary care doc from the Southside, and some physical therapists and such. Just so we are in the know and you can make that connection and help people out when it comes to what they need with a specialist or with ongoing care because you have clients who they maybe have lost their jobs, so they have no health insurance.
Mitch: Okay
Jon: And then what?
Mitch: Yeah.
Jon: Then what do you do? Hopefully, you have auto insurance. They what you call a Med Pay policy so then you can use your MedPay to help pay for your doctor bills, but who do you go to and who’s going to see you if you don’t have a primary doctor also?
Mitch: Right.
Jon: So you have all these different problems then we have seen a lot of these situations where many times its somebody that’s been involved in a car accident, they have health insurance, they have a primary care doctor, and I strongly encourage them to go to their primary care doctor because that’s your quarterback. And they’re gonna tell ya where to go. Which specialist, whether it’s a PT or somebody else.
Mitch: So start with your PCP.
Jon: Exactly. But, you have the problem then, if the PCP, the primary care doctor, refers you to somebody else, there are doctors that don’t like lawyers. I’m shocked that people..
Mitch: What is wrong with these people?
Jon: I don’t know.
Mitch: I know lots of lawyers and they’re all very good people.
Kyle: I just handed him a twenty. Thank you.
Jon: You have specialists who don’t like getting involved in litigation and part of the problem is, eventually, the worst case scenario is there’s a deposition and they’re taken away from their doctor’s office and they have to come somewhere else and we have to come to them and they take three hours out of their day where they can’t treat people and they have to sit there in a room with some lawyers who they may not like;
Mitch: Some stuffy suits.
Jon: Some stuffy suits and answer questions that are maybe stupid.
Mitch: To them.
Jon: To them. Yeah, well why are you asking me this? Obviously, this person is injured, so why am I getting grilled for those kinds of things? So, there are doctors who don’t like getting involved and we like to be in the know throughout the entire process so we can help with the process because there are sometimes when you will see that there’s a doctor who will not help with litigation or there’s a facility in itself, the entire facility, whose rule is they won’t get involved in litigation. So then we know because we have to look at the endgame, what’s gonna happen six months from now or a year from now when we have to put it in a suit if we have to. Will we get the proper support from the physician, from the doctor, from their facility? If they’re not gonna sit for a deposition and we need to have them sit for a deposition, I don’t want to have to subpoena them and then well..
Mitch: That’s a whole other round of litigation.
Jon: Oh my gosh, because then you have their in-house counsel calls and then you have their attorneys who are involved and risk management, it’s a big mess. So, getting involved earlier and getting involved in the process as to who they’re seeing is really important.
Kyle: And to touch on that a little bit more, like I said earlier, this is what we do seven days a week. For us to reach out to doctors and to be in the know, I think it really does two things, it’s gonna maximize what we can do for the client as far as settlement.
Mitch: Sure, makes sense.
Kyle: More importantly, I would say is uncertainty is what causes all the stress. It’s again, how am I going to pay for the groceries? Where do I need to go? What’s wrong with me? For us to meet with these doctors and, ya know, and neurosurgeons, and everyone that we meet. At the end of the day, its something that we can say, okay, based on this soft tissue injury, I can send you to this particular facility. You’ll likely have x amount of weeks of treatment before another evaluation and then we’ll go from there. At least we give them some kind of certainty based on what we know.
Mitch: I guess I’m surprised by the concept that, alright, I got in a car accident and I got hurt and I call you guys and you guys, ya know, you guys tell me to document everything and do everything and I go to my primary care physician and he sends me to a doctor. I don’t think at the time, oh should I check on this doctor with you guys. Ya know, this is where my primary care physician is sending me, I trust him. He’s gonna send me to someone good. So he sends me to somebody good and they fix my elbow, which got hurt in the car accident, and months later, there’s litigation about who is paying for the elbow surgery I had. That the elbow specialist that I went to wouldn’t have the cajones to come and, I just paid him this exuberant medical bill, I’m his patient, that he can’t show up for an hour and say yes, this person’s elbow was totally messed up because of the car accident. Ya know, that seems counterintuitive to me.
Kyle: I would say from beginning to end, from that initial phone call until we settle the case, everything we’re doing is setting up for that instance.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: Whether it’s sending to a specialist or getting the medical records from a doctor. This is exactly we do. We will build up the case from day one.
Mitch: Yep.
Kyle: So at the end of the day, you won’t have to deal with that kind of an issue.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: The people that we work with, the people that we would refer potential clients to, they will go to bat for you and we know that.
Mitch: So again, we go back to that concept of every step along the way, talk to you guys. So I met with my primary care physician, he referred me to somebody. If anything changes or if there’s any new information or anything, ya know, talk to you guys just so we know we’re all on the same page and we’re headed in the right direction.
Jon: And this is what I say to every single client is that I’m not a doctor and if you want to go and see a doctor that I have told has a history of not cooperating, that’s fine. That if you have some relationship with this doctor that is you think he or she..
Mitch: Right, if we’re childhood friends and I think that person might make an exception for me then that might be different.
Jon: Yeah, certainly. Or, if you think this is the only doctor that can solve your problem, that’s fine too. You just have to understand that they may not go to bat for you in the end. Ya know, just the client needs to be aware of what’s going on and the worst case scenario is, and this is a real-life situation, I had an orthopedic surgeon who has now since retired, but he was older and in his last years..
Mitch: You want to say his name so badly I can tell. I can tell you want to call him out right now.
Jon: I do, but I’m not gonna do.
Kyle: I think I know who you’re talking about.
Jon: So, it was a surgery. He had written a report, so it was in black and white, it said x, y, or z is related to the crash and we were getting ready for trial. I called him and I said, okay, we’re gonna now set up your deposition either before trial or I’d like you to come to trial and it’d be great if you could actually be there in the stand and talk to the jury and the response was that you’re not gonna like what I have to say. And I said, well doctor, all you have to do is read your report. I don’t want to do this, so you’re not gonna like what I have to say.
Mitch: But it’s in the report!
Jon: I was shocked that was the situation.
Mitch: So can you use his report, but then not call him? Does that at least count for something?
Jon: Well then this adds some layers of complexity because then now you have a doctor that doesn’t want to cooperate. I think that’s, I would say it’s unethical.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: Agreed.
Jon: I don’t know what it would be against do no harm, it’s one of those things doctors say they’re gonna do and again, there are a million doctors, many doctors who are friends who are fantastic. But there’s the small chance, and I’ve seen it before, where a doctor doesn’t want to get involved for whatever reason and then you have to scramble and do a lot to figure out how you’re gonna salvage the case because the doctor who was inside in my client’s body repairing it now won’t go to bad, so what does that mean? That’ll give ammunition to the defense.
Mitch: Right.
Jon: Which they’re always looking for. So they can say no or we’re gonna pay less or whatever that’s gonna be. So, I’ve had that situation occur and that makes me more concerned and more vigilant with all current clients and all future clients.
Mitch: And that blows my mind a little bit.
Kyle: Yeah, and just that one aspect of the case, a doctor who is unwilling to testify, that could be the difference right there.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: From beginning to end, we’re talking a thousand different steps that we need to take care of on our end and just that right there is the difference.
