EP #5 | Griff Tonkin With The Intersection of Law and Finance: Full Video and Transcription
In this engaging conversation, Chris Hall interviews attorney Griff Tonkin, who shares his journey from aspiring astronaut to personal injury lawyer. They discuss the importance of proper insurance coverage, the impact of distracted driving, and the intersection of legal and financial planning. Griff emphasizes the need for liability insurance and the role of personal injury attorneys in protecting clients’ rights. The discussion also touches on the significance of aptitude testing in career choices and the consequences of legal actions on individuals and families.
To find out more about Griff Tonkin, visit his website at https://www.atlawoffices.com/.
Transcription
Griff Tonkin:Every person who comes into my office is a is a real person with a real issue, and I get to be, you know, sort of hand in hand with them. And sometimes these are devastating issues where their lives will never be the same. And so to be trusted with that, to come up with a successful result for those people Right. Highly meaningful. It’s it’s completely changed, my level of what I do.
Griff Tonkin:I I liked what I did before. I love what I do now.
Chris Hall:That’s awesome. Yeah. Hello. This is Chris Hall with Redding Financial Advisors, and I have another special guest for my podcast today, Griff Tonkin. He’s an attorney here in town, and we’ve been friends for quite some time now.
Chris Hall:And, I really am excited to interview him and ask him all about the legal world of what he does in insurance and financials and how you can protect yourself, etcetera. So without further ado, here’s Griff Tonkin. Thank you so much for being here.
Griff Tonkin:Hey. Thanks for having me. It’s an exciting opportunity to get down to, do my first podcast and also do it with a friend.
Chris Hall:Awesome. I’m glad to have you. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:It’s good to be here.
Chris Hall:So, for everybody out there, let’s go ahead and start from the basic stuff of, like, you know, what do you do here in town? You know, what do you do for fun? You know, where’d you come from, etcetera?
Griff Tonkin:Sure. I guess we’ll keep it in chronological order. I’m a hometown kid. Grew up in a mobile home out near Shasta Dam. Went out to Buckeye Elementary School, Buckeye Middle School, and then I graduated Central Valley High School.
Griff Tonkin:I like to make a joke, poke fun at my my beginnings. You know, I’m one of a handful of people that can read, who graduated Central Valley High School. I had dreams of being a baseball player like every 10 12 year old. It turns out I’m not very athletic. So that that dream went away pretty quick, but school, we’re kinda all good at school.
Griff Tonkin:So I went on to college and then law school. Had no intention after UC Davis and McGeorge School of of coming back here to my hometown. I wasn’t one of those kids that, you know, wanted to put it in the rearview mirror. It just didn’t think there was an opportunity here for me. Couldn’t see the board at school, in law school, so I had to get glasses.
Griff Tonkin:So I was home here visiting my folks. My dad took me to buy some glasses, and the girl who was dispensing the glasses to me was very cute, very much out of my league, but I got her phone number, and, we got married, and that was 5 kids in 22 years ago.
Chris Hall:Oh my gosh. That’s awesome. I hope so that’s story.
Griff Tonkin:That’s what brought me back here, to Redding. That was a you know, you’re a financial guy. So this is, you know, interesting financial crossover there. I’d had a job offers. They they hire you if you’re doing well in school.
Griff Tonkin:At least at this time in the legal economy, they hire you between your 2nd 3rd year. So I had taken a job in the city, and it was a $71,000 a year pay cut to come back to Redding, and that was in $2003. So it was significant. And, it was the best financial decision I ever made because I I got the girl and I I got the kids, and it’s That’s awesome. Been amazing.
Chris Hall:Now McGeorge is at UCLA?
Griff Tonkin:McGeorge is University of Pacific.
Chris Hall:Okay. University of Pacific. And that’s what? Stockton?
