Does Litigation Funding Win Bigger Payouts?
Big Insurance Hates Legal Funding. Here’s Why:
“Litigation funding allows lawsuits to be decided on their merits, and not based on which party has deeper pockets or stronger appetite for protracted litigation.”
— Eileen Bransten
New York Supreme Court Justice
Litigation Finance Can Level The Playing Field
TriMark Legal Funding is one of America’s foremost legal funding companies. Today we explore the link between legal funding (litigation financing) and larger settlement payouts.
🢂Does Litigation Funding Help Plaintiffs Win Bigger Payouts?🢀
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DISCLAIMER:
TriMark Legal Funding makes no promise, warranty, or guarantee, explicit or implicit, regarding any particular outcome, positive or negative, that litigation funding may have on the final value of any negotiated settlement or jury award.
What Caused Litigation Finance?
Honestly, big insurance did it to themselves.
Think about it. Had it consistently conducted its’ business with honesty, integrity, compassion, and a moral compass, litigation finance never would have found a way in.
Up until about 25 years ago, litigation finance wasn’t even a thing.
The insurance industry had been out of control pretty much forever, so the need for it was definitely there, but as an industry, it just didn’t exist yet. Finally, people decided they’d had enough, and viola!, litigation funding was born.
Despite its newness, litigation finance has become a fast-growing industry that, by some estimates, has grown into a $30-$100 billion market.
The reason litigation funding has become as popular (with plaintiffs) and as unpopular (with the insurance industry) as it has in such a relatively short period of time is simple:
Litigation funding improves the quality and integrity of legal settlements.
Do you see how that statement can mean entirely different things depending on which side of the negotiation you happen to be on? That’s the rub.
The Problem: Why Was Litigation Financing Born?
Since time immemorial, insurance companies (collectively we’ll call them ‘Big Insurance’) have developed a notorious reputation for using a litany of bad faith tactics to cheat people.
Delaying, devaluing, and denying claims and low-balling, or offering less money than a claim is worth, are just a couple of examples of bad faith.
Using dirty tricks, deception, bad faith tactics, and more, Big Insurance perfected the art of settling legal claims by exploiting the financial vulnerabilities of claimants rather than by establishing fair, appropriate compensation values based on the actual merits of a claim.
The Solution: How Is Litigation Finance Different?
Litigation funders, on the other hand, evaluate and invest their capital into legal claims based almost entirely on the claim’s merits.
In other words, through their experience, research, and due diligence, funders develop an accurate idea of what a claim’s appropriate settlement value, all things being equal, should be.
Litigation finance has already transformed civil litigation at the single case level, as well as business litigation at the commercial level.
It has also begun transforming how attorneys and law firms do business.
The Result: Why Is Litigation Funding So Popular?
Investing in legal claims often has the effect of resolving a plaintiff’s financial difficulties, at least for the near-term. They can relax, pay their bills, and wait patiently for their lawsuit settlement.
This, in turn, removes any pressure on the plaintiff’s attorney to settle prematurely because the plaintiff has run out of money.
The settlement figure in a lawsuit that is backed by litigation funders is far more likely to reflect the true merits of the claim rather than the financial disparities between the parties, or the financial desperation of one of the parties. 🢅
What Just Happened?
Simply stated, legal funding can help prevent an insurance company from using a plaintiff’s financial hardship as a bargaining chip during settlement negotiations.
When it does, the one-sided effect of the economic imbalances between the parties simply disappears. And what’s left is a “level playing field”, ready for a serious but fair settlement discussion.
The plaintiff’s attorney is then free to negotiate the maximum appropriate compensation on the basis of the claim’s merits.
The Future of Litigation Funding
Litigation finance covers a lot of ground and can be divided into multiple sub-markets:
- Consumer pre-settlement funding
- Consumer post-settlement funding
- Commercial litigation funding
- Law firm financing
- MDL and mass tort litigation
Consumers primarily use legal funding in the form of personal injury loans, car accident loans, slip and fall accident funding, settlement funding for medical malpractice, and legal funding for workers compensation, to name a few.
This type of funding is intended for personal injury plaintiffs to cover non-litigation-related expenses (living and medical expenses) while their cases are pending.
Commercial litigation funding is used to finance virtually all types of high-stakes business disputes from IP, patent, and copyright infringement to mass torts, products liability, and environmental litigation.
In addition to law firms loans, post-settlement attorney funding is a powerful option to keep the war chest brimming with fresh working capital.
Advocates and adversaries both agree that litigation financing is one of the most important and most transformative developments in the civil justice system in recent memory.
Does Litigation Funding Help Plaintiffs Win Bigger Payouts?
