Life, 5Ks, Marathons and Ultra Marathons

As it turns out life is a lot like the 5K, Marathon and UltraMarathon, in fact Life is the ultimate ultramarathon.

You cannot succeed without the ultimate support crew, friends and family, who often work harder than you do, with one goal in mind, to unconditionally support and help you.

The preparation, the persistence, perseverance. The relentless forward progress.

Some people are born with it, most of us have to work really hard at it. Hard work outlast talent. The will to win means nothing without the will to prepare.

The anticipation of the start, the excitement in your stomach, the fear that almost paralyzes you as you toe the start line, you want to turn back, but no you can’t, you have prepared for this, you know what you have to do, oh the excitement. The spirit of friends and total strangers coming together with a common bond, a common goal, to get to the finish line, in one piece.

Sometimes it’s a sprint, sometimes a long and beautiful road, other times its brutal and painful. Run, walk, crawl, just keep moving, and smile, but, then again, there are those times when you just need to lay down where you are and take a nap.

There will always be someone with fancier running shoes, a nicer watch, better gear, who cares, you are perfectly fine with what you have and that’s all you need.

On any given day, there will always be someone faster, someone stronger, someone who looks better, you will always feel like you are chasing someone or something, and someone will always be chasing you. In the end, its just you and the clock. Time, it is what you chose to do with your time that matters.

Someone in the past has mapped the course for you, shown you the way, but, sometimes you just got to take your own path. There will be support along the way, total strangers at aid stations to support you with food, water and a hearty cheer. All along the course there will be familiar and unfamiliar faces cheering wildly, shouting encouragement, for you, then again, you will encounter some jackass or jerks along the way, that’s their problem, be better than them because you are. You can never control what other people do, but, you can control what you do.

There is the joy, energy, enthusiasm, spirit and vigor at the start that will inevitably fade, then wax and wane, as the miles pile up, and you wonder why you are doing this, how hard it is, I paid money for this? Then again, sometimes, as Winston Churchill put it, “you just got to bugger on”.

Sometimes you wonder what you are running from, other times what you are running to.

There are the hills, mountains, flat roads, down hills and the valleys, the roller coaster of life, hang on and just keep making relentless forward progress. Slow and steady. The highs are never as high as they seem or look, what goes up must come down, and the lows are never as bad as your mind imagines them to be, and you always come back up, just hang on and enjoy the ride.

When you look up the mountains may seem daunting, or the task at hand may sound insurmountable, but, then you look inside yourself, put one foot in front of the other and you find your space, your flow, mojo, you got your ying and your yang. Unstoppable.

Your mind and body are capable of anything, and so much more than you could possibly think possible, you are only limited by self-doubt, or you let other people’s perceived limitations hold you back. Just because someone else thinks they cannot succeed does not mean you can’t. Sometimes you just got to put one foot in front of the other and set out, put the pen to paper, stand up and give the opening, get your flow and keep rolling and rolling, beyond anything once thought possible.

It will get hot, damn hot, plan well and drink your water. You will come upon someone struggling, you need your water, but they need it more than you do, and you, of course will give your water bottle to them and help them along to the next aid station, because it’s the right thing to do. Then out of nowhere, that same person will come flying up to you in the middle of the night with life’s “second or third wind” and you will smile, be happy for them and happy to have helped along the way. What comes around goes around.

Sometimes they let horses in the race. Humans and animals together. The horse will clomp up behind you on a hill while you are eating pringles, so you share your pringles, and while you and this “animal” don’t share the same language as you look into their eyes, you see gratitude, and you know you have a friend for life, even though you will never see each other again.

There will be times were you just got to step off the trial dig a hole, grab some leaves and take care of business, then bury your troubles, that’s life, sh&% happens, take care of it and move on.

Maybe everything will go according to plan, then again, we all know what usually happens with the best laid plans. As Mike Tyson said, “everyone has a plan until you get punched in the mouth.”  The weather, coronavirus, blisters, upset stomach, or you just have a bad day, adapt, improvise, change it up, bugger on, survive and thrive, but, never, never, never, never give up.

The sun may shine, it may be pouring rain, the wind in your face or at your back, take each step and day as it comes and find its joy. The risk of doing something in the moment.

A mile may seem like a long way away, or just around the corner. Its all a matter of perspective.

There will be times where you feel on top of the world and a 5K sounds like a piece of cake, then again, maybe you are recovering from that latest injury or setback and you are ecstatic to make it to mile one, or you look over and you see the will power and determination of someone recovering from cancer finishing right there beside you and you are overwhelmed with joy for them and awestruck with their determination and grit. Find your inspiration, be someone else’s inspiration.