Griff Tonkin:The main campus is in Stockton. They have a dental school in San Francisco and a law school at the state capitol. Their real connection to the legal world or one of their special connections to legal world is that they have, access to the state capitol. They do a lot of capital studies, California legislative studies there at the campus, and then they’re also a big trial advocacy school, which is, you know, trial attorneys, and that’s actually what I do.
Chris Hall:Okay. I’m a
Griff Tonkin:trial attorney here.
Chris Hall:Were you, were you gonna be a trial attorney in Sacramento then? Is that where your job offer was?
Griff Tonkin:I had job offers in San Francisco and in Sacramento. The one I’d accepted was in Sacramento.
Chris Hall:Okay. So Alright. And were you also gonna be a trial attorney there as well?
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Turns out I’ve kinda been a pain in the butt my whole life, so I was just gonna kinda go with it. I think trial attorneys are all good at being a pain in the butt and if they can direct that skill set well. So that was my plan was to do that. And the same line of work that I end up doing here in Reading, but there’s a certain economy of scale, and they have national firms with offices in Sacramento and Bay Area that can offer increased wages, versus the firm I came back to work for here when I first came back to Reading.
Chris Hall:Right. If you wanna be a nice person, you can go do a state at the state law or something?
Griff Tonkin:You know, all the colleagues I have in Redding that, that do estate planning, they really are wonderful, ladies and gentlemen. So you might you might be right about that. Yeah. Yeah.
Chris Hall:That’s awesome. So I little known fact, I also went to, the the Central Valley area k through 8 as well.
Griff Tonkin:Oh, okay.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So I went to Project City
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:Then Deer Creek, then CBI.
Griff Tonkin:K.
Chris Hall:And then I then I went to Nova, which that doesn’t exist anymore. Of course, people it’s really funny because people are like, what’s that? And, so Nova was a 9th grade school for Central Valley Shasta Enterprise Kids. I went there. It turns out pretty much all my friends ended up going to Shasta, so I went to Shasta.
Griff Tonkin:That’s where
Chris Hall:I went to high school. But yeah. So it’s nice couple of CV kids. I like that.
Griff Tonkin:We’re probably there’s a there’s a well known personal injury attorney in Sacramento, wonderful guy, talented lawyer, Chris Wood. You, I, and Chris Wood are the only people who can find Project City on a map because he’s from he’s from this area as well.
Chris Hall:I don’t think they call I mean, they definitely don’t call it that anymore, and I know that the Project City School itself, they renamed that years years ago. So
Griff Tonkin:I think they even renamed CDI. I think you’re right. And all the schools I went to, I think Buckeyes is now Buckeye School of the Arts or something. Yeah. A lot of different names out there.
Chris Hall:Yeah. My niece and nephew go to Rocky Point, which is like a charter school.
Griff Tonkin:That was the junior high.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Yes. It’s a lot of changes out there.
Griff Tonkin:So that’s good. That’s pretty good.
Chris Hall:For sure. So what interested you in law? So were you in college when you decided you wanna be a lawyer? Did you go to college to then go to law school? Did you know you were gonna be a lawyer?
Griff Tonkin:No. I didn’t know I was gonna be a lawyer. So earliest memories of people telling me, oh, you should be a lawyer, probably are contemporaneous with my earliest memories, period. I mean, I can remember 5th and 6th grade teachers telling me you should be a lawyer, you should be a lawyer. Think, again, because it’s kind of a natural pain in the butt.
Griff Tonkin:I like to argue. Take a no for an answer was not something that was natural to me. You could pray for my wife, because I don’t know if that’s necessarily changed a lot over time, but I didn’t wanna be a lawyer. I wanted to be an astronaut. Legitimately, I wanted to be an astronaut.
Griff Tonkin:So I started down the road of, Navy ROTC applications because I wanted to be a fighter pilot because that and and beyond that, a carrier qualified fighter pilot because that was the best way to get into the astronaut corps at that time. It turns out I’m not particularly good at math, and an aeronautical engineering major was exceptionally difficult. Okay. So after about a year, you know, reality set in and, I transitioned then to kinda what I was naturally, gifted at, which was, you know, the social sciences, politics, history, and argumentation. So that’s what led me to law school then.
