ATTORNEY JANE LEGER – GETTING SO MUCH MORE
The Ferguson Law Firm fights to ensure our clients get every medical option available so they can try to have a normal life after their injury. Attorney Jane Leger recalls a case where her client was burned so bad, he lost the ability to use his hands and would need additional surgeries. The insurance company did not want to pay for surgeries that the doctors recommended would improve her client’s quality of life. Jane fought the insurance company to get them to pay for every surgery to get her client the best quality of life possible after his injury.
When I first met clay, he had been in the burn unit for about eight or nine months, a long time. And he was just kind of at that in between, that limbo, where he was so happy to be out of the hospital and away from the doctors. But we knew that there were medical professionals and medical care that could make his life better.
And I remember sitting down with the director of a burn unit that we were gonna hire to help us do a life care plan for Clay. And one of the things that the defendant kept saying
about some of the surgeries.
We knew that Clay had enough of a thumb left that if it could be extended, we could give him opposable grasp. Not anything like the hand he had lost, but at least give him the ability to pick up things, his cell phone, chapstick that he needed to apply to his lips.
And the defendants were fighting those types of surgeries saying that they weren’t medically necessary. In other words, they only wanted to pay for surgeries that were life saving or limb saving, but they did not want to pay for surgeries that would make Clay’s quality of life better. And we fought for those.
And the director of the Joseph M Still burn unit, when I asked him, you know, what do you think about this position that this insurance company has taken? That we shouldn’t have to pay for this surgery because it’s not medically necessary? And he said, I think that’s ridiculous.
And I said, if your brother had been burned, like Clay had been burned, do you think the surgeries would give him a quality of life? And he said, these would just be a start. I would want my brother to have this and so much more. And I said, well, give us the “so much more”.
That’s what we want for our clients. We want them to have every available option to get back to absolute as good as they could get.