Whose Fault Is It Anyway?
The journey of entrepreneurship is akin to finding your way through a jungle with a poorly drawn map. Navigating all the obstacles can be terrifying, but thankfully, the many entrepreneurial odysseys that came before us offer great opportunities to learn. Evan Williams, co-founder of Blogger and Twitter, went on a wild journey himself while finding his way out of the metaphorical jungle and into success. Williams began his career running irrigation for his family farm in Nebraska. After only a year and a half of working for tech startups in Florida and Texas, he found his way back to the farm but didn’t give up. He persevered, moving to California and eventually working with Meg Hourihan, pioneer of online blogging and fellow internet entrepreneur, to co-found Pyra Labs in 1999. Together at Pyra, they developed Blogger, a journaling platform that became the launch pad for Williams’ entrepreneurial prosperity. Unfortunately, after venture capital and company resources were depleted, Pyra Labs’ employees, including Hourihan, quit en masse, and Williams forged on alone to keep Blogger afloat. In 2003, Google acquired Blogger, which is successful to this day and credited as one of the first blogging sites. Fun fact: Williams also coined the term “blogger”! After Blogger’s acquisition, Williams’ new startup, Odeo, was poised to be a premiere platform for podcasts and podcasting software. However, due to a laundry list of problems, including a lack of vision and the rise of Apple, Odeo experienced a less-than-stellar launch and simply could not compete with iTunes, a platform already holding a major foothold in the podcasting community. At that point, Williams turned his attention to another side project under Odeo’s umbrella: Twitter. Learning from their abysmal launch, the team focused on making a social networking service. With this singular focus, Twitter’s popularity exploded and garnered attention from entrepreneurs and consumers everywhere. Today, Twitter is the sixth most visited website in the world and boasts 330 million active users. In the third quarter of 2019, Twitter’s revenue amounted to $823.7 million. Evan Williams’ journey to success is one for the ages, and it’s a lesson every entrepreneur can learn from while trying to find the one opportunity that will launch them into the big leagues. If you’re interested in learning more about Williams’ path to entrepreneurial glory, check out the bestselling biography “Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal” by Nick Bilton. TWITTER ME THIS The Storied History of Evan Williams’ Journey to Success
Representing a Client Hurt by Her Own Car
What happens if you’re a passenger in your own car and the driver causes an accident? Can you make a claim against your own insurance company? What if the driver lost control because of a known medical condition? Can the passenger be held negligent for getting in the car with a driver with a known medical condition? These are all questions that came up in a single case our firm took on. Our client was a passenger in her own car, which was driven by her son. The son lost control of the vehicle and struck a portion of a building. Our client suffered a traumatic amputation of most of her thumb on her nondominant hand. At the scene, witnesses reported that our client’s son had suffered a seizure. We made a claim against our client’s $500,000 insurance policy, arguing our client was injured as a result of the negligent operation of her own vehicle by her son. The insurance company defended, arguing there is no negligence for a medical emergency, and even if the driver was negligent, our client was negligent for allowing her son to drive with a known medical condition. In the course of the lawsuit, our client’s son denied he suffered from a seizure and claimed he had no history of seizures. He did previously suffer concussions and had been treated with seizure medication. When we demanded the defense provide us with access to our client’s son’s medical records, they resisted. They eventually withdrew their defenses that a known seizure disorder caused the accident and that our client was negligent for allowing her son to dive. The insurance company offered $200,000 to settle. We advised our client to reject the settlement offer and proceed to arbitration. She agreed with our advice. As a result of the arguments presented by firm partner Roger L. Simon at the arbitration, our firm won an award of $450,000.00 for our client — 2.5 times the amount the insurance company had tried to settle at with their very own insured. Cases like this illustrate how the question of fault can be a complicated one to answer. But with the diligence to hold the insurance company accountable and a dogged pursuit of the facts, an experienced legal team can make all the difference. Before taking a settlement on what looks like a complex case, consult an attorney you trust.
2
FRIEDMANSIMON.COM
Published by The Newsletter Pro • www.TheNewsletterPro.com
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online