Chris Hall:I wish that they would do more aptitude type tests instead of, like, just an SAT, like, how good are you at taking tests? It would be nice if they would say, hey. What are you good at? What are your skill sets? And and have counselors maybe even weigh in, teachers weigh in on that.
Chris Hall:And I’ll and I’ll say because for me, I went to college. I went to Shasta College for the 1st 2 years, and I wanted to be a nuclear medical doctor. Like, I wanted to work on that. That’s just what was in my brain as to what I wanted to do. And same thing, 1st year of college, I’m taking chemistry and biology and math and all that there calculus 2 and all that stuff.
Chris Hall:And I’m like, I did not wanna do this for 12 years.
Griff Tonkin:Right. Right.
Chris Hall:Yeah. And so so I, you know, I I I kinda pivoted and went with a business major. Spent most of my adult life, in business, sales, marketing, was a pharmaceutical rep for a lot of that. But then, you know, then I found out about being a financial adviser kinda like as a fluke. And it’s actually what I was made to do.
Chris Hall:Like, when I was 12 years old, I was taking my tip money from busing tables and buying troy ounces of silver. Right.
Griff Tonkin:So,
Chris Hall:like, when I was 16, I was trading Walmart stock. I mean, it’s just it’s something that I was always interested in. I had no idea you could do it for a living when I was 20, 22 years old. Right. I thought you had to go to, like, USD School Wharton if you wanted to be a financial adviser.
Chris Hall:So yeah. So it’s I wish they would have more of that because you mean, it sounds like you didn’t waste any time, but in the same respect, it would have been nice to go, hey. If you wanna do that, you have to have this kind of aptitude.
Griff Tonkin:Right. And you’re I think the world is connect is finally catching up rather because my my son who’s now a freshman in college and he’s army ROTC cadet simultaneously, we took him through a great program that’s available to every kid here in the North State through college and career options where they do exactly the type of testing that you’re talking about because it turns out kids who do what they think they want to do don’t fare as well as kids who do what they want to do and that it overlaps with their aptitudes. Right?
Chris Hall:Skill sets.
Griff Tonkin:You know? You can wanna be a carrier qualified fighter pilot all you want, but if you’re not a talented aeronautical engineer or mechanical engineer, that’s just not in the cards for you. That wasn’t, you know so so I had all the desire in the world. I just didn’t have the natural aptitude for it and that testing wonderful stuff that they have at College and Career Options. I didn’t come here to pitch them or anything like that, but it’s just something
Chris Hall:that We’re here to give information. That’s great information.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. We experienced that as a family in this last year, and it’s made all the difference for my son who, all of his aptitudes were sort of people centered. Right? Oh, he should be a, you know, a counselor, a psychologist, a physician because it turns out that those are the things that matter to him and those were his aptitudes are. So he’s a pre med major right now, and it’s hard.
Griff Tonkin:He’ll tell you it’s really hard, but he’s grinding out and he loves it.
Chris Hall:I love that. That’s so cool. Yeah. That college it’s a college connect. Is that what they call it?
Griff Tonkin:No. That’s that’s a different program. This is college and career options. It’s a nonprofit and, the you know, Brad Williams helps parents with financial planning, and then, Dan is the guy that runs the testing part of it over there, but they’re really comprehensive. You just walk in as a as a family over there and you can get all the keys to the kingdom for higher education and and skill training.
Griff Tonkin:Right? Like, we have a huge vacuum of, of good blue collar skilled workers coming online that we we just don’t have. Right? These skillsets are leaving us.
Chris Hall:Right.
Griff Tonkin:And there’s great shovel ready, as they say, 6 figure jobs out there. And so college and career options is not just college options. It’s college and career.
Chris Hall:I love that.