Mitch: Unbelievable. Jon Groth and Kyle Buss are here with us today. When we come back we’re gonna talk more about this concept fo expert crash reconstruction and also about some dog bites as well. Kyle Buss, Jon Groth, Groth Law Firm. G-R-O-T-H, G-R-O-T-H. Go to grothlawfirm.com. Give them a call, 414-375-2030. 375-2030. They are right here on 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. This is, Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts on The Big 920, thebig920.com, streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app. It’s free, download it today. Go to iheartradio.com. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles with you, another edition of Ask the Experts. It’s the first Sunday of the month, you know what that means, that means that Groth Law Firm is in the house. Jon Groth is here, Kyle Buss is here. We’re talking about the process, we’re talking about keeping you whole and we’re talking about all the steps that Jon and Kyle and the entire firm go through in order to make this as stress free a process as possible if you’re in a car accident or if you’ve been by a dog or whatever. A tree falls on you, hopefully, a tree’s not falling on you.
Jon: I’ve had those cases.
Mitch: I’m sure.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: I’m sure that there’s very few types of cases that you haven’t seen over the years.
Jon: So far, I guess.
Mitch: But again, you’ll get to work tomorrow, `Monday morning and you’ll get a call and it’ll be something that, maybe something similar happened, but it’ll be something that you’ve never seen before.
Jon: It could be Sunday at halftime of the Packer game. You just never know.
Kyle: If a tree does fall on you, branch out to us. 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Wow, branch out to us. I like it. Nicely done.
Jon: I think I like it.
Mitch: Yeah, you mentioned the Packers, I just don’t have a good feeling today. I don’t why. I’ve changed this one to bag for the bucks today and I just don’t have a good feeling.
Kyle: They’re kind of do for one I guess.
Mitch: Yeah, and the Packers played such, for them, a great game last Sunday night, that I don’t know if they can do it again. Well, we’ll see. So, talking about and Jon, Kyle, Jon mentioned to me that you have some recent experience with crash reconstructionists and also with private investigators and I want to get into crash reconstruction, ya know, so I get in an accident, how important is it that there is a crash reconstruction or, ya know, is that used in assessing blame or is that used in to actually prove that my elbow was hurt in the accident and that I don’t have a preexisting condition, what is the crash reconstruction? What is that process?
Kyle: In a particular case like that, overall I’d say maybe five percent of cases we would actually need an accident reconstructionist.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: In those particular cases it would be, unfortunately, at the scene of an accident, it’s not often that people are gonna say, I caused the accident.
Mitch: Right. I mean, sometimes it’s obvious.
Kyle: Sometimes it’s obvious. A rear-ender. Maybe there’s some witnesses, but again, that’s pretty rare that witnesses, nowadays, will stop and speak to the police and give a name and number. So, really you have he said, she said.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: And what an accident reconstructionist can do, is determine who was going what speed, who impacted what vehicle at what rate and those determine liability. And again, that’s the case right there.
Mitch: Okay, so sometimes it’s as cut and dry as that, as you need to bring somebody in because they can tell, ya know, what speed and based on I’m guessing a hundred different variables, but that’s their job, that’s what they know how to do.
Jon: Well, and we had the, I’m not gonna say his name, but we had a guy a couple weeks ago who stopped by the office on a Friday and we were going through with pictures and police reports and things like that trying to figure out what’s what because it was the early stage in the process.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Or a very early part of the process. And the at-fault insurance, who we believe is at fault, is making some hay with the thought that our client was going too fast for conditions or too fast for that particular intersection.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: We don’t believe it. And the client says he was not. The other person had a stop sign, but there’s just kind of a general rule that speed defeats right of way. So, if I have the right of way, but I’m speeding, speed defeats right of way. So, I’ve given up right of way because I’m going too fast, okay?
Mitch: Really?
Jon: So if I’m going seventy miles per hour in twenty-five, well..
Mitch: That’s a little, ya know, yeah okay. I’ll give you seventy in a twenty-five.
Jon: So seventy in a twenty-five..
Mitch: Seventy in a sixty-five, I’m not sure I’m willing to give you.
Jon: Well and that’s the exact situation. So, we have somebody who, it’s a T and the at-fault party was at a stop sign, they looked to the left and they didn’t see what we thought, or we believe, is in plain sight, which is a vehicle, coming. This person pulls out and our client hits them because she pulled out and she had the stop sign and she should have stopped.
Mitch: Right. By definition, actually.
Jon: Absolutely, a stop sign means you stop.
Kyle: It’s a good rule of thumb.
Mitch: I like that.
Jon: It signals you to stop. So, she says that our client was going too fast. Which is, I…
Mitch: I would say it doesn’t matter. You’re at a stop sign and a car’s coming. You don’t go! Whether somebody is speeding or not, you’re at a stop sign. Stop your flippin car.
Jon: In theory, I’m trying to be an advocate for the Ethel party, ya know, I don’t know why, but in theory…
Mitch: You’re setting up the scenario.
Jon: I’m setting the scenario. You’re stopped there. The defense counsel is gonna say, hey, the other vehicle was three-hundred yards down, so the only way that they could’ve gotten from there to here was going a hundred and ten miles an hour. So, therefore, they give up their right of way. That’s the argument.
Mitch: Again, I’ll give you that if you’re going a hundred and ten miles an hour, but if you’re going fifty in a forty or if you’re doing what is seemed to be considered appropriately above the speed limit or responsibly above the speed limit, that to me is a different case than exorbitant, ya know, I’m seeing if I can hit one-eighty or something like that.
Kyle: And so that’s where the reconstructionist comes in.
Mitch: Exactly.
Kyle: If their vehicle ends up stopping five feet away from where the collision happened, it’s going to suggest that they weren’t speeding, especially in an excess rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Yeah, and…
Kyle: In that particular case we just had, it was…
Jon: Exactly.
Kyle: It was, the vehicle had stopped about a hundred or two hundred feet down the road, it’s a clear indication that they were traveling at a high rate of speed.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: Yeah, so yeah, there’s things like that and where is the pieces of the car? What is left?
Mitch: How far did they fly?
Jon: How far did they fly.
Kyle: All of those factors.
Mitch: Sure.
Jon: Was there skid marks and things like that. And those are things that we have to, again, look at the endgame and what’s gonna happen if we’re in front of a judge and jury. I can’t get up there and say I believe x, y, and z, look at this police report. That’s not allowed.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: What we a have to do is have somebody who will be able to give that voice and talk about the evidence. And that’s gonna be an expert. And that expert then can rely on a bunch of stuff.
Kyle: And that touches on the last segment, ya know, that we know these experts. We know them on a personal level.
Mitch: I was just gonna say that I was gonna make the same connection, Kyle!
Kyle: So, yeah it’s all aspects of the case.And we’re on it.
Mitch: And I think that shows the power of Groth Law Firm. You know, that shows the power that Groth Law Firm, when they take your case, when you guys take someone’s case, ya know, I don’t know if it’s a 180 or 360 or ya know, it’s all-encompassing. You’re going to be protecting people on all levels. And figuring out, ya know, whether it’s the medical profession, whether again, this accident reconstruction, whether we haven’t talked about private investigators and that whole process which I’m guessing could probably be it’s own show at some point. Getting into that process. You are, you’re all in. I mean, you’re fully invested in getting, and again, there are people out there who say, oh, they’re fully invested in getting the highest settlement possible. And I’ll come back to them and I’ll say it every time, no. That may be part of it, but you’re fully invested in making people whole again. People who’ve been wronged, people who’ve been a victim of an accident getting them back to whole because that’s, ya know, we’re gonna leave here today and we’re gonna watch the Packers game, and we’re gonna with our families or our friends or whatever we do and we’re living a whole life. Ya know, we’re doing what we like to do. Ya know, I gotta clean the dining room tonight and I gotta do this, but that’s part of my whole life. If that’s take away from me by an element that I had no control and that I was the victim of something, I would want to get back to whole. And that’s what you guys are doing.
Kyle: That’s exactly, like I said before, that’s exactly what we do. That’s seven days a week for us. our job is to make sure that you are where you were at prior to the slip and fall, the dog bite, the car accident.