In a word, according to Jennifer Marshall, YES.
Jennifer Marshall is an insurance industry ratings department director at A.M. Best Co. in Oldwick, New Jersey.
She cut right to the heart of the matter in a July 12, 2021 Business Insurance article, wherein she confirmed that winning larger awards and settlements is PRECISELY what litigation funding helps plaintiffs do.
Here is an excerpt that reflects the insurance industry’s current thinking:
“Many insurance industry participants are unhappy with the growth of litigation funding. Jennifer Marshall, a director in the property/casualty ratings department at A.M. Best Co. in Oldwick, New Jersey, said it puts upward pressure on claims costs and drives increases in awards and settlements.“
Source: Businessinsurance.com
Ms. Marshall probably never intended for her comment to serve as a raving endorsement of the legal funding industry.
Be that as it may, she isn’t alone in her assessment that legal funding helps plaintiffs win bigger settlement payouts.
- Forbes: In its February 2, 2022 article entitled ‘How Litigation Funds Are Affecting Lawsuits Against Insurance Companies‘ the author stated it plainly: “Insurance companies hate these funds.”
- Rand Corporation: On June 2, 2009, the UCLA-RAND Center for Law and Public Policy convened a conference in Santa Monica, California, on third-party litigation funding. One of the key findings from that conference was that litigation funding “helps level the playing field by financing litigants with legitimate claims who cannot otherwise afford to litigate.”
- RDN: In its February 8, 2022 article ‘Litigation funding could aid consumers in court‘, the author said that for plaintiffs who use litigation funding, it “means you and your attorney may no longer have to confront insurance companies alone.”
Litigation Funding From Our Perspective
TriMark Legal Funding is, admittedly, pretty biased.
We are pro-plaintiff and on a daily basis, we witness firsthand what it’s like to be a plaintiff who is pitted against a multi-billion dollar insurance company that is determined to lowball them into submission.
By the time they get to us they’ve been injured, some very seriously. Their old lives are usually in tatters and their livelihoods have either been disrupted or destroyed.
And keep in mind, not one of them signed up for this; this was done TO them by someone else’s negligence, not BY them because of their own.
Trodding on the Downtrodden
Plaintiffs reach out to us because an insurer has delayed, devalued, or denied their rightful, legitimate claims of compensation for their injuries and losses to the extent that they felt their only recourse was to file a lawsuit against the insurer.
Instead of doing the right thing and paying out a prompt, fair settlement for their policyholder’s negligence like they were paid by their policyholders to do, insurers frequently offer plaintiffs a pittance of the financial settlement they ought to receive. And when they don’t accept it, the insurer beats them down, marginalizes them, and leaves them to fend for themselves.
When they stand up and hire an attorney, the insurer pits itself against them in a years-long, ultra-high-stakes grudge match designed to test how long plaintiffs can endure without money, and how little of it they can be forced to accept before they will finally go away.
A Real Eye-Opener
One of the most shocking and, quite frankly, disappointing revelations to come out of this process is the realization that many insurers have absolutely no compunction whatsoever about re-victimizing injury victims all over again, all for the sake of saving themselves some money.
We have watched as insurers endeavor to make it as inconvenient, hopeless-looking, time-consuming, painful, frightening, uncertain, uncomfortable, and financially unfeasible as possible for plaintiffs to hold out for a larger, more appropriate settlement.
Insurers know that under the right circumstances and enough financial pressure, cash-strapped plaintiffs will eventually cave in and settle for tens, and sometimes even hundreds, of thousands of dollars less than they would have if only they’d had the money to carry them through the legal fight.
Does litigation funding help plaintiffs win bigger settlement payouts?
After everything we’ve seen, we certainly hope so.
The Golden Rule
You’ve probably already figured it out by now, but if you haven’t, here’s a truth bomb for you:
Insurance Companies Believe In The Golden Rule
No, no, no…not THAT Golden Rule, the other one. The one that says:
“The one with the gold MAKES the rules.”
In other words, the one who has the money gets to control the one who doesn’t.
We Disagree.
Legal funding, by its very nature, disrupts that power imbalance, levels the playing field, and restores a long-absent sense of integrity and fairness to the settlement negotiation process.
Have Questions?
Call and speak with one of our funding experts today.
Have Questions?
Call and speak with one of our funding experts today.
Apply For Litigation Funding Now
It’s fast, free, and easy to qualify for lawsuit settlement funding.
At a minimum, all you need to qualify is that you must:
- Have received significant injuries
- Be represented by a contingent-fee attorney
- Have clear liability against a sufficiently-insured defendant
Isn’t it finally time for you to take back control of your finances?