Griff Tonkin:So it’s it’s anything, you know, that you could imagine, and, they can they can help you, you know, get pointed in the right direction as a family.
Chris Hall:Yeah. I like that. I deal with, you know obviously, families have 529 plans, for college or careers. You know, it used to be you have to have a 529 plan to help you, you know, offset the cost of college. But it was years ago now, but they’ve changed it to careers as well.
Griff Tonkin:Oh, that’s a good change.
Chris Hall:And I always encourage people, like, hey. Listen. College is not for everyone. If your kid likes to play in the dirt, if he like you know what I mean? He’s the kind of kid who doesn’t mind getting dirty.
Chris Hall:Exactly what you said. We’re talking 6 figure jobs pretty much right out of the gate because that industry, all of those hardworking people who are willing to get dirty, they are retiring. They are getting older, and there’s very few people to replace them. So that’s a really good point. I’m glad you brought that up.
Chris Hall:I
Griff Tonkin:know this is your podcast, so forgive me for redirecting, but I have a question about 529 plans that might be good for for everybody. So, like, what if you’re a guy like me? I’ve got kids of of all ages. You know, kids in their twenties, kids in their teens, and and then our youngest is is 7. So let’s pick on the 7 year old.
Griff Tonkin:I got a 529 plan for him. And as he’s approaching college, let’s say that, you know, college isn’t for him. He does an apprenticeship, and I don’t have to spend that money on his education or his career training. Can I use it for a grandkid? Because I got one of those now too, Chris.
Chris Hall:The answer is wow. Congratulations. Thanks. The answer is yes. So you can always move it downhill.
Chris Hall:So, like, in other words, the the oldest kid, if he doesn’t use it, can go to the next one or that or any of them below him. And then, you know, like, with your child, if, yeah, your youngest, if he doesn’t end up going to college, then you can definitely move it down to another kid. There’s also some information out there. I don’t have it at my fingertips, but it’s something that I’ve been working on. It’s actually something I’ve been studying.
Chris Hall:But there’s actually, like, a 529 to Roth conversion.
Griff Tonkin:Oh, okay.
Chris Hall:So you can take that money if they’re not gonna use it and move it into, like, a Roth IRA for that same kid. And then that way, they still get the tax savings, and it’s all after tax money. So why wouldn’t it be able to be converted? Okay. It’s it’s a it’s a little bit of a paperwork type of a thing, but it’s something that can be done.
Chris Hall:It’s important. So both of those are good options.
Griff Tonkin:So you’re telling me that there’s a highly regulated federal industry, and there’s paperwork involved, Chris?
Chris Hall:No way.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Right. Right. The government has paperwork. That’s crazy.
Griff Tonkin:So yeah. So alright.
Chris Hall:So how long have you been in your practice here?
Griff Tonkin:21 years practicing law. December actually of this year will be 21, so we’re getting real close to the 21st anniversary. Took the bar exam, passed the bar exam. You get licensed in, November or December, so that’s my anniversary date. And then I’ve practiced almost exclusively in the area of personal injury for that 21 years.
Griff Tonkin:The first, you know, half of that was almost exclusively on the defense side, which I know that some of the stuff we’re gonna cover today about asset protection and risk and those sorts of things. And so on the defense side, you know, I was tasked with protecting people or trying to resolve cases within insurance limits. I got in a real bad car accident a little over 10 years ago. Wasn’t treated particularly well by the insurance company in that situation, and so that shifted my practice focused representing folks who’ve been hurt. And, over time, you know, the percentage of defense cases by design was going down and the percentage of representative folks who’d been hurt, the personal injury side or the plaintiff side went up, and now we’re exclusively, plaintiff’s personal injury practice.
Griff Tonkin:And then the firm that I’m with, my business partner Ken Art Hoefer and I founded that, in May of 2009. So we’ve been little over 15 years, and then the last probably 5 of it’s been exclusively personal injury and then significantly personal injury before that.
