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Introduction

Odds are, I’m very sorry you’re reading my book.

Many of my years-long relationships with clients start with the same regret. As a personal injury lawyer, I often meet people in the middle of the worst days of their lives. Nobody who comes into my office for the first time is happy to be there, but I’m always glad to meet them—across my desk or by their hospital beds. I take no pleasure in the grief and shock they’re experiencing, but I know (as you’ll see in the stories of loss and recovery I share in this book) that they are part of a larger narrative. There’s something heroic about every one of them, even beyond the strength it takes to tell me about what’s just happened to redirect their lives in a direction they never wanted or planned.

No matter who they are, and although we’ve just met, I already know a few things about these people (as I suspect I do about you). For one, I know there’s hope. From my outsider’s perspective and years of experience, I know the person I’m speaking with is living through the worst days of their lives. And I know that things will get better. There’s no room left to get worse.

If they’re talking to me in my professional capacity, I also know someone has told them they need to consult a lawyer. During their struggle to go on without a loved one they’ve lost or in the face of a grueling physical recovery, they’re talking to me because they want to right a wrong. They want to do this, not for themselves, but to hold the system that’s responsible to account and to protect other people from harm. They’re thinking about taking on the hero’s work of standing against injustice, but they’re also feeling overwhelmed, guilty, or unsure. I always grieve for them and with them, but I’m always awed by them as well. And proud to stand with them.

I tell them that it’s my objective to ensure that, as time goes on, they’ll look back on our meeting as the absolute worst time because, I hope, it will mark a turning point where things began to get just a fraction better. I tell them I’ve been right here where we are far too many times but that I’ve seen what comes next, and it does—it will—get better. Not every day is better than the one before, and it never gets easy, but there is hope, and they’re not alone.

If you’re reading this book because you’re living through tragedy, please know that you have my genuine and experience-informed sympathy. You also have my respect. I hope you’ll take some of my hope as well.

When I first meet with people, they are entirely and understandably overwhelmed. They don’t know how to go forward. They don’t know what they should do or how to do it. Often, in addition to the practical and emotional upheaval they’re facing, serious financial worries threaten them. Finally, they’re struggling with ethical questions: How could this have happened? Who’s responsible? What can and should I do about it?

My advice to them and you is always the same: do what you need to do to take care of yourself and your family. If you want to stand up to those responsible, you don’t have to do anything about it right now. That’s what I’m there for. I have a team of investigators and experts ready to determine what happened, which system failed, and where the blame belongs. The process can begin operating in the background while their thoughts, focus, and whatever energy they have left can go to taking care of themselves and their family. I promise that I’ll take care of who did this. Then, I tell them a story of someone I’ve worked with who faced something similar.

I tell these stories for several reasons: because thinking about something else, even for a few minutes, is a kind of respite; because I’ve seen how people take inspiration and hope from hearing about someone who faced something equally unthinkable and came out the other side; and because from the distance of time or another person’s life, it’s easier to see that there is, in fact, a story.

They are living a story that’s unique to them but also universal to everyone who’s survived tragedy. They are at the beginning of a journey no one has ever wanted to take, and it helps them to know that it will have a middle and, eventually, an end—even if the effects of it last the rest of their lives.

Sadly, I’ve had enough experience that I’ve seen one that’s similar no matter what their situation. Because I’m not there to tailor a story for you, I’ve grouped the nine I’ve collected for this book into two sections—wrongful death and catastrophic injury. Here, I’ll provide a few details to help you select the one that’s closest to your situation.

• Chapter 1: The death of a seventy-two-year-old man who would not have died trying to stop the sexual assault of his seventy-year-old wife had the owners of their building provided the exterior lighting and security they’d promised.
• Chapter 2: The death of a twenty-seven-year-old man killed by a tire thrown from a company’s inadequately maintained truck.
• Chapter 3: The death of a six-year-old child run over by a utility company repair truck.
• Chapter 4: The death of a thirty-nine-year-old husband and father caused by his workplace’s refusal to install an inexpensive piece of safety equipment.
• Chapter 5: The death of an eighty-year-old nursing home patient from infected bedsores.
• Chapter 6: A delivery driver who lost his leg when his company-owned box truck rear-ended another truck on the highway.
• Chapter 7: A man left paralyzed from the neck down when an improperly affixed toilet seat shot out from under him.
• Chapter 8: The traumatic brain injury suffered by a woman whose bicycle hit a broken speed bump.
• Chapter 9: A young man living with chronic pain after falling down an elevator shaft.

These are all true stories of people I worked with over the years in which they survived, recovered, found meaning, and built new lives. I’ve changed identifying details to protect their privacy, but they’re “real life” enough, I trust, to offer you some hope and provide a bit of a roadmap for the journey you’ve been forced onto. If you’re reading this book for inspiration, I suggest finding the story most similar to yours and starting there. If you’re reading to get a broader picture of how these stories develop as legal cases and move through the process of litigation,1 you can read the book sequentially to follow the larger story.

My part in this story starts, as most people’s stories do, with my parents. My mom and dad were both extraordinary people. Mom lost her mother when she was just seventeen, but she didn’t let it stop her. She went to college, where she met my dad and didn’t slow down when she had kids.

I was one of three boys and remember tagging along (and later being dragged) to her bowling league and to rehearsals for pretty much any musical you can think of because our babysitters rarely came back for a second engagement. We were a lot to handle. But Mom managed us and made it look easy. She was tough, but she was also incredibly loving to us and, I found out later, to many, many others.

I’ve never been to a bigger funeral or heard so many stories of small, impactful kindnesses. Hearing how many lives she touched inspired the family to set up a charity in her name: the Diane Finkelstein Fund for Families in Crisis. Like Mom, it gives money to people who need a little help to get through a tough time in their lives. We’ve covered everything from car repairs to a month’s rent (and all proceeds from the sale of this book will go to further its work).

Dad outlived my mother by twenty-five years. Happily, I didn’t have to wait until his funeral to see the impact he had on people’s lives. I still remember the day it hit home for me. It was the first time he let me sit “up front” in his car.

Every year, he took me to the spring carnival at a high school thirty miles away, and every year, I lobbied to sit in the front seat. The carnival was a fundraiser, and his refusal was as predictable as the nice couple—a teacher and her husband—who found Dad at some point while we were there. They would come up to us by the Ferris wheel or at the popcorn stand and talk to Dad for a while.

Usually, I got bored and wandered around nearby. When Dad caught up with me again, there were always tears in his eyes. I didn’t think that much about it. It was just one of those things that happened at the carnival, like paying for everything with long strings of red tickets. Besides, it wasn’t that unusual. For as long as I can remember, people have approached my dad in restaurants or at the gas station to shake his hand. They always talked in low voices that carried the kind of suppressed adult emotion that embarrasses kids.

That year, I remember thinking I was too grown-up for rinky-dink fairs. Dad was talking to the couple I only knew as “Jennifer’s parents.” (I only knew that because the whole Saturday was called the Jennifer’s Day Fair.) I had drifted off to watch the kiddie coaster—a rickety track that unfolded from the back of a trailer—when I spotted an older kid standing there doing the same thing. Every go-round, he’d wave at his little sister squealing in one of the little cars. I strolled over. “Pretty dumb, right?” I suggested.

The kid didn’t even turn his head to look at me. “What do you know?” he said in the way only teenagers can dismiss younger kids.

“I just get...