Mitch: So we only have a couple minutes left in this segment, but I do want to touch on the dog bite real quick because we think so often of a car accident. Alright, car accident, I’m gonna call the law firm and, ya know, but dog bites and other animal bites or whatever it might be, that’s part of what you guys do as well.
Kyle: Yeah, I had a case several weeks ago where there was a pitbull that was on the loose.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: Unfortunately, there was three children involved in this particular incident.
Mitch: Wow, okay.
Kyle: The pit bull got ahold of all three of them and ultimately fled. At the scene, we have two good samaritans who helped get the pit bull off one of the kids.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: They whacked him with a shovel or something, right?
Kyle: They had to physically hit the dog with a shovel to get him off one of the kids. So obviously we deal with some pretty traumatic stuff.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: Very terrible injuries. But importantly, I would almost stress, we have two people at the scene. We have a random dog that runs away prior to the cops getting there. The difference is our resources, it’s the people that we know. Because initially, the cops show up, they don’t know who the dog belongs to, they don’t know really anything, whether there’s an insurance policy or anything like that. It’s our job to contact the investigators, which we’ve done.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: They talk to the neighbors, they talk to anybody…
Jon: The whole neighborhood.
Kyle: Any and all witnesses. It’s one of those where…
Mitch: They put it all together.
Kyle: They will put everything together and if at the end of the day we can help those kids get back to whole. That’s why we’re here.
Mitch: Absolutely. Kyle Buss, Jon Groth from Groth Law Firm. G-R-O-T-H, G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. Give them a call at 414-375-2030. 414-375-2030. Right here on 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. We’ll come back to wrap things up, connect some more of the dots and figure out how to get everybody back to whole on Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts on the Big 920, thebig920.com. streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles with you here as I am every Sunday from eight to nine on Ask the Experts and like the first Sunday of every month, Groth Law Firm is here. Jon Groth is with us. Kyle Buss is with us and they’ve taken us through a number of the different processes of how they go through making people whole again. How they go through the process, the different experts in all the different fields they talk to. That it’s not just car accidents, but it can be dog bites it can be, ya know, tree falling and who’s to blame and that sort of thing and how you get that answer and how you reconstruct some of these situations so that you know you get what is due to you at the end of the day. We’ve got the holiday coming up and the first Sunday of January isn’t until January seventh or whatever it is and so, I just wanted to touch a few minutes on what you see during the holiday season more, maybe are there cases in December that are more than others, is it because the winter is colder or icier, is it because of drinking during holiday parties, is it, ya know, what do you see more and do people need to do to protect themselves?
Kyle: I would say, at least around this time of year, there’s probably three main things. Usually, you’ll have the insurance companies trying to get you to settle whatever your case is quick.
Mitch: By the end of the year.
Kyle: By the end of the year. If you were involved in a motor vehicle accident…
Jon: Fiscal year.
Kyle: Fiscal year. They will call you, come to your house, try to get you to sign on the dotted line.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: That’s exactly when you call us. 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Perfect.
Kyle: Other than that, this time of year, we’re gonna have, I’m assuming, sometime soon, a couple of blizzards. Weather-wise…
Mitch: There’ll be weather.
Kyle: Tis’ the season.
Mitch: But even if it’s rain, that’s still weather, ya know?
Kyle: It’s around this time of year, people haven’t driven on snow for the last six or seven months.
Mitch: Exactly.
Kyle: Typically, accident increase around this time and then unfortunately with the holidays, there’s a lot of people who drink and drive.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: It’s the holiday party season.
Kyle: Holiday parties and everything else.
Mitch: Can I just say another PSA? Don’t drink, don’t. You got a cab, you got Uber, you got Lyft.
Kyle: Uber, Lyft, all of them.
Mitch: Do something, make a better decision. Even if you think you’re not drunk, even if you’ve only had a couple, even if you’ve done it a hundred times before and you’ve gotten lucky. Don’t. Make a better decision.
Jon: That’s what I kinda thought years ago when Uber and Lyft came about that there wouldn’t be as many drunk driving cases just because it’s so easy.
Mitch: It’s so easy.
Jon: It’s an app. It’s on your phone or it’s on your watch. You push the button and they’re there.
Mitch: And they’re there.
Jon: Click click, five dollars later and you’re home.
Mitch: Yeah!
Kyle: I’ve seen so many people who make that terrible decision and their lives are ruined. There’s legal costs and jail time and everything else. Just don’t even think about it.
Mitch: And I’ll go back to one of the other example you gave as well is, weather. Ya know, I love all the tweets and all the social media. The first snow we get where everybody tweets, oh looks like everybody’s never driven in snow before. Everbody forgot we’ve all driven in it people. We live in Wisconsin. We know how to drive in snow, we know how to drive in ice, act like it. Give yourself a little extra time to break when you’re coming to a stop light or stop sign. Don’t hit the person in front of you, how about that? Ya know, act like you’ve been there before.
Jon: Correct. I think part of it is, you get, we all see people who are on their phones, looking down while they’re driving. And then you get the snow and then you’re looking down at your phone for whatever reason because you have to see what Facebook says at that particular moment.
Mitch: Facebook is really important, Jon!
Jon: And then you forget that, yeah, you have to stop a little bit earlier, but then you’re distracted because of the phone and then it just, it’s a mess. And then, well, you’ve changed somebody’s life. And that just isn’t fair in the entire grand scheme of things and certainly during the holiday season. The weird thing is that we probably won’t see these calls or these cases until January so, as a way to stop the process or to hopefully stop one extra call or two extra calls, we’ll gladly give away those cases if people would just drive safer and understand certain things early on. Like I said, you need to take extra time and call Uber and call Lyft or whatever it’s gonna be.
Mitch: So if it happens to you, call immediately. Don’t wait until January. Don’t wait until after you’ve seen the doctor. Don’t wait until after you’ve already been knocked on the door by the insurance company ten times. Call immediately. 375-2030. 414-375-2030. If you don’t call immediately and you wait until you get home, go to grothlawfirm.com, that’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. You can message with people right there on the website or you can find out that they’re at 111th and Bluemound and you can walk in or make an appointment or whatever it is you need to do. You can do it from the website, you can do it from your phone as well.
Jon: And when you’re car is stopped, you can also text that same number. So you can text 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Oh really? And somebody will get back to you.
Jon: We will text you back. Or call you back, yeah.
Mitch: Very cool. Kyle, Jon, thank you so much for taking the time this morning.
Jon: Thank you.
Kyle: Thanks for having us.
Mitch: Let’s get a Packers win, okay?
Jon: Absolutely. Go, Pack, go.
Mitch: Absolutely. Today’s guest on Ask the Experts, Groth Law Firm. Jon Groth and Kyle Buss from Groth Law Firm. Go to G-R-O-T-H grothlawfirm.com. GIve them a call, 414-375-2030. On the Big 920, thebig920.com, and streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app, this has been Ask the Experts.
Jon: Good Sunday morning to you, how are you?
Mitch: I’m ya know, ya know?
Jon: You sound great!
Mitch: I hope I’m great.
Jon: Good.
Mitch: Yeah. We’ll see how the Packers do later today. I may have picked them to lose.
Jon: Ohh, it was a close game last time. That was an exciting game because the spread was fourteen points, right?
Mitch: It was. So, we will see what happens. Alright, good to see you on this morning. And today you’ve brought with you another one of your friends and coworkers, Kyle Buss is here. Kyle, good to see you.
Kyle: Morning, good to see you.
Mitch: Yes, how are you doing this morning?
Kyle: I’m doing okay. I’m excited for kickoff in a little bit here.
