“Preparing wrongful death claims and securing their payment requires creativity,” Beaumont attorneys Mitchell Toups and Richard Coffman assert on their website.
Toups and Coffman have demonstrated their creativity by soliciting the surviving family members of alleged COVID-19 fatalities and encouraging them to target Texas business owners who kept their enterprises open, instead of the state and local bureaucrats responsible for the “official” overreaction that led to fatalities.
Toups and Coffman just can’t help themselves. They insist they’re trying to help, but they make matters worse instead, and their “creativity” looks more like clumsiness or a failure to think things through.
Toups and Coffman have also demonstrated their creative approach to the exploitation of unfortunate deaths by jumping on the opioid lawsuit bandwagon and snuggling in with the other lawyers who’ve signed contingency contracts with county officials to hold drug companies accountable for the failure of those county officials to do their jobs properly.
Unfortunately for Toups and Coffman, “preparing wrongful death claims and securing their payment” requires more than just creativity. It also requires attention to detail, and a legitimate contract with the county you’re purporting to represent.
Prior to the passage of House Bill 2826, Texas law required local governments to secure the approval of the state comptroller for contingency-fee contracts. Approval for such contracts must now be obtained from the state attorney general. Some of the more than 100 Texas counties that had negotiated contracts for opioid litigation failed to have those contracts approved by the comptroller before authority passed to the AG.
At least 19 Texas counties dropped the ball, neglecting to get the comptroller’s approval for their opioid contracts before that authority transferred to the attorney general, thus rendering those contracts null and void.
Toups and Coffman signed a contingent opioid lawsuit contract with Jefferson County last May, but apparently did not have it submitted to the AG for approval.
Maybe they should forget about creativity and just try to be adequate.