Chris Hall:Now, is it still Artifer and Tonkin? Did you bring on you brought another partner on, but is still Artifer and Tonkin, or do you have a third name on there too?
Griff Tonkin:Nope. Just Artifer and Tonkin. Ken and I are the partners. We have had different associates over the years. We currently have an associate attorney now who does a great job for us, Carrie Williams, local family and so on.
Griff Tonkin:So, anyways, yep, Ken and I, and and we’re just that’s all we do is represent folks who’ve been hurt, and it’s actually meaningful. You know, I would say that if there was something missing from my career for the first half of it, I would say it was, the idea that you were making a a beneficial change. Right? Like, we all like to feel like we’re doing something good. Like, in in your in your field, you know, people come to you.
Griff Tonkin:There’s this giant monolithic problem of, like, retirement and finance and and how do we handle it, you know, and they need somebody like you to guide them through, you know, good stewardship of resources as they age and being able to be ready for retirement when it comes. There wasn’t that in the first half of my career. You know, if I won a case, I saved an insurance company some money. Now it wasn’t just the insurance company. I mean, I did represent actual people and and you built relationships and that could be meaningful, but not at the scale it is now.
Griff Tonkin:Every person who comes into my office is a is a real person with a real issue and I get to be, you know, sort of hand in hand with them. And sometimes these are devastating issues where their lives will never be the same and so to be trusted with that to come up with a successful result for those people, highly meaningful. It’s it’s completely changed, my level of what I do. I I liked what I did before. I love what I do now.
Chris Hall:That’s awesome. Yeah. I love that. And, like, is there a particular kind of personal injury that you deal with mostly as a car wrecks or or make accidents like that, or is it kind of, like, anything, to do with insurance where they’re not being, you know, treated well by the insurance? What’s your what’s your is you have a specialty?
Chris Hall:Or
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. I would say it it personal injury is the specialty. Car wrecks become a significant part of the practice because people get hurt in car wrecks so frequently. We’re all in cars. We’re all in cars regularly, so the opportunity to be injured in a car accident is much higher.
Griff Tonkin:But, you know, we’ve we’ve had aviation accident cases. We’ve had slip and falls, trip and falls, you know, things falling injuries, construction site injuries, all those sorts of things, work related injuries, not work comp, but sometimes there’s a crossover between both work comp and personal injury. We’ll we’ll partner with a good personal injury, or, excuse me, we’ll partner with a good work comp attorney in town to handle both phases of that case. So people get hurt in a myriad of ways. We handle it.
Griff Tonkin:There are occasional times where insurance companies are just flatly not living up to their obligations because because insurance is just a contract, and and a contract’s really an exchange of promises. So we pay our premiums faithfully, and the insurance company promises they’re gonna do things for us. If certain events occur and when they don’t, that can be a special area called bad faith. We’ll touch in bad faith from time to time, but, certainly, you know, car accidents are a large part of the practice. And I would say maybe I’d clarify not just car accidents, you know, buses, big rigs, any kind of motor vehicle, motorcycles, bikes, pedestrian accidents, we handle it all.
Griff Tonkin:Unfortunately, people really get get hurt terribly in a myriad of ways.
Chris Hall:Yeah. You know, I was a pharmaceutical rep for 10 years. And as a pharmaceutical rep, you know, I dealt with prior authorizations and things like that. We were we’re trying to get medicines covered for people. We were trying to get, you know, you know, hey.
Chris Hall:You need to go down and get this done, you know, this imaging or whatever. We try to get those things kinda covered for people. And, you know, it was always like, you know, they’re they’re the goal of insurance companies seems more like instead of protection, it’s more like deny, deny, deny. And then if you come back like a 4th time, maybe we’ll look at it. And so I can understand how if someone, you know, doesn’t have the skill set to manage themselves, you know, they need someone in their corner.