Mitch: Yeah, ya know, we found out before the show that you’re a Yankees fan.
Kyle: I am a Yankees fan. I like teams that win and I hear that you’re a Red Socks fan, so I’m sorry to hear that.
Mitch: You like teams that win, historically. I mean, not in recent history, but historically.
Kyle: Historically.
Mitch: Which is cool.
Kyle: And next year, yes.
Mitch: Fair enough. We’ll leave it at that.
Jon: I like the Brewers, how’s that?
Mitch: You know what, I think we can all say that we like the Brewers, is that fair?
Jon: There we go. Go, Brewers, go.
Mitch: Absolutely. So, Jon, we’ve had you in a couple times now and you’ve been by yourself and you’ve been with guests and we’ve been talking about all the things that Groth Law Firm can do to help you. And really, making people whole again and how that whole process goes. And we’ve talked quite a bit about what happens when someone calls you and how that first call goes and what happens then. And today I think we want to dig a little bit deeper into the process and what happens both before that call, so what people need to do to protect themselves. But then, really what happens after that with the investigation, I know that Kyle is an expert at expert crash reconstruction and that process and so we’re going to get into that as well today. Does that sound like a good place to go?
Jon: Yeah, it does. Just digging into the next stage of the process, yeah.
Mitch: So, something happens. There’s a car accident or there’s a, or something, I don’t want to say catastrophic, but something bad.
Jon: We, for some reason, had a rash of dog bites. I don’t know if it was people were out more because of the weather or what the deal was, but there was, oh boy, a half dozen of dogs attacking kids.
Mitch: We’re gonna spend a whole segment of this show talking about that because I have, I have a situation that happened a few years with a dog that we owned at the time that I want to talk about with you guys.
Jon: Sure. Absolutely.
Mitch: It’s always nice to bring in personal history and stories and stuff like that.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: I would guess more common though, ya know, the car accident is kind of the classic case.
Jon: Yep, yep.
Mitch: So someone calls, there’s an investigation, ya know, you guys are really one of the things that you take pride in is helping relieve that stress immediately.
Jon: Yeah, I think its important. When we get potential clients, they call us up. Ya know, their lives are turned upside down. Their car is damaged, their back hurts, they don’t know how to go to work the next day. I mean what we do is, we make sure that more or less from beginning to end that they’re taken care of. We’ll get them to the right doctors, we’ll make sure their property damage is taken care of. I know personally and from working in the legal field for as long as I have, a lot of firms will say that you just deal with your property damage and oh, by the way, you gotta go to the hospital let me know when you’re done treating. We will contact these clients from beginning to end, see how they’re doing, make sure they get to the right doctors, make sure the vehicle is fixed, everything in between.
Mitch: So, it sounds like you guys are part of the process and people need to be careful because, to add to your point, Kyle, you could, I think so often people are harmed by what they don’t know. And so they don’t follow the right procedure.
Jon: Certainly.
Mitch: They don’t follow the right steps. They don’t document things the way they’re supposed to and I’d like to think that all law firms are, ya know, taking advantage of people, but all law firms are looking out for their client and on some level, I’m sure they are. But, it sounds like the connection that yo form and the way that you follow that process all along with the client is one of the things that sets you guys apart.
Kyle: It is, and I don’t if it’s a, maybe you wanna call it the Groth difference.
Jon: Sure, we can call it that.
Mitch: I like that. I’m gonna write that down.
Kyle: Groth difference. But like I said, these people come to us and whether its a car accident, dog bite, slip and fall, they don’t where to turn to and its our job and obviously we’ve been doing this for quite some time to make sure that they talk to the right people, they get the right treatment, everything’s documented so at the end of the day we can not only maximize their settlement but also make sure they get their lives back to what it was before whatever happened.
Mitch: Absolutely. We’re talking today with Kyle Buss and with Job Groth form Groth Law Firm. Go to grothlawfirm.com, that’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com I’m just, I always back to this and I feel like I’m gonna back to this every month with you, Jon is that concept of making people whole and its, ya know, so often we, ya know, society’s hard right now. Ya know, America’s tough right now and there is so much debate about well is this a capitalistic thing or is this a socialist thing or is this a, ya know, and that the end of the day if somebody is hurt if somebody is in an accident and they hire you. It just makes sense to me that you’re invested in getting them back to whole because, Kyle, like you said, that’ll maximize their settlement, but even more than that, it’ll make them a whole human being again.
Kyle: Absolutely. And I don’t if Jon if you want to touch on this a little bit, but in most cases, they didn’t ask to get rear-ended they didn’t get asked to get bit by a dog. I mean, we’re not trying to run up the scores here. At the end of the day, we want to make sure these bills that have been incurred over the last six to twelve months are taken care of. That their car is back to normal, that they, any lost wages are taken care of. This isn’t some get rich scheme.
Mitch: Right.
Kyle. This is our clients who didn’t ask for a terrible situation to happen, but once it happened, they certainly give us a call and we make sure to take care of them.
Mitch: Sure.
Jon: And it’s a real-life situation. Ya know, you’re talking about something that occurred to somebody’s Mom or somebody’s kid or somebody’s aunt, uncle, whatever it is and whoever they are and it does kind of comeback to capitalistic, socialistic, or some kind of politics because our economic format, I guess I’ll say that instead of politics, because Progressive, Acuity, whichever insurance company, it’s their job. That’s their business and that’s fine, their job is to get as much as they can in premium and pay out as little as possible. That’s just the way it is.
Kyle: Right.
Jon: And that’s our job to fight against that and make them pay out more than they want to pay. There’s something that’s been happening more recent, sorry, more frequent than not in recent years with insurance companies is they are coming soon after a crash and saying hey, we’ll pay you, let’s say five hundred dollars right now and we’ll cover your medical expenses in the next thirty days and they’ll have you sign a document. You get your check for five hundred bucks and then you think you’re covered. And I’ve had…
Mitch: Can I give a PSA real quick here?
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: Don’t sign that paper!
Kyle: Absolutely not.
Mitch: Am I right with that?
Jon: Agreed. One hundred percent correct.
Mitch: I just want to make sure that we’re on the same page.
Jon: The problem is, people are in tough times and they have to pay for..
Mitch: They need that five hundred buck.
Jon: They need the five hundred bucks because they need to pay for their groceries and they may be off work for a couple days so they need to pay for it so they do it. And then, ya also, I’ve had a number of potential clients who we can’t help out because they did sign, have come and said well, the adjuster said I’ll be taken care of and while theoretically you were taken care of for that month.
Mitch: Right.
Jon: But once the thirty-first day or whatever day it is and you’re still going to the doctor and you call back the adjuster and you say, hey, you said I’d be taken care of that my medical bills would be taken care of and the adjuster says, sorry, what you signed cuts off on this day, I don’t care if you have more medical bills because that’s it.
Mitch: That’s it, Yeah, I’ve done physical therapy, not because of accidents or anything like that, but ya know, I play sports and ya know, you guys play sports as well. So, ya know, you get injured and gotta go to physical therapy. I don’t know any physical therapy that says, yeah come for three weeks and then you’re all healed. I mean, this is, so I’m guessing in an accident even more. This is a two, three-month process for some people, probably a lot longer for some people, knock on wood, they’re lucky. They’re not injured in an accident, but this isn’t a, ya know, it sounds like the insurance company treats everybody pretty much the same. Oh well we’ll look at this and every example I’m guessing is different.
Kyle: Well right, and to kind of touch on what Jon was talking about, especially this time of year. It seems like insurance companies are, ya know, people get into an accident or other incidents that happen, they will call them immediately. They will show up at their house, they’ll say sign on the dotted line, flash a little bit of money, and I’ve known too many people who’ve signed it and they’ve lost all of their rights to go after the insurance company.
