Jim Miller and I have been fighting the ladder industry for the last 10 years. Jim is one of the brightest legal minds I have had the pleasure to work with in my career. When the issues are complex, I call Jim.

Jim Miller and I, together with my soul-mate, Jim VanderLinden, have handled these ladder cases and, to take a quote, “we have never lost”. Boy, that is not bragging because these cases have scarred, torn and nearly bankrupted us because of the litigation tactics of one of the most oppressive litigation machines in the history of product liability.

I want to tell you one simple thing. Ladders do break because they are defective. They are very dangerous. Do you hear me?

The thing the ladder industry has going for it is the stupid things people do on ladders when they jump the ladder, get on the ladder off the roof and set the ladder up on ice or on an incline. They play upon all of the prejudices that people have that if you get hurt on a ladder, it’s your own damn fault. The ladder industry would rather pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend lawsuits that to pay claims. The strategy works, because most attorneys fall off the train.

The good news is that of the three cases I took, we successfully settled two cases on a confidential basis and tried and won the third with the brilliant work of my co-counsel Jim VanderLinden. The cases were serious injuries. Two were broken backs with surgeries and the third was a brain injury with paralysis and death.

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