From the President, 1019 GABJ, GSB Vol. 25, No. 2, Pg. 6

• Author: DARRELL SUTTON PRESIDENT
• Position: Vol. 25 2 Pg. 6

From the President

Vol. 25 No. 2 Pg. 6

Georgia Bar Journal

October, 2019

Tackling Case Runners

DARRELL SUTTON PRESIDENT

Anyone who has seen the movie adaptation of John Grisham’s “The Rainmaker” surely remembers Danny DeVito’s entertaining portrayal of the prototypical personal injury “case runner,” Deck Shifflet.

In a particularly memorable scene, Shifflet and young lawyer Rudy Baylor, played by Matt Damon, are on a client solicitation run to the hospital and have just made their pitch in the room of an injured patient when, leaving the hospital, Baylor exclaims, “That was blatant ambulance chasing.”

“Right!” Shifflet replies. “You’d better learn quick, or you’re going to starve.”

Unfortunately, illegal and unethical client solicitation is not so entertaining. Case runners, who prey on recently injured victims and their families, are nothing new to the legal profession.

The use of these true “ambulance chasers” on the part of some personal injury lawyers has for decades been a prevalent practice. In Georgia, it is an issue that has been around for a long time but in recent years has become more common and, because of advances in technology, more sophisticated.

Gone are the days when runners operate in the shadows. Even though the practice is illegal in Georgia and stands in violation of State Bar rules about client solicitation, I have listened as lawyers from Athens to Savannah to Atlanta shared first-hand accounts of lawyers not only engaging in case-running, but boasting about their use of the practice.

So brash have some Bar members become that they even employ hospital personnel themselves to generate personal injury clients. This practice is the subject of a currently pending lawsuit in Athens-Clarke County, alleging an attorney hired a staff member of a local hospital to run cases for him.

This illegal, unprofessional and unethical form of client solicitation casts a bad light on the legal profession. It makes us the worst caricature of ourselves. All the while, it operates to the detriment of the public, whose best interests we are sworn to serve.

Rule 7.3 (c) specifies, “A lawyer shall not compensate or give anything of value to a person or organization to recommend or secure the lawyer’s employment by a client, or as a reward for having made a recommendation resulting in the lawyer’s employment by a client; . . . The maximum penalty for a violation of t his...