Mitch: And there’s no recourse after that, right?
Kyle: There’s no recourse after that.
Jon: It’s shocking how fast..
Mitch: But you guys are lawyers! Can’t you get it past a legal document?
Jon: A contract’s a contract. Yeah.
Kyle: You sign on the dotted line at some point and that’s pretty much it.
Jon: That’s pretty much it. You could say its a contract of adhesion or unfair dealing or all that kind of stuff, but its been tries and its been lost.
Mitch: So don’t sign that contract?
Jon: Simply say that I wanna think about it, can I call somebody.
Mitch. Yeah.
Jon: What’s wrong with that? You want to get a second opinion when you can go online for anything. You’re looking to get on Amazon and on eBay..
Mitch: When I’m doing my basement or my roof or I’m buying a car or anything, I want to go to more than one, I want more than one option.
Jon: So why would you take the..
Mitch: The fandom of a baseball team, ya know.
Kyle: Yeah, well.
Jon: Why would you take, why would you take the one, or the first, or the only offer from the insurance company when it’s in their best interest to offer the lowest amount possible. It just doesn’t make any sense, but especially now, its the holiday season and you need that extra cash for something and that’s where it’s shocking to me how fast they have people available to swoop in and literally knock on your door with a check. That’s kind of shocking, but that’s the business they’re in. And they understand that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush and people are going to fall for it.
Mitch: Right. Well and not only do they, it’s a holiday season, but its also at the end of the year and everybody’s budgets ya know. They probably have some money burning holes in their pockets because of the premiums they charge and all that sort of stuff.
Jon: Sure.
Mitch: So they, oh, we have some extra cash on hand right now. I’m not, and I would never suggest this and you guys would never suggest this when that person knocks and my door and says here’s five hundred bucks and we’ll cover your medical bills, can I negotiate with them? Not that I ever would, but just to kind of needle them I wanna say. Why don’t you give me a check for five hundred thousand dollars and then we’ll start talking.
Kyle: I mean certainly you..
Mitch: And then they’ll slam the door in my face.
Kyle: Yeah, I was gonna say that you could go with that approach and it’s likely the negotiations will end pretty quickly.
Mitch: But I assume I don’t, it’s not in my best interest to negotiate or anything. It’s in my best interest to say no thank you, I need to call my lawyer, I need a second opinion or something like that.
Kyle: Exactly, I mean at the end of the day what does it cost you to call Groth Law Firm? It’s free.
Jon: Its a free consultation.
Mitch: And it’s 414-375-2030. That’s 414-375-2030.
Kyle: So, if at the end of the day you have a question, just give us a call. If you decide to go with us, great. We’ll help you, like I said, from beginning to end. If not, what’s the worse that happens? It’s a free consultation. Give us a call.
Mitch: And as the name of the show is, Ask the Experts, when somebody calls you they can ask the expert in, and I know you guys aren’t allowed to call yourselves experts, but I’m allowed to call you experts.
Jon: Thank you.
Kyle: Appreciate that.
Mitch: But, you guys, I mean, this is what you do. Ya know, this is what you do for a living. You see, you’ve seen, I’d say you’ve seen everything, but then tomorrow you’re gonna get a call of something new, but you have all of this experience and you have all this knowledge and expertise. Where when somebody calls you and makes that phone call whether they are gonna talk to you for fifteen minutes and never talk to you again or whether they’re gonna hire you and it’s gonna be three to six-month process or however long it’s gonna be. You’re going to be able to act in their best interest. You’re gonna be able to give them legitimate advice. Ya know, you’re on their side. Ya know, I got in an accident and the insurance is not on my side. They may show up with hundred bucks and pretend like they’re on my side, but I’d like to think that we’re all smart enough that we know they’re not.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: You guys are.
Kyle: Yeah, and this is what we do. This is seven days a week. Ya know, we talked to hundreds of adjusters, doctors, obviously…
Mitch: Just not during the Packers game today.
Kyle: Possibly.
Mitch: Even during the Packers game today?
Jon: I’ve taken phone calls during a Packers game.
Mitch: I believe that.
Jon: I have yeah, but you never know.
Kyle: But it’s what we do. We take pride in it. At the end of the day, ya know, clients, like I said, you want to give us a call for a free consultation. We are more than happy to speak to anyone.
Jon: Ya know, something about that with the doctors and such and just the expert discussion, was it last week or probably two weeks ago now, we went to lunch with a couple different doctors, a couple different experts because we want to know, kind of get into that part of the process for what’s new in the world of medicine,
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Visit pain management and rehab doctors or specialists or things like that, that we can keep in touch with their side so we know whether it is gonna be a three-week process for this kind of injury to heal or that kind of injury or I had on Thursday last week, I had one of my paralegals say hey, one of our clients is having some issues. It’s a crush injury to her foot. Who do you we know? Her doctor doesn’t have a referral for a specialist.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: That’s something that we are in the know, I guess I’ll say because we’re going to lunch, ya know, we are keeping in touch with these kinds of specialists to know who to get clients to so we can help with the process.
Mitch: I actually want to get more into that when we get back because I think that brings a ton of value that people really need to know about. Kyle Buss and Jon Groth are with us today on Ask the Experts from Groth Law Firm. Go to grothlawfirm.com. That’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. They’re at 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. You can call them at 414-375-2030. That’s 375-2020. More coming up, this is Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts, The Big 920, thebig920.com, streaming nationwide and beyond by the iheartradio app. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles here with you with Ask the Experts, and if you’ve had a chance to pick up the most recent copy of Milwaukee Magazine, which has the title on the cover, “Milwaukee Cheers,” and has a delicious looking glass of some sort of spirit. I will assume it’s scotch, but it’s probably bourbon or, people are into bourbon these days, I’m a scotch guy, that’s okay. But, if you open up, there’s a section on Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyers and I didn’t even have to thumb through it. I opened right to the page and I’ve got a picture of Jon Groth, I’ve got a picture of last month’s guest, Melissa Fischer, and I’ve got a, in the picture as well, today’s guest, Kyle Buss. So Groth Law Firm, skilled, dedicated, proven. Is featured in the Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyers section as Jon, you were named a Wisconsin 2017 Super Lawyer, were you not?
Jon: I was lucky to get that designation, yes, thank you.
Mitch: Well congratulations!
Jon: Thank you, thank you.
Mitch: And the picture looks great. Kyle you gotta big smile going on.
Kyle: I do what I can.
Mitch: Yep. Absolutely.
Jon: Nice tie.
Mitch: Not that everybody doesn’t, but ya know, Ryan doesn’t smile with teeth. And you smile with teeth and I like that. I like showing, ya know, if you’ve got the pearly whites, you show them off.
Kyle: Well Ryan takes it so seriously that sometimes he just doesn’t smile, but that’s okay. He’s incredible at what he does too.
Mitch: Sure, absolutely. So, Ask the Experts. Today we’re talking to Groth Law Firm and we’re talking about becoming whole again and the process that we go through and we’ve talked to Jon. We’ve talked to you throughout the months about the entire process and something that you brought up last segment really connected with me for some reason. You talked about how you, from time to time, have lunch with doctors, or physical therapists or people in other fields and you can fill in more of those that you talk about the process and what’s hot and what’s the big deal right now. Is it rehab? Is it pain management? And what’s the process if somebody comes to you with whiplash, which I’m guessing is a big deal in car accidents.
Jon: Sure.