A total stranger will see your hurting and are in need and they will help. No questions asked, wanting nothing in return, just offering help and support. Success through sharing.

You may take the wrong path and get lost and miss qualifying for the Boston Marathon by ten seconds. Then some forces of evil place bombs near the finish line causing many, many people terrible and horrible loss and pain, but from that loss and pain rises strength and hope. Strong on! Someone or something is watching over you.

You will have your successes, but, remember what got you there, because success is not guaranteed the next time.

Sometimes you just need to go it alone, fly solo for a while, other times you will want a companion, someone to confide in, or a whole group to carry you along. To listen to your troubles, but mostly you will need to really, really listen to others.

You may lose your training partner, or training buddies along the way, but, you must carry on, that is what they would have wanted and what you would want them to do for you.

Then there is the approach to the finish and the finish.  There will be times where the crowds and cheering are deafeningly loud, then there will be times where its just you and the finish line.  Finish the job, finish what you started. Sometimes you just won’t be able to “finish the job” or you “lose the trial”. There is no such thing as failure because you learn from the journey are better off for taking it, and you get back up, dust yourself off, and step up to the next start line. Refuse to give yourself permission to be defeated.

Even when you finish and the fanfare is over, there is the what’s next? What are you going to do now? How are you going to top this? Take time to enjoy and savor the moment, you deserve it, you earned it. Find the joy and grace in the moment.

Congress Stands Up for Victims of Truck Crashes

On June 18, 2020, Congress passed an Amendment to the INVEST Act by a vote of 37-27 that will help families devastated in truck crashes and help make America’s roadways and the trucking industry safer.

The full bill (The INVEST Act - otherwise being referred to as the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act) will be brought up for a floor vote as early as July 1. The Senate has a different version of a Surface Transportation Reauthorization that has already passed committee. It has not yet been scheduled for a full Senate vote.

When a person suffers life threatening injuries due to the negligence of motor carriers, families struggle with the costs of long-term care and the loss of income when a person can no longer work, threatening the families with lifelong economic instability. For families that undergo tragedy, it often comes as a surprise that despite a Congressional mandate in the 1980s, minimum insurance requirements for interstate truckers have remained unchanged. This amendment approved by Congress remedies this wrong by increasing commercial motor carrier insurance minimums to reflect current increases in inflation.

Background: The Motor Carrier Act of 1980

Congress has long recognized the connection between the issue of financial responsibility and the fitness of carriers operating in interstate commerce. The Motor Carrier Act of 1980 specifically set out to ensure public safety by requiring insurance minimums to be updated regularly. While the minimum insurance level in 1980 for general freight carriers was $750,000 per accident, the intent of Congress was to increase the minimums regularly[1], on pace with inflation. This increase has never occurred.

In 2014, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) released a report to Congress that examined the adequacy of the current financial responsibility requirements for motor carriers. The conclusion was clear: today, the costs of injuries and fatalities arising from crashes far exceed the minimum insurance levels interstate operators are required to carry. Moreover, the report found that in real terms, insurance premiums have actually decreased for the same level of coverage since the 1980s. As a result, injured Americans are often not appropriately compensated for life-altering injuries.

The Amendment helps provide the following protections to victims of heavy truck crashes:

·       Increase the statutory insurance minimum for general commercial motor carriers.

The amendment would increase the insurance minimum required for general commercial motor carriers from the current limit of $750,000 per accident to $2,000,000 per accident, to reflect increases in inflation.[2]

·       Require adjustments for inflation every five years.

In the amendment, the Department of Transportation is required, in consultation with the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to adjust the minimum insurance limit for inflation every five years so that it will not take over 40 years to update the limit in the future.

·       Ensure that insurance levels adequately cover crashes.

The amendment is a start, but, there is  a long way to go in making sure that crash victims are no longer left without the financial resources to pay medical bills or restore the quality of life enjoyed before the trucking crash. It would also help alleviate the burden of health care costs on taxpayers as it would ensure that Medicare and Medicaid are not shouldering millions of dollars of medical care each year due to inadequate insurance.

·       Create a real financial incentive to enforce safety.

The amendment establishes an increased minimum level of insurance so that free market forces would appropriately incentivize insurance companies and motor carriers to enforce safety.

