Ten Part Legal Marketing Series

Think how often you get out of the car, and drag an armload of plastic shopping bags into the house. Leaving aside the groceries, we haul in–and dump on the kitchen counter–clothes, books, TVs, laptops, desktops, hand-held PCs, monitors, all manner of computer and electronic games and gizmos, cell phones, small appliances, and goodness knows what all else. That’s just the stuff that you can lay out on the counter. That’s before we even start on vehicles and large appliances.

Remember the infamous Carbolic Smoke Ball? The 1893 decision in Carlill v. Carbolic Smoke Ball Company is not just memorable from a literary and historical standpoint; it remains good authority, 120 years later, for important contract law doctrines, including those of offer, acceptance, consideration and misrepresentation.

The Staten Island Advance reports that lawyer John O’Leary recently negotiated a $750,000 settlement for his client, mid-trial, for injuries she suffered when a car struck her as she crossed a street. Helena Rozanska, 62, a housekeeper at a convent at the time of the accident, injured her arm so badly that she was unable to return to work or perform her own household chores, such as cooking, cleaning and shopping.

Remember the good old days? When you learned about a trial decision when the law report digests came out? If you were lucky you read about the decision in the newspaper or heard about it by way of lawyer gossip. And as for settlements–good luck in finding anything out anywhere–the cases just vanished.