Mitch: You know, what is that, is it physical therapy? Or is it, do you need a neurosurgeon sometimes or how does that, tell us more that you’re not insulated in your bubble. You’re out there, you’re doing what’s right and I think both of you could probably touch on this. How important it is to talk to professionals in other professions to have a full well-rounded idea of how you can help people.
Jon: And that’s what Kyle, I know Kyle has set up lunches in the past couple week, with different pain management and rehab specialists, doctors, a primary care doc from the Southside, and some physical therapists and such. Just so we are in the know and you can make that connection and help people out when it comes to what they need with a specialist or with ongoing care because you have clients who they maybe have lost their jobs, so they have no health insurance.
Mitch: Okay
Jon: And then what?
Mitch: Yeah.
Jon: Then what do you do? Hopefully, you have auto insurance. They what you call a Med Pay policy so then you can use your MedPay to help pay for your doctor bills, but who do you go to and who’s going to see you if you don’t have a primary doctor also?
Mitch: Right.
Jon: So you have all these different problems then we have seen a lot of these situations where many times its somebody that’s been involved in a car accident, they have health insurance, they have a primary care doctor, and I strongly encourage them to go to their primary care doctor because that’s your quarterback. And they’re gonna tell ya where to go. Which specialist, whether it’s a PT or somebody else.
Mitch: So start with your PCP.
Jon: Exactly. But, you have the problem then, if the PCP, the primary care doctor, refers you to somebody else, there are doctors that don’t like lawyers. I’m shocked that people..
Mitch: What is wrong with these people?
Jon: I don’t know.
Mitch: I know lots of lawyers and they’re all very good people.
Kyle: I just handed him a twenty. Thank you.
Jon: You have specialists who don’t like getting involved in litigation and part of the problem is, eventually, the worst case scenario is there’s a deposition and they’re taken away from their doctor’s office and they have to come somewhere else and we have to come to them and they take three hours out of their day where they can’t treat people and they have to sit there in a room with some lawyers who they may not like;
Mitch: Some stuffy suits.
Jon: Some stuffy suits and answer questions that are maybe stupid.
Mitch: To them.
Jon: To them. Yeah, well why are you asking me this? Obviously, this person is injured, so why am I getting grilled for those kinds of things? So, there are doctors who don’t like getting involved and we like to be in the know throughout the entire process so we can help with the process because there are sometimes when you will see that there’s a doctor who will not help with litigation or there’s a facility in itself, the entire facility, whose rule is they won’t get involved in litigation. So then we know because we have to look at the endgame, what’s gonna happen six months from now or a year from now when we have to put it in a suit if we have to. Will we get the proper support from the physician, from the doctor, from their facility? If they’re not gonna sit for a deposition and we need to have them sit for a deposition, I don’t want to have to subpoena them and then well..
Mitch: That’s a whole other round of litigation.
Jon: Oh my gosh, because then you have their in-house counsel calls and then you have their attorneys who are involved and risk management, it’s a big mess. So, getting involved earlier and getting involved in the process as to who they’re seeing is really important.
Kyle: And to touch on that a little bit more, like I said earlier, this is what we do seven days a week. For us to reach out to doctors and to be in the know, I think it really does two things, it’s gonna maximize what we can do for the client as far as settlement.
Mitch: Sure, makes sense.
Kyle: More importantly, I would say is uncertainty is what causes all the stress. It’s again, how am I going to pay for the groceries? Where do I need to go? What’s wrong with me? For us to meet with these doctors and, ya know, and neurosurgeons, and everyone that we meet. At the end of the day, its something that we can say, okay, based on this soft tissue injury, I can send you to this particular facility. You’ll likely have x amount of weeks of treatment before another evaluation and then we’ll go from there. At least we give them some kind of certainty based on what we know.
Mitch: I guess I’m surprised by the concept that, alright, I got in a car accident and I got hurt and I call you guys and you guys, ya know, you guys tell me to document everything and do everything and I go to my primary care physician and he sends me to a doctor. I don’t think at the time, oh should I check on this doctor with you guys. Ya know, this is where my primary care physician is sending me, I trust him. He’s gonna send me to someone good. So he sends me to somebody good and they fix my elbow, which got hurt in the car accident, and months later, there’s litigation about who is paying for the elbow surgery I had. That the elbow specialist that I went to wouldn’t have the cajones to come and, I just paid him this exuberant medical bill, I’m his patient, that he can’t show up for an hour and say yes, this person’s elbow was totally messed up because of the car accident. Ya know, that seems counterintuitive to me.
Kyle: I would say from beginning to end, from that initial phone call until we settle the case, everything we’re doing is setting up for that instance.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: Whether it’s sending to a specialist or getting the medical records from a doctor. This is exactly we do. We will build up the case from day one.
Mitch: Yep.
Kyle: So at the end of the day, you won’t have to deal with that kind of an issue.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: The people that we work with, the people that we would refer potential clients to, they will go to bat for you and we know that.
Mitch: So again, we go back to that concept of every step along the way, talk to you guys. So I met with my primary care physician, he referred me to somebody. If anything changes or if there’s any new information or anything, ya know, talk to you guys just so we know we’re all on the same page and we’re headed in the right direction.
Jon: And this is what I say to every single client is that I’m not a doctor and if you want to go and see a doctor that I have told has a history of not cooperating, that’s fine. That if you have some relationship with this doctor that is you think he or she..
Mitch: Right, if we’re childhood friends and I think that person might make an exception for me then that might be different.
Jon: Yeah, certainly. Or, if you think this is the only doctor that can solve your problem, that’s fine too. You just have to understand that they may not go to bat for you in the end. Ya know, just the client needs to be aware of what’s going on and the worst case scenario is, and this is a real-life situation, I had an orthopedic surgeon who has now since retired, but he was older and in his last years..
Mitch: You want to say his name so badly I can tell. I can tell you want to call him out right now.
Jon: I do, but I’m not gonna do.
Kyle: I think I know who you’re talking about.
Jon: So, it was a surgery. He had written a report, so it was in black and white, it said x, y, or z is related to the crash and we were getting ready for trial. I called him and I said, okay, we’re gonna now set up your deposition either before trial or I’d like you to come to trial and it’d be great if you could actually be there in the stand and talk to the jury and the response was that you’re not gonna like what I have to say. And I said, well doctor, all you have to do is read your report. I don’t want to do this, so you’re not gonna like what I have to say.
Mitch: But it’s in the report!
Jon: I was shocked that was the situation.
Mitch: So can you use his report, but then not call him? Does that at least count for something?
Jon: Well then this adds some layers of complexity because then now you have a doctor that doesn’t want to cooperate. I think that’s, I would say it’s unethical.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: Agreed.
Jon: I don’t know what it would be against do no harm, it’s one of those things doctors say they’re gonna do and again, there are a million doctors, many doctors who are friends who are fantastic. But there’s the small chance, and I’ve seen it before, where a doctor doesn’t want to get involved for whatever reason and then you have to scramble and do a lot to figure out how you’re gonna salvage the case because the doctor who was inside in my client’s body repairing it now won’t go to bad, so what does that mean? That’ll give ammunition to the defense.
Mitch: Right.
Jon: Which they’re always looking for. So they can say no or we’re gonna pay less or whatever that’s gonna be. So, I’ve had that situation occur and that makes me more concerned and more vigilant with all current clients and all future clients.
Mitch: And that blows my mind a little bit.
Kyle: Yeah, and just that one aspect of the case, a doctor who is unwilling to testify, that could be the difference right there.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: From beginning to end, we’re talking a thousand different steps that we need to take care of on our end and just that right there is the difference.
