Fraud/Deceptive Practices

Insurance companies will lie, banks will cheat, mortgage companies will steal, finance companies will engage in deceptive practices, car dealerships will swindle. The victims are most often innocent citizens who place their trust and their funds with companies based on promises that never will come true. Alabama law provides several remedies for those victimized by fraudulent or deceptive practices.

 

King Simmons, PC, has sued a vast number of large and small businesses and corporations for defrauding honest consumers. The lawyers at the firm have also worked hard in avoiding the arbitration clauses with which dishonest businesses have tried to protect themselves.

 

Punitive damages are recoverable in fraud and deceit lawsuits in Alabama and can serve as a powerful deterrent to dishonest companies. Victims of dishonest practices can also recover what the companies wrongfully took, and for the emotional distress that so often accompanies being cheated out of hard-earned money. To that end, the firm’s lawyers have settled several cases without the necessity of trial where dishonest companies have paid several hundred thousand dollars.

 

In 2007, the firm took to trial a mortgage company from another state that had cheated our clients on a mortgage deal. Following a trial in Chilton County, the jury agreed with our clients’ position, and awarded $415,000 — including a vast but deserved amount representing for punitive damages.

 

The lawyers at King Simmons, PC have handled thousands of workers’ compensation claims, involving virtually every type of injury or condition imaginable – from broken backs to myofascial pain syndrome to reflex sympathetic dystrophy to torn knee ligaments to ruptured or bulging discs.

 

Injured workers have a variety of complex rights available, involving medical treatment, vocational retraining, job protection, and cash payments for disabilities. Most cases involving workers’ compensation are settled, usually in such a way that results in lump sum cash payments to the injured workers.

 

Railroad employees, unlike most other classes of workers, are permitted a jury trial when injured on the job. In late 2005, the firm represented an engineer injured on the job when a boxcar was accidentally directed onto the track where he was aboard his locomotive; he suffered a ruptured disc in low back and was not able to return to work. After a week-long trial, a Jefferson County jury returned a $720,000 verdict to compensate the engineer for the losses that resulted from his injury. The railroad’s motion for a new trial was denied.