Chris Hall:They need somebody to go to these guys and go, hey. We’re serious, and this is serious, and you need to take it serious. So that to me is is really the value of having somebody in your corner, like, constantly, you know, working for you on that.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. For I I mean, this is this is probably a plug for some of my competitors. The personal interest space is a highly competitive space from
Chris Hall:a
Griff Tonkin:marketing standpoint, but there are other competent personal injury practitioners in our area and outside of our area, but I would you know, somebody’s hurt. They need they need to realize that, you you know, you wouldn’t do your own surgery. You’re gonna be best served for your financial future by having an excellent financial planner like yourself. You probably ought not to handle your own legal matter as well. Right?
Griff Tonkin:You would never take out your own appendix. I I think it was Lincoln, although I might be misquoting it, but, you know, very famous quote that the person who represents himself as a fool for a client, and that and that quote is true. So regardless of who you select as a personal injury attorney, select somebody competent. Right. Get somebody in your corner because this is very much a David and Goliath situation.
Griff Tonkin:If you don’t believe me, just look at the revenues for insurance companies. They’re always measured in the tens of 1,000,000,000 of dollars
Chris Hall:Right.
Griff Tonkin:Versus you. So you might as well have somebody who’s there ready to fight for you and and get you what’s fair. Right? We’re trying to put you back on track, and and that that can be a tall order from time to time.
Chris Hall:Yeah. I don’t think most people know this, but most insurance companies are also mutual companies. So they take the money that they get for premiums and they invest it in the mutual funds that they do have with all sorts of different tools that they use, securities, etcetera. And that’s like almost always you’ll see, like, Prudential. They’re an insurance company, but gosh darn it, they’re also a wealth management company.
Chris Hall:They’re also doing advising, things like that. And it’s because that’s those things are so tied together. But they you know, make no mistake, they’re there to grow their money. Right now, they’re there. They, you know, they anytime you have corporate stockholders in in the mix, that’s that’s who they care about.
Chris Hall:So I I always say, like, you know, like, you can not serve 2 masters. So if they have stockholders, you can almost be guaranteed that’s who they care about.
Griff Tonkin:And that and that’s their job and that’s their motivation, and you’re exactly right. And, you know, that’s why you need a good representative if you’ve been hurt like Ken, my business partner, or me or or you know, again, hate to give a plug for the other guys, but there’s other competitors that do a good job. If for some reason, you don’t like guys named Griff, there’s there’s other folks out there that
Chris Hall:For the sake of the podcast, there’s just you and Ken.
Griff Tonkin:I appreciate that. I appreciate that. But, yeah, you know, here’s a here’s a story about exactly what you’re talking about. So from time to time, certain cases resolve and part of the settlement is annuitized where the person who’s receiving the compensation is gonna get money over time. Well, an annuity is an insurance product.
Griff Tonkin:So I’ve had situations where the insurance company who’s paying the settlement is also willing to annuitize the settlement, so they get to make profit off the money that they’re paying you. You know what I mean? They’re they are profit driven corporations to the bottom line of their their shareholders, just what you said.
Chris Hall:So the as a financial adviser, that is something that I’m always interested in. Why would someone take an annuitized settlement versus, like, a cash settlement? What does that typically look like for them as a benefit?
Griff Tonkin:Okay. We’re gonna get a little bit on the weeds where it makes sense as a as a benefit, and then we can talk about some of the reasons that people do that that you may have a different view of of whether or not that’s the best stewardship of their money. Sure. Okay. So let’s say that you are a Medicare recipient.
Griff Tonkin:You’re involved in a personal injury matter. You receive a settlement. When money is being paid to you for injuries caused by a third party, Medicare doesn’t wanna pay for the treatment for those injuries. So sometimes you have to set up something called a Medicare set aside, which is where you take some of the money that you’re being, compensated with to pay for your future care so that Medicare isn’t paying those bills. It makes sense to annuitize that money because it costs you less upfront to fund that Medicare set aside.
