Attorney Ben Schwartz talks about a workers’ comp claim loan and predatory lenders in the Shivani case.

I am attorney Ben Schwartz,

Today we’re going to do a quick video about lawsuit loans. A case came out of the industrial accident board just last week and I’m very excited about it. The case is called Shivani Inc. versus Global Financial Credit LLC. We’re gonna link to it in the show notes so you can read it for yourself if you like.

Essentially this is a case where a woman made a workers’ comp claim. She took a lawsuit loan that was supposed to be repaid from the proceeds of that workers’ comp claim if she won or settled it. The industrial accident board said that it doesn’t fly in Delaware. You can’t assign your right to receive benefits to some lawsuit lenders. So I just want to take a minute to do this quick video and let people know about this, let attorneys in the area know about it; let consumers know about it.

If you have a pending workers’ comp claim, you know this is something you aught to know about as well. But, just to talk about it and get the information out there and get people thinking about this. I’ve done a good number of videos over the last couple or a few years about predatory lending and lawsuit loans. It is something that we see in my legal practice. You know where we’re representing someone who is legitimately injured in an accident whether it’s an on-the-job accident or a car accident or a slip-and-fall or something else and the clients will often come to us and say, “I need money. I’m going to get a lawsuit loan, will you help me fill out the paperwork?”

We tell them this is just a terrible idea (and) these are predatory lenders and the amount of interest that they charge is astronomical. In this particular case, this lady got a $1,000 loan. By the time she would have paid it back, it would have been almost $4,000. So, I just think that people don’t understand the nature of these lawsuit loans. People don’t understand concepts like interest and figuring out what the actual interest is on a loan like this.

You know, I just think if you’re an attorney, you have an obligation to your clients to warn them about these types of predatory lenders who prey on accident victims. If you’re a consumer, you should know about this just to keep yourself safe because this can truly harm you and it can harm your case as well.

I’m attorney Ben Schwartz, check out the decision in the show notes below. You can read it in PDF format there. We will link to it. If you have a question, leave us a comment and we can take up your question in a future video. Thanks for watching!

Shivani Inc. v. Global Financial, No. 1442616 (Del. I.A.B. Sept. 6, 2018)