Comments on: NJ comp fraud case: lawyers settle out, workers nailed

By: Ted

Ted — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 16:31:01 +0000

Walter beat me to this: I’ve been following the story for a couple of weeks, waiting for a better story from the media. What’s amazing to me is that not one news story thinks it notable that there was obviously a giant workers’ compensation fraud involving identical bogus claims. But every story is about big, bad Bath Unlimited, who is clearly a victim in all this. Even a website readers have made me promise not to link to takes this tack.

By: Rochelle Funderburg

Rochelle Funderburg — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 10:08:04 +0000

Is the State ethics agency looking into this? It seems to me that the lawyers violated a number of ethical obligations if they knowingly filed masses of fraudulent claims, and then let the workers hang out to dry.

By: Griffin3

Griffin3 — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 11:41:52 +0000

I read all of the articles linked in the article, and some more links from those articles. Now, we here at OverLawyered are used to fairly credulous reporting. But in none of the articles, not even anything on Google, is it ever mentioned that this happened because Ginarte O'Dwyer and Winograd failed to represent their clients. The inclusion of some clients with legitimate complaints seems harsh, and I would be interested to see how much of this judgment ends up being overturned. Rather than having a chilling effect on all cases, seems to me it's more likely to have a chilling effect on filing bogus cases. But it would be nice, if the public took just one thing away from this, which is that, apparently, Ginarte O'Dwyer and Winograd failed to represent their clients. {grin}

By: Deoxy

Deoxy — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 10:41:27 +0000

Wouldn’t Ginarte doing that be an extreme conflict of insterest? I mean, don’t they have responsibilities to their clients?

By: Bill Alexander

Bill Alexander — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 09:44:30 +0000

In reality, the workers are probably almost all judgement proof, so it doesn’t much matter.

By: David Nieporent

David Nieporent — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 01:08:00 +0000

John: To the extent that the workers were complicit in worker’s comp fraud, we shouldn’t have any sympathy for them. To the extent that they were poor unsophisticated non-English-speaking immigrants manipulated by Ginarte, their remedy should be against Ginarte.

And the workers may have a strong case against Ginarte — not for its behavior in the racketeering case, but for its behavior in the underlying workers’ comp cases.

While it’s incredibly unseemly that Ginarte settled and the workers defaulted, Ginarte couldn’t possibly represent them; their interests differed and it would be a huge conflict. (It may have been able to request an extension of time to answer on behalf of the workers to enable the workers to get their own lawyers; we don’t know what happened there.)

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:09:54 +0000

I’d think the workers would have a pretty good case against the attorneys who were ostensibly representing them. Had Ginarte O’Dwyer and Winograd no obligation to put up a defense? To ensure that their clients did not lose by default?