Griff Tonkin:So if you had a, you know, whatever, a $30,000 set aside, you could buy an annuity and that’s an acceptable product to use under the Medicare scheme, and you might be able to buy that annuity for $15,000 because it’s gonna pay out over 20 years. So that’s where an annuity really makes sense because it maximizes dollars in your pocket today. Other times that people annuitize settlements, you know, historically, annuities had better rates of return in their very secure investments typically because if you buy your annuity from a, you know, an a plus rated insurance company, it’s not exactly FDIC insured, but it’s close to that level of security. So people wanted a highly secure investment, and the rates of inch interest used to be better. They’re returning a little bit in annuities as interest rates have gone up in the market.
Griff Tonkin:But, I think as a financial adviser, you might say that you could beat the rates of return that annuity provides in the market, but I’d I’d leave that to your expertise. And in fact, that’s what I’d advise a client is, hey. You know, annuities are an option, but you ought to talk to a pro like Chris about what to do with this to make this money last.
Chris Hall:They also have a structured settlement?
Griff Tonkin:Is that what Yeah. Structured settlement and annuity are are synonyms.
Chris Hall:Okay. Okay. Yeah. So, obviously, pros and cons from my standpoint is, like, you do have a guaranteed stream of income for the rest of your life, which in this case is sometimes that is their only income because they’ve been now, in some sort of, accident where they can no longer make income. So that is a beauty of that because so, you know, if you give somebody half a $1,000,000, they can run through it pretty fast unless they’re, you know, good stewards of their own money.
Chris Hall:And then the other thing that I look at with the annuity is, you know, there’s there’s typically, you know, what they what they call guarantees. Right? So, like, hey. We’re gonna give you this. You give us this much money.
Chris Hall:We’re gonna give you this much money back forever as long as you’re alive. And sometimes you can even, like, add in a spouse and say, hey. Listen. If I pass away, I still want the money to go to my spouse until she passes away. You know?
Chris Hall:So there’s some there’s some benefits to that in your in your situation specifically because, you know, there’s there’s probably loss of income. And typically speaking, annuities, we’re not allowed to, like, say this, but, like, it’s basically like a self funded pension. And so, so it’s like that, and so I understand why people would want that. As far as returns go, you pretty much can beat the returns of an annuity in almost every case if you just go in a nice, conservative sixty forty model over time, especially if you factor in fees because annuities typically have very high fees because they’re not just an investment, they’re an insurance policy.
Griff Tonkin:Right.
Chris Hall:So the the guarantee comes with a cost. So, I’ve been doing this for 8 years now. I’ve written, like, 3 annuities. I know there are people in this town, again, other people, qualified financial advisors, who might write 3 a week.
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:So it’s just a kind of, like, you know, preference type of a deal.
Griff Tonkin:So I think it might make make sense depending on somebody’s tolerance for risk, their age, you know, an older person who had a lower tolerance for risk. And then also you you’d hit the nail on the head. There are some situations where a person might be better served to have a guaranteed stream of income as opposed to having a big chunk of money all at once. I mean, I’ll I’ll pick up myself. Had I been, gifted with a huge chunk of money at 17 years old?
Griff Tonkin:I mean, I think at that time, I had a subscription. This is I can’t believe I’m gonna say this in a public context, but I had a subscription of mini truck and magazine. For the kids, magazines are these paper things that you look through with pictures and mini trucks where little trucks load to the ground, really terrible. Don’t Google it. It’s awful.
Griff Tonkin:And whatever esteem you hold me in presently, it’ll be lowered. But I would’ve I would’ve put a big stereo in a truck that scraped the ground when it drove. You know? It would’ve been foolish for me to have a pile of money in 17.
Chris Hall:Okay. So you because you said that, I’ll do one for you too.
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:So I’ll go on the record as well. So when I was in high school right before I graduated, I got an altercation with a guy. He blindsided me. He hit me when I wasn’t looking. He smashed my glasses into my face, and he broke, he I mean, I had, like, 17 stitches
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:In the lower part of my eye. And, so I took him to small claims court for the medical damages plus quote unquote pain and suffering.
