About
I’d like to take a moment to tell you who I am. My name is Angelo Patane. I am in my 17th year of practice as an attorney.
In 2004, after almost five years, I left my job as a trial attorney at one of the three largest insurance companies in the country. During my tenure, I handled hundreds of injury cases. I met a lot of injured people. I took sworn statements of doctors and experts witnesses. I tried, arbitrated, and mediated hundreds of cases. I learned how injury cases are prosecuted and defended. I saw how insurance companies hire doctors to say that people weren't injured. I watched insurance companies hire "experts" to say that an injury could not have been caused by wrongdoing.
I learned exactly how insurance companies destroy injury claims. I know, because I did it.
The insurance company named me their Trial Attorney of the Year 2000. People said "congratulations," important people shook my hand, and I received an award. That made me proud. My job was pretty decent, and I became quite good at it. The insurance company wanted me to win my cases, so they taught me how to try and handle injury cases. They sent me to a week-long Trial College just so I could excel at it.
I handled many cases which were definitely "questionable." I liked fighting the questionable claims, because we are all better off without them. But too often I noticed I was coming across cases with serious and legitimate injuries. Most insurance companies fight these just as they fight the "questionable" ones. Usually they end up paying what they should, but not after putting the injured person through a battle. Sometimes an insurance attorney wants to settle the case, but the insurance company will not allow it. The insurance company controls the money and holds all the power.
All of this started to rub me the wrong way. But, what really open my eyes were the times where I won a case where I thought the claimant might really have been injured. I had evidence to legitimately argue otherwise, but I often thought if the injured person had a better attorney, the outcome would have been different. I began to realize that injured people were being let down by their own attorneys. The attorneys did not do what needed to be done, did not properly work up the case, and did not make the right arguments.
After years of saving a billion dollar insurance company money, I realized that my heart was not into it. I did not want to defeat the claims of regular folks who were injured, but whose attorneys were of no use. I realized that perhaps if these people had an attorney who had worked on the other side, who understood what the insurance company would throw at them, who knew how to plan for and counter-attack it, that the insurance company might be beaten at its own game. And with that, I switched sides.
Now, I work to help people fight the insurance companies for what they deserve.
If you want to know more about why I particularly like helping people who have been injured by medical errors, click here. It's personal.
