Monday, July 10, 2006

Cowtown's #1 Ambulance Chaser

If you live in Central Ohio and watch any T.V. at all, you have no doubt seen the commercials of one Kevin Kurgis, personal-injury attorney extraordinaire. For those of you who live elsewhere (you lucky bastards), I'll provide a brief synopsis of one of his typical pitches:

Open with a scene of a perfect, upscale, attractive, Aryan-looking family--consisting of a father, mother, one son, and one daughter, of course--driving down a country road in their current-model SUV. The father, who is driving, naturally, has his hands precisely at 10-2 on the steering wheel. Everyone is buckled in and behaving wonderfully, although the mother occasionally turns her head to gaze adoringly at her children in the back seat and chat with them a bit.

Cutaway to another vehicle somewhere down the road, heading toward our Perfect Family. This vehicle is an older-model pickup, carrying two white trashy teenagers who are obviously supposed to be under the influence of one or more substances. They are carrying on, messing with each other, screwing with the radio, and of course swerving all over the road.

You can guess what happens next. We don't actually see the inevitable accident, but White Trash Wasted Kids come close to hitting Perfect Family head-on. Perfect Dad swerves at the last minute, and then . . . fade.

Fade back in to a darkly lit courtroom. A tall, beefy, imposing man starts walking directly toward the camera, talking fast.

"I'm Kevin Kurgis, and I'm a lawyer. If you've been injured in an accident, your job is to get well, and my job is to fight the insurance company. In fact, I'll do whatever I can to squeeze as much cash as possible out of them so that I can take a third of it, or maybe even half, depending on how stupid you are and how much I can pull over on you."

O.K., he doesn't actually say that last part, but somehow, that's what I hear every time.

Even if you don't live in the Heartland, you no doubt have your own local version of the prominent PI-attorney commercial hawker. They all make the same kinds of ads--you know, the kind that looks like it was shot by an out-of-work porn director.* Bad production quality, really bad "acting," and a sales pitch aimed at an intelligence level just slightly below that of your average Jerry Springer viewer. Such commercials are a natural outgrowth of our legal system, and they no doubt bring in big bucks for the ambitious PI attorney who can afford them.

But apparently, they're not enough for our own Kevin Kurgis.

For those of you who don't know, I had a little incident with my car a few weeks ago. Not my fault--some asshole did a hit and run while my car was parked on the street. They got my driver's side fender pretty good, enough so that I had difficulty opening the door. No note, of course. Asshole.

Anyway, I filed a police report, because I thought that's what you had to do before filing an insurance claim. (I don't think that's actually true, but never mind.) And then I filed an insurance claim, fully expecting and prepared to deal with an evil corporate empire and its demon-from-hell representatives.

As it turns out, the whole experience was completely free of stress or evilness. The insurance company sent an adjuster out to look at my car. Said adjuster was a perfectly nice guy who took about 15 minutes to write up an estimate. Four days later, a check arrived from the insurance company. As I write this, my car is being fixed up good as new. Sure, I'm out the $250 deductible, but all things considered, the whole experience could have been a lot worse.

The funny part is, a few days after I filed the police report, I got a letter in the mail from . . . can you guess? Kevin Kurgis himself! The letter was very reassuring, full of promises about how he would go to battle for me with the insurance company over my "injuries." The injuries he and his crack staff apparently figure I sustained while my car was parked as I was several blocks away at a music festival, thoroughly enjoying myself.

So, there's a lesson learned--apparently, ambulance chasers don't need for an actual ambulance to be involved before pimping themselves out for a claim. And in fact, they don't even need for any injuries to be sustained. And in fact, they don't even need for an actual accident to have occurred.

All I can say is, if you live in central Ohio, be careful of filing a police report--KEVIN KURGIS WILL FIND YOU!! And the letter he sends you will be full of grammatical errors! And it will infuriate you that a man who doesn't even understand subject-verb agreement is a millionairre, while you are not.

*Said out-of-work porn directors are getting plenty of work these days, apparently, because all of the online poker site commercials are done in exactly the same way.

6 comments:

law69 said...

I know Kevin Kurgis personnally and he is a wonderful attorney and person. They simply send out those fliers to make sure you don't need help. It is no different than any other business sending there services through the mail. Thank god you were not injured and just boozing it up at a concert douchebag!!!

Anonymous said...

Just happened to run across this Kevin Kurgis thing...I guess I'm a few years late! Just wanted to say that I, like "law69", also know Kevin, and the idea that he is "a wonderful person" is laughable. He's sleazy, his wife is sleazy, and his daughter who had to go to rehab while she was still in high school, is also sleazy. Sally (the daughter) is scary looking, just like her dad.

Anonymous said...

The only problem that my wife and I have with him, is that they take so long to resolve a case! Two years before we heard from his office! We left unanswered messages, to no availe! Then, one of his associates shows up at our door two years later, saying he has a check coming for us, for personal injury! All we had to do is sign a conformation form, accepting the check that we'll get shortly! That was four weeks ago and so far nothing! They first told us, not to speak with the other parties insurance, because they will handle everything! After two years, our vehicle is still sitting, broken down, needing fixed! This, I swear, is the Gods truth!

Anonymous said...

Law69 is Kevin Kurgis.

Anonymous said...

law69's daughter probably hit your car

Anonymous said...

He is the scum of the earth but we as a society have our selves to blame by filling a lawsuit for every little thing that goes wrong