• november@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    1 day ago

    I’m a bit confused.

    The California proposal, dubbed the “Protecting Automobile Accident Victims from Attorney Self-Dealing Act,” is slated for the November midterm election. It would require crash victims to keep 75 percent of their total settlement awards, leaving lawyers and hospitals to split the remaining 25 percent.

    That… seems totally fine? That “would make it harder for victims to sue after a car crash” in the same way that raising the minimum wage “makes it harder to find a job”.

    The text of the bill is here if anyone wants to take a look. I’m reading through it and it seems to deal entirely with fees and contracts. It is a bit sus that Uber’s supporting it, but it’s important to have all the facts.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      The article is disappointingly short; but I can picture why that would seem nice to Uber. It could lead to a scenario where lawyers don’t want to bother taking on crash suits since they don’t offer much return. With fewer crash suits and more victims paying for the crash out of pocket, Uber is less likely to pay liability (for instance, forcing drivers to rush to meet pickups/dropoffs)

      That is a possible thread of logic; but I am curious what further data would suggest as an outcome.

      • Ludicrous0251@piefed.zip
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        1 day ago

        The data suggesting an outcome is the fact that Uber is pouring millions of dollars into this campaign. That’s a sizable and somewhat risky investment (because it could go nowhere) so it needs an equally sizable ROI for them.

        Ambulance chaser lawyers are some of the worst, but I’m not holding my breath that Uber is here to save the day out of the kindness of their hearts.

    • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
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      21 hours ago

      Because it cost money to sue and most if not all the victims won’t have the funds to sue. And attorney who normally take these cases up on being paid later will not pursue these types of cases. Uber isn’t doing this to help victims.

        • limonfiesta@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Why do you think they combined the lawyer and hospital/healthcare share?

          This is designed specifically to almost sound reasonable on the surface, but is really intended to strongly discourage lawyers from suing them.

          They are trying to legally eliminate the incentive structure (compensation) for the class of people (lawyers) necessary to hold them financially accountable.

          • november@piefed.blahaj.zone
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            1 day ago

            Right, so it’s okay when lawyers take the lion’s share of a settlement. Not like the whole point of a settlement is to reimburse the wronged party.

            • Pika@sh.itjust.works
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              23 hours ago

              I mean, when the alternative is self representing, I think the lion share is the better choice.

              In a perfect world you would be able to have one without the other but, the lawyer industry at least in the states is super predatory, the more you remove from what the lawyers get out of it, the less likely you will get a lawyer, or the higher costs you have to pay for them to take it.

              • november@piefed.blahaj.zone
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                21 hours ago

                The fuckcars community is the last place I expected to see “you can’t regulate this industry because it’s too predatory”, but okay.

            • limonfiesta@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              jfc you really have no idea how any of this works, but even that isn’t enough to prevent you from being supremely confident.

              Congratulations, you are the target demographic for this Uber expenditure.