Mitch: Unbelievable. Jon Groth and Kyle Buss are here with us today. When we come back we’re gonna talk more about this concept fo expert crash reconstruction and also about some dog bites as well. Kyle Buss, Jon Groth, Groth Law Firm. G-R-O-T-H, G-R-O-T-H. Go to grothlawfirm.com. Give them a call, 414-375-2030. 375-2030. They are right here on 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. This is, Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts on The Big 920, thebig920.com, streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app. It’s free, download it today. Go to iheartradio.com. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles with you, another edition of Ask the Experts. It’s the first Sunday of the month, you know what that means, that means that Groth Law Firm is in the house. Jon Groth is here, Kyle Buss is here. We’re talking about the process, we’re talking about keeping you whole and we’re talking about all the steps that Jon and Kyle and the entire firm go through in order to make this as stress free a process as possible if you’re in a car accident or if you’ve been by a dog or whatever. A tree falls on you, hopefully, a tree’s not falling on you.
Jon: I’ve had those cases.
Mitch: I’m sure.
Jon: Yeah.
Mitch: I’m sure that there’s very few types of cases that you haven’t seen over the years.
Jon: So far, I guess.
Mitch: But again, you’ll get to work tomorrow, `Monday morning and you’ll get a call and it’ll be something that, maybe something similar happened, but it’ll be something that you’ve never seen before.
Jon: It could be Sunday at halftime of the Packer game. You just never know.
Kyle: If a tree does fall on you, branch out to us. 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Wow, branch out to us. I like it. Nicely done.
Jon: I think I like it.
Mitch: Yeah, you mentioned the Packers, I just don’t have a good feeling today. I don’t why. I’ve changed this one to bag for the bucks today and I just don’t have a good feeling.
Kyle: They’re kind of do for one I guess.
Mitch: Yeah, and the Packers played such, for them, a great game last Sunday night, that I don’t know if they can do it again. Well, we’ll see. So, talking about and Jon, Kyle, Jon mentioned to me that you have some recent experience with crash reconstructionists and also with private investigators and I want to get into crash reconstruction, ya know, so I get in an accident, how important is it that there is a crash reconstruction or, ya know, is that used in assessing blame or is that used in to actually prove that my elbow was hurt in the accident and that I don’t have a preexisting condition, what is the crash reconstruction? What is that process?
Kyle: In a particular case like that, overall I’d say maybe five percent of cases we would actually need an accident reconstructionist.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: In those particular cases it would be, unfortunately, at the scene of an accident, it’s not often that people are gonna say, I caused the accident.
Mitch: Right. I mean, sometimes it’s obvious.
Kyle: Sometimes it’s obvious. A rear-ender. Maybe there’s some witnesses, but again, that’s pretty rare that witnesses, nowadays, will stop and speak to the police and give a name and number. So, really you have he said, she said.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: And what an accident reconstructionist can do, is determine who was going what speed, who impacted what vehicle at what rate and those determine liability. And again, that’s the case right there.
Mitch: Okay, so sometimes it’s as cut and dry as that, as you need to bring somebody in because they can tell, ya know, what speed and based on I’m guessing a hundred different variables, but that’s their job, that’s what they know how to do.
Jon: Well, and we had the, I’m not gonna say his name, but we had a guy a couple weeks ago who stopped by the office on a Friday and we were going through with pictures and police reports and things like that trying to figure out what’s what because it was the early stage in the process.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Or a very early part of the process. And the at-fault insurance, who we believe is at fault, is making some hay with the thought that our client was going too fast for conditions or too fast for that particular intersection.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: We don’t believe it. And the client says he was not. The other person had a stop sign, but there’s just kind of a general rule that speed defeats right of way. So, if I have the right of way, but I’m speeding, speed defeats right of way. So, I’ve given up right of way because I’m going too fast, okay?
Mitch: Really?
Jon: So if I’m going seventy miles per hour in twenty-five, well..
Mitch: That’s a little, ya know, yeah okay. I’ll give you seventy in a twenty-five.
Jon: So seventy in a twenty-five..
Mitch: Seventy in a sixty-five, I’m not sure I’m willing to give you.
Jon: Well and that’s the exact situation. So, we have somebody who, it’s a T and the at-fault party was at a stop sign, they looked to the left and they didn’t see what we thought, or we believe, is in plain sight, which is a vehicle, coming. This person pulls out and our client hits them because she pulled out and she had the stop sign and she should have stopped.
Mitch: Right. By definition, actually.
Jon: Absolutely, a stop sign means you stop.
Kyle: It’s a good rule of thumb.
Mitch: I like that.
Jon: It signals you to stop. So, she says that our client was going too fast. Which is, I…
Mitch: I would say it doesn’t matter. You’re at a stop sign and a car’s coming. You don’t go! Whether somebody is speeding or not, you’re at a stop sign. Stop your flippin car.
Jon: In theory, I’m trying to be an advocate for the Ethel party, ya know, I don’t know why, but in theory…
Mitch: You’re setting up the scenario.
Jon: I’m setting the scenario. You’re stopped there. The defense counsel is gonna say, hey, the other vehicle was three-hundred yards down, so the only way that they could’ve gotten from there to here was going a hundred and ten miles an hour. So, therefore, they give up their right of way. That’s the argument.
Mitch: Again, I’ll give you that if you’re going a hundred and ten miles an hour, but if you’re going fifty in a forty or if you’re doing what is seemed to be considered appropriately above the speed limit or responsibly above the speed limit, that to me is a different case than exorbitant, ya know, I’m seeing if I can hit one-eighty or something like that.
Kyle: And so that’s where the reconstructionist comes in.
Mitch: Exactly.
Kyle: If their vehicle ends up stopping five feet away from where the collision happened, it’s going to suggest that they weren’t speeding, especially in an excess rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: Yeah, and…
Kyle: In that particular case we just had, it was…
Jon: Exactly.
Kyle: It was, the vehicle had stopped about a hundred or two hundred feet down the road, it’s a clear indication that they were traveling at a high rate of speed.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: Yeah, so yeah, there’s things like that and where is the pieces of the car? What is left?
Mitch: How far did they fly?
Jon: How far did they fly.
Kyle: All of those factors.
Mitch: Sure.
Jon: Was there skid marks and things like that. And those are things that we have to, again, look at the endgame and what’s gonna happen if we’re in front of a judge and jury. I can’t get up there and say I believe x, y, and z, look at this police report. That’s not allowed.
Mitch: Okay.
Jon: What we a have to do is have somebody who will be able to give that voice and talk about the evidence. And that’s gonna be an expert. And that expert then can rely on a bunch of stuff.
Kyle: And that touches on the last segment, ya know, that we know these experts. We know them on a personal level.
Mitch: I was just gonna say that I was gonna make the same connection, Kyle!
Kyle: So, yeah it’s all aspects of the case.And we’re on it.
Mitch: And I think that shows the power of Groth Law Firm. You know, that shows the power that Groth Law Firm, when they take your case, when you guys take someone’s case, ya know, I don’t know if it’s a 180 or 360 or ya know, it’s all-encompassing. You’re going to be protecting people on all levels. And figuring out, ya know, whether it’s the medical profession, whether again, this accident reconstruction, whether we haven’t talked about private investigators and that whole process which I’m guessing could probably be it’s own show at some point. Getting into that process. You are, you’re all in. I mean, you’re fully invested in getting, and again, there are people out there who say, oh, they’re fully invested in getting the highest settlement possible. And I’ll come back to them and I’ll say it every time, no. That may be part of it, but you’re fully invested in making people whole again. People who’ve been wronged, people who’ve been a victim of an accident getting them back to whole because that’s, ya know, we’re gonna leave here today and we’re gonna watch the Packers game, and we’re gonna with our families or our friends or whatever we do and we’re living a whole life. Ya know, we’re doing what we like to do. Ya know, I gotta clean the dining room tonight and I gotta do this, but that’s part of my whole life. If that’s take away from me by an element that I had no control and that I was the victim of something, I would want to get back to whole. And that’s what you guys are doing.