Our roadways, communities and families deserve this safety protection and security. Its time for the full Congress and Senate to do the right thing, make up for 40 years of lost time, account for inflation and increase the minimum insurance for commercial motor carriers from $750,000.00 to $2,000,000.00 to help protect American citizens and tax payers from footing the bill when trucking companies violate safety rules that cause devastating consequences. It is time for accountability and responsibility.

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[1] H.R. Rep. No. 96-1069 at 43.

[2] The value of $750,000 was adjusted for changes in prices based upon the Consumer Price Index as provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), http://www.bls.gov/cpi/data.htm.

What is a Trial Lawyer

What is a Trial Lawyer?

Predatory.

Greedy.

Someone who will lie to win their case.

Ambulance-chaser.

We have all heard the stereotypes, and for some lawyers, these sadly hold true. But like most stereotypes, this dangerous misperception of the whole profession is based on inaccurate or incomplete information, at least as it relates to most of us.

I am proud to be a trial lawyer, and you should be too!

We strive to make the world a safer place.

We help families of victims of wrongdoing, whose lives have been blindsided and thrown into chaos through no fault of their own.

We strive to improve the lives of everyone we meet.

We help enforce safety rules that protect us, and we hold those that violate safety rules accountable for the damage they have caused.

We deter repeated violations of safety rules so that preventable tragedies do not repeat themselves— because if negligent wrongdoers get away with it, conduct rewarded is conduct repeated, and, with business as usual, next time it may be your family that ends up in misery land.

For example, more than 400,000 patients die each year in hospitals due to medical errors, according to a recent study published in the Journal of Patient Safety. Without trial lawyers holding hospitals and doctors accountable for these systems failures, the number of preventable deaths will increase.

The Ford Pinto, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Ford Explorer/Firestone tires, and the Takata exploding airbags are all examples of tragedies where the government was unable to hold corporations accountable for their violation of safety rules and damages caused. However, trial lawyers and juries were, while also deterring other corporations from similar conduct—helping make our families safe.

Trial lawyers hate injustice. We reject the notion that might makes right.

We trial lawyers go to court for our clients to help repair the damage done to their lives, to help make sure safety rules are followed, and to deter future violations. Most lawyers desperately try to avoid going to court, but we trial lawyers are a different breed. We give our all—sometimes to our own and our families’ detriment—missing important family events or sacrificing our own health as we put in the necessary time to prepare and provide our clients the best preparation possible for their day in court.

As much as we pour ourselves into our clients’ cases, as much as we care about our clients, and even with all the sleepless nights, time away from our families, missed meals, and sometimes a late night beer or glass of wine, we trial attorneys must also take care of ourselves so that, in turn, we can better take care of our clients and our families.

One of my favorite books is Touching the Void by Joe Simpson. It narrates the ordeals faced by Joe and his climbing partner, Simon, as they were the first to climb Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes. There are many parallels to the life of a trial lawyer and their story, from the preparation to the hard work to the life-altering falls. There are also many lessons, like the realization that the greatest danger may come when we least expect it, or when we think we may have already overcome the hardest parts. But to me, the most important lesson is the following quote that applies to us as trial lawyers, as well as moms and dads, neighbors and friend.

“Ultimately, we all have to look after ourselves, whether on mountains or in day to day life...[T]hat is not a license to be selfish, for only by taking good care of ourselves are we able to help others...[I]n the complexity of everyday life, the price of neglecting this responsibility might be marriage breaking down, a disruptive child, a business failing, or a house repossessed."

"The trick is to anticipate all the possible consequences of what you set out to do so that, if things do go wrong, you are better able to stay in control

We share our clients’ pain; we listen quietly to stories of misery from those who have lost a son, daughter, husband, wife, or parent, or have been paralyzed, burned or brain-damaged by someone’s violation of safety rules or by dangerous products. We take our clients’ problems and miseries home with us, because we trial lawyers care. But we must also not forget to take care of ourselves and our own families. This means getting enough sleep, eating healthily, perhaps drinking in greater moderation, meditating, finding time with our own families, going to cross-country meets, and watching lacrosse games and tennis matches. We must also keep ourselves physically fit, work out and keep ourselves in shape. Trials and the preparation that goes along with them are emotionally and physically demanding—the trial lawyer’s ultramarathon.

So this is who we are. We are the ones whose faces are marred by dust and sweat and blood. We are the ones who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotion; who spend ourselves over and over again in worthy causes to right another wrong, to find justice and put it where it belongs, to save a family and protect our community. We are the champions who will help hold those who violate our safety rues accountable for damages caused, and keep our families safe.

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