Last year there was an oil spill in the subdivision next to ours. Six months later my husband starting having recurrences of his Crohn's disease. He had not had an episode in years until this and now we have made 3-4 trips to the ER and those were just the occurrences we couldn't stop at home. Since this started I have spent countless hours looking for a reason why this would begin so suddenly and with no end in sight. The only thing that has changed is this oil spill and after doing some research I believe this may be the cause. Unfortunately because of the way Crohns works it is impossible to point to a specific reason for his recurrence. We are however in the process of seeing a specialist so nothing will be done until after we see him and rule out as many other factors as possible.
We spoke to an attorney today who is handling the class action lawsuit and it is his belief that we have a claim. He would like to add us to the lawsuit however I have some concerns.
1. He has stated that he will take the case on a contingency basis with his fee being 1/3 of whatever is received. Is this average rate for this type of case?
2. We have gone through all of our savings at this point and the case is not scheduled to go to court for over a year. Would we be better off to approach the oil company ourselves? I'm just not sure we can wait.
3. If we approach them what sort of settlement should we request?
We spoke to an attorney today who is handling the class action lawsuit and it is his belief that we have a claim. He would like to add us to the lawsuit however I have some concerns.
1. He has stated that he will take the case on a contingency basis with his fee being 1/3 of whatever is received. Is this average rate for this type of case?
2. We have gone through all of our savings at this point and the case is not scheduled to go to court for over a year. Would we be better off to approach the oil company ourselves? I'm just not sure we can wait.
3. If we approach them what sort of settlement should we request?
