What kind of cases does your firm take?
Our firm is a consumer protection firm, meaning we sue businesses who hurt or defraud regular people. Some examples include a bank ignoring your dispute of a transaction, a car dealer selling you a lemon, or a solar company lying to you when selling panels for your house. We also take on civil rights cases, which means when someone has had one of their constitutional rights violated. An example of that would be a police brutality case.
We’ve taken cases outside these areas when the damages are high, such as personal injury or wrongful death.
What kind of results have you gotten?
We can’t disclose many of our settlements, but we have a number of public awards or settlements. Some examples are:
- $695,000 arbitration award for wrongful refusal to investigate disputed bank charges
- $51,000 arbitration award for solar fraud victim
- $7.5 million class action settlements for skin cream fraud victims
- $12.5 million class action settlement for diet pill fraud victims
- $5.5 million class action settlement for computer part mislabeling
We settle hundreds of cases a year. We can’t guarantee your results would be similar to any other lawsuit, and the amounts above are what were recovered, but are before attorney’s fees and costs. We also can’t predict what your settlement will be, but we fight hard for our clients, and you always have control over whether you want to settle your case or keep fighting.
What information do you need to know if you can take my case?
That can depend on what happened to you, and what kind of lawsuit you have. But our staff will work with you to get any documents we need to evaluate your claim. For example, if you are a consumer, usually you will have a contract with the company that we will want to review. You may have proof of your injury – for example, photos of damage to your home, or bank statements if there was a fraud on your account. It’s always helpful to gather all the documents, emails, texts, and other files related to your case. All of this might be evidence so it’s important to gather it all.
What should I look for when selecting a lawyer?
There are lots of things that are important in a good lawyer – first and foremost, being honest and caring about your clients. We hire attorneys who have a passion about helping people. Often, they come from much bigger law firms where they used to work for giant companies. Our attorneys come here because it’s more fulfilling to help regular people who need it.
Experience and results matter, too. We’re one of the most experienced consumer law firms out there, and we’ve pioneered use of the federal racketeering laws to take down online scammers. We’ve obtained tens of millions of dollars in settlements.
Our firm was founded by two lawyers who met on their college debate team, and the ability to stand up in court before a jury is a big part of what we develop in our lawyers. Lawyers from our firm focus on learning these skills, often going to lawyer “boot camps” to practice trials before mock juries.
What is the difference between court and arbitration?
In the kind of cases we take, many people have signed what’s called an arbitration agreement without even knowing it. Any time you click on a website saying you agree to their terms, there probably was one of them buried in there somewhere.
Arbitration is a private, mini-lawsuit before an attorney who’s been appointed to act like the judge of the case. That person is called the arbitrator. Usually arbitrators are either attorneys or retired judges. Arbitration has some benefits: it’s faster and cheaper. But it also means you don’t get your right to go in front of a jury and you lose your automatic right to appeal.
For a long time consumer firms wouldn’t even do arbitrations. They thought they couldn’t win without a jury. We were one of the few law firms to ignore that “wisdom” and actually start taking the cases in front of the arbitrators. We’ve won many arbitrations and settled many more.
What is the difference between mediation and arbitration?
If you have a lawsuit, you may do something called a mediation. This is when a lawyer, called the mediator, tries to work out a settlement between both sides. The difference is a mediator isn’t actually ruling on your case. They can only talk to you about it. If you don’t want to settle, you don’t have to. Mediations are often very helpful in settling cases because both sides have someone neutral to talk to. They’re either done in person where you sit in different rooms, or on Zoom where the mediator goes back and forth between the sides. Arbitration is when you have someone actually decide a winner and loser in the case.
How long will my case take?
There’s no way to know, but you should be ready for any lawsuit to take years sometimes. We’ve had some cases settle quickly, but more often it’s at least a year to go through the full process, even if you’re in arbitration.
How soon should I contact a lawyer?
It’s always better to contact us sooner rather than later. For some kinds of claims (like bank disputes) the statute of limitations may only be one year. And if the statute of limitations runs out, you can’t file your case. It’s usually a good idea to try to work out any disputes with the company first – most people don’t call us unless the company has treated them badly for a while. But don’t wait months and months, because you could be risking your claim.
Are there any claims that are “too small” for your firm to take?
No – we have taken claims as low as $100, or even less. How can we do that? Because for many kinds of lawsuits, and especially consumer cases, there are laws saying that if you win as the consumer, the business has to pay your attorney’s fees. So even if your claim is very small, if you think it’s important enough to sue over, we might be able to take it.
Now, most people don’t want to sue over $100, because it isn’t worth their own time. But sometimes the business is doing something wrong to lots of other people, too, and filing the lawsuit can get a court order to stop them from doing it to everyone else. One example of cases we took with very small damages were pet products that had complaints about injuring pets. The law unfortunately didn’t allow much in damages for that. But our clients thought it was important to stop, and so did we.
Can I bring my own case without hiring a lawyer?
Yes, but your odds of winning are much lower. And if you win, you then have to figure out how to use the legal system to collect the money. It’s generally a very good idea to have a lawyer. We can handle all the complex legal rules. And another good reason is that companies don’t pay as much to people who don’t have lawyers. They know we can win, and insurance companies know how much they’ve had to pay us before. And that track record helps you get more money, too.
What separates Kneupper & Covey from other law firms?
We do this because we like to. We could probably be making more money working for big corporations. Many of our attorneys used to do that. But it’s more fulfilling to help people, and to know that what you’re doing every day matters to those people. Our firm was founded by two former competitive debaters, who used to spend their summers in high school preparing for debate tournaments for fun. Nobody was paying us to – we did it because we loved it. We became lawyers because we think that’s fun, too. And that passion means we fight hard to win your case.