Kyle: That’s exactly, like I said before, that’s exactly what we do. That’s seven days a week for us. our job is to make sure that you are where you were at prior to the slip and fall, the dog bite, the car accident.
Mitch: So we only have a couple minutes left in this segment, but I do want to touch on the dog bite real quick because we think so often of a car accident. Alright, car accident, I’m gonna call the law firm and, ya know, but dog bites and other animal bites or whatever it might be, that’s part of what you guys do as well.
Kyle: Yeah, I had a case several weeks ago where there was a pitbull that was on the loose.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: Unfortunately, there was three children involved in this particular incident.
Mitch: Wow, okay.
Kyle: The pit bull got ahold of all three of them and ultimately fled. At the scene, we have two good samaritans who helped get the pit bull off one of the kids.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: They whacked him with a shovel or something, right?
Kyle: They had to physically hit the dog with a shovel to get him off one of the kids. So obviously we deal with some pretty traumatic stuff.
Mitch: Yeah.
Kyle: Very terrible injuries. But importantly, I would almost stress, we have two people at the scene. We have a random dog that runs away prior to the cops getting there. The difference is our resources, it’s the people that we know. Because initially, the cops show up, they don’t know who the dog belongs to, they don’t know really anything, whether there’s an insurance policy or anything like that. It’s our job to contact the investigators, which we’ve done.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: They talk to the neighbors, they talk to anybody…
Jon: The whole neighborhood.
Kyle: Any and all witnesses. It’s one of those where…
Mitch: They put it all together.
Kyle: They will put everything together and if at the end of the day we can help those kids get back to whole. That’s why we’re here.
Mitch: Absolutely. Kyle Buss, Jon Groth from Groth Law Firm. G-R-O-T-H, G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. Give them a call at 414-375-2030. 414-375-2030. Right here on 111th and Bluemound in Tosa. We’ll come back to wrap things up, connect some more of the dots and figure out how to get everybody back to whole on Ask the Experts.
Mitch: This is Ask the Experts on the Big 920, thebig920.com. streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app. Mitch “Thunder” Nelles with you here as I am every Sunday from eight to nine on Ask the Experts and like the first Sunday of every month, Groth Law Firm is here. Jon Groth is with us. Kyle Buss is with us and they’ve taken us through a number of the different processes of how they go through making people whole again. How they go through the process, the different experts in all the different fields they talk to. That it’s not just car accidents, but it can be dog bites it can be, ya know, tree falling and who’s to blame and that sort of thing and how you get that answer and how you reconstruct some of these situations so that you know you get what is due to you at the end of the day. We’ve got the holiday coming up and the first Sunday of January isn’t until January seventh or whatever it is and so, I just wanted to touch a few minutes on what you see during the holiday season more, maybe are there cases in December that are more than others, is it because the winter is colder or icier, is it because of drinking during holiday parties, is it, ya know, what do you see more and do people need to do to protect themselves?
Kyle: I would say, at least around this time of year, there’s probably three main things. Usually, you’ll have the insurance companies trying to get you to settle whatever your case is quick.
Mitch: By the end of the year.
Kyle: By the end of the year. If you were involved in a motor vehicle accident…
Jon: Fiscal year.
Kyle: Fiscal year. They will call you, come to your house, try to get you to sign on the dotted line.
Mitch: Okay.
Kyle: That’s exactly when you call us. 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Perfect.
Kyle: Other than that, this time of year, we’re gonna have, I’m assuming, sometime soon, a couple of blizzards. Weather-wise…
Mitch: There’ll be weather.
Kyle: Tis’ the season.
Mitch: But even if it’s rain, that’s still weather, ya know?
Kyle: It’s around this time of year, people haven’t driven on snow for the last six or seven months.
Mitch: Exactly.
Kyle: Typically, accident increase around this time and then unfortunately with the holidays, there’s a lot of people who drink and drive.
Mitch: Yep.
Jon: It’s the holiday party season.
Kyle: Holiday parties and everything else.
Mitch: Can I just say another PSA? Don’t drink, don’t. You got a cab, you got Uber, you got Lyft.
Kyle: Uber, Lyft, all of them.
Mitch: Do something, make a better decision. Even if you think you’re not drunk, even if you’ve only had a couple, even if you’ve done it a hundred times before and you’ve gotten lucky. Don’t. Make a better decision.
Jon: That’s what I kinda thought years ago when Uber and Lyft came about that there wouldn’t be as many drunk driving cases just because it’s so easy.
Mitch: It’s so easy.
Jon: It’s an app. It’s on your phone or it’s on your watch. You push the button and they’re there.
Mitch: And they’re there.
Jon: Click click, five dollars later and you’re home.
Mitch: Yeah!
Kyle: I’ve seen so many people who make that terrible decision and their lives are ruined. There’s legal costs and jail time and everything else. Just don’t even think about it.
Mitch: And I’ll go back to one of the other example you gave as well is, weather. Ya know, I love all the tweets and all the social media. The first snow we get where everybody tweets, oh looks like everybody’s never driven in snow before. Everbody forgot we’ve all driven in it people. We live in Wisconsin. We know how to drive in snow, we know how to drive in ice, act like it. Give yourself a little extra time to break when you’re coming to a stop light or stop sign. Don’t hit the person in front of you, how about that? Ya know, act like you’ve been there before.
Jon: Correct. I think part of it is, you get, we all see people who are on their phones, looking down while they’re driving. And then you get the snow and then you’re looking down at your phone for whatever reason because you have to see what Facebook says at that particular moment.
Mitch: Facebook is really important, Jon!
Jon: And then you forget that, yeah, you have to stop a little bit earlier, but then you’re distracted because of the phone and then it just, it’s a mess. And then, well, you’ve changed somebody’s life. And that just isn’t fair in the entire grand scheme of things and certainly during the holiday season. The weird thing is that we probably won’t see these calls or these cases until January so, as a way to stop the process or to hopefully stop one extra call or two extra calls, we’ll gladly give away those cases if people would just drive safer and understand certain things early on. Like I said, you need to take extra time and call Uber and call Lyft or whatever it’s gonna be.
Mitch: So if it happens to you, call immediately. Don’t wait until January. Don’t wait until after you’ve seen the doctor. Don’t wait until after you’ve already been knocked on the door by the insurance company ten times. Call immediately. 375-2030. 414-375-2030. If you don’t call immediately and you wait until you get home, go to grothlawfirm.com, that’s G-R-O-T-H, grothlawfirm.com. You can message with people right there on the website or you can find out that they’re at 111th and Bluemound and you can walk in or make an appointment or whatever it is you need to do. You can do it from the website, you can do it from your phone as well.
Jon: And when you’re car is stopped, you can also text that same number. So you can text 414-375-2030.
Mitch: Oh really? And somebody will get back to you.
Jon: We will text you back. Or call you back, yeah.
Mitch: Very cool. Kyle, Jon, thank you so much for taking the time this morning.
Jon: Thank you.
Kyle: Thanks for having us.
Mitch: Let’s get a Packers win, okay?
Jon: Absolutely. Go, Pack, go.
Mitch: Absolutely. Today’s guest on Ask the Experts, Groth Law Firm. Jon Groth and Kyle Buss from Groth Law Firm. Go to G-R-O-T-H grothlawfirm.com. GIve them a call, 414-375-2030. On the Big 920, thebig920.com, and streaming nationwide and beyond via the iheartradio app, this has been Ask the Experts.