It's pretty rare, but once in a while personal injury lawyers come across cases where we're tempted to go after someone's personal assets.
Typical scenario is where your client suffers substantial injuries, where the value of the case is potentially in excess of $100,000. And the person who injured your client has limited insurance (say $25,000) but appears to be wealthy.
I have a case pending like this. Client was a passenger and was pretty badly hurt (fortunately he's recovering well). The person who caused the accident was driving at a high rate of speed in a $30,000+ luxury performance car with additional performance modifications, and had only $25K insurance.
Personal injury lawyers have a general sense that poor people driving old, cheap cars are likely to have low insurance, while the middle class driving newer cars of decent quality will typically have a $100/300 policy ($100K per person, $300K per occurrence), and wealthy people driving cars worth $30K plus will typically have more insurance.
So in the case I just mentioned, where a snot-nosed punk (I'm just being colorful here) is racing on city streets in a hot-rodded high-end car, we get a little out of joint about there not being enough insurance.
This brings us to the question -- do we try to get more than the insurance coverage by going after the tortfeasor (oops, used a lawyer word) personally? We really don't like doing that. In this case I discussed it with the client, explained my concerns, and we decided not to go after the guy.
There are a few reasons not to do this. First, it's much more difficult. Usually in a case like this we can settle with the insurance company without even having to sue. The case gets resolved quickly with little or no expenses (meaning both client and attorney get more money). If we want to get personal assets, we would usually have to go through a trial which would take a lot of time, cost a lot of money, and there's always the danger of getting a bad result from a jury.
The second reason stands out to me more. Personal injury lawyers have a bad enough name as things stand now. If it becomes commonplace for us to go after personal assets, we will fall into much wider disrepute. From a long-term economic perspective, we would risk creating a backlash that could cut off or damage our gravy train. While I personally support and advocate tort reform, that is not a popular view in the trial bar.
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