Lawsuit Website Divides Legal Community

A heavily bandaged man lies in a hospital bed while a sexy nurse tends to him. The man glances around the hospital room through bandaged eyes, spotting the nurse and asking her that all-important question.

“Who can I sue?”

The nurse refers him to www.whocanisue.com, a South Florida-based website, where the man finds a lawyer, files a lawsuit and winds up with a convertible Mercedes Benz as well as the nurse – who has traded her nurse uniform for a sexy short dress.

Although the television ad is not anymore risqué than your average Go Daddy commercial, it has still raised the ire of some in Florida’s legal community.

But not those lawyers who are advertising on the site.

"I'm getting probably twice as many phone calls," Martin Saenz, a Miami labor and employment lawyer who has been advertising on the site for just more than a month, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.

But critics say whocanisue and other online referral services degrade the legal profession and often steer the public to lawyers who operate under a business model of "bring in as many cases as you can and settle them."

The website, which is run out of Boca Raton and launched in October 2008, is not the first time unconventional methods have been used to attract clients.

In 2007, a Chicago law firm came up with the slogan “Life is Short. Get a Divorce,” which is posted on billboards throughout the city, to much controversy and success.

In fact, the slogan became so popular that the firm, Fetman, Garland & Associates, created a website to sell t-shirts.

However, earlier this year, a Chicago alderman had one of their signs torn down under a technicality. The firm apparently did not have the proper permit for the sign.

But so far, critics have not found a pretext to remove the Who Can I Sue website despite the fact that they also use billboards to advertise the site. Considering they are lawyers, don't be surprised if they eventually do.

Gary Lesser, managing partner of a 10-lawyer firm started by his grandfather as well as vice chairman of the Florida Bar’s advertising committee, which oversees lawyer advertising, calls the site “egregious.”

“There are real people who are hurt, who need lawyers," he said. "Whocanisue.com is part of an emerging trend. They are not a law firm, but a referral agency."

F. Gregory Barnhart a senior partner at Searcy Denney Scarola Barnhart & Shipley in West Palm Beach calls the site a “disgrace” because they are targeting people looking to make money off whiplash cases.

But those are the type of clients that a personal-injury lawyer would seek, so it made sense to Mitch Polay of Fort Lauderdale, who says his phone hasn’t stopped ringing in the month he’s been using the site.

Whocanisue was launched in October 2008 by Curtis Wolfe, 46, a former in-house counsel at a large Miami firm.

“We wanted to provoke people,” he said. “Most lawyer advertising is unremarkable and not memorable. I would sit at home and see these ads asking if you're injured blah, blah, blah. There was no branding involved. We have a brand."
 

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