Griff Tonkin:Right.
Chris Hall:And so I just I really just wanted to get him. I just felt like he hit me when I wasn’t looking. I just wanted him he was an adult, you know? I was 18. I was 18.
Chris Hall:So I was like, you know what? If you’re gonna act like this, you need to pay adult consequences. So I took him to small claims court. I won. It was about $3,000 that I won.
Chris Hall:Okay. His parents paid the bill, but I still won the $3,000, and I took all of it, every dime of it, and I put it into a new stereo for my car.
Griff Tonkin:Okay. Your story is inherently cooler because at least it involves a physical altercation and stitches. But, yeah, the stereo was like a no brainer. If any of my friends who knew me from that era see this podcast, they’re gonna be nodding their head and like, oh, yeah. Griffith, I put a big stereo in something.
Griff Tonkin:Totally.
Chris Hall:I get alpine stereo
Griff Tonkin:Yeah.
Chris Hall:And crossovers. I had this the the big subwoofer in the trunk that made it rattle the
Griff Tonkin:whole thing.
Chris Hall:So, yeah. Yeah. That’s pretty funny.
Griff Tonkin:I had to go, to an ear, nose, and throat doc recently. I was having some problems with retaining water my ear after at swim and, I had a hearing test. And both were really great on the shooting range, which chainsaw about wearing ear protection, but he says, you know, you’ve got some some hearing loss. That’s a little surprising given your age. I’m not that old yet.
Griff Tonkin:And, and he said, you know, do you do you shoot? I said, yeah, all the time. A competitive shooter, hunter. I said, but I wear ear protection even when hunting. He said, that’s not it.
Griff Tonkin:And then, you know, we went through the the list of causes, and we got to loud stereos as a kid. He’s like, oh, that’s it.
Chris Hall:So Totally. Yeah. My my brother’s practically deaf, but he also had the mini truck that was boom boom boom all the way down the street. Yep. Yep.
Chris Hall:It’s pretty funny. So well, I wanna shift gears a little bit. Sure. Let’s talk about, like, you know, some of the things that you’ve kinda run across, in your situation. And I guess probably leading out of the gate, what I would say is how can, like, individuals and businesses protect themselves better from these lawsuits?
Chris Hall:Because, you know, when someone’s got assets, right, whether it be their house, their business, some money that’s sitting in an account with me making money, you know, all those kinds of things. Like, there are people who will go get that if the insurance policy is not enough. Like, you had mentioned earlier that that one lady didn’t have anything beyond the policy. But if they do have something beyond the policy, people are gonna go after it. So how can businesses and individuals protect themselves from that type of a, you know, kind of an action?
Griff Tonkin:Sure. Your your question is actually, perhaps I could rephrase a little bit is how do people out there protect themselves from guys like me? Because the case that I was telling you about was one that we’re talking about before we went into the recording. A young lady that I was representing in a personal injury matter, she was struck. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:Hard impact accidents, significant injuries, hospitalization. The driver who had caused the accident was a a senior. He’s an older fellow. He clearly at fault. No question as to liability.
Griff Tonkin:He’s on a fixed income, did not have any significant assets, and he had a small automobile insurance policy. In California, the smallest policy that’s commonly sold has a liability limit of $15,000, so that was the limit of my client’s recovery from his insurance. Wow. Well, you know, an ambulance ride and a trip to the ER, even if you’re released from the emergency room within a few hours, will exceed $15,000 to build amount. I’d say a 100% of time, 99% of the time.
Griff Tonkin:So, you know, there’s no compensation for her for what she went through. Now she, had her own insurance, but, unfortunately, that your own insurance can kick in in underinsured situations, which is where the driver who causes an accident has less insurance than you, but she had a low policy as well. So then the question becomes, you know, does this guy have any assets? So we went down that road, and it’s something we do in cases where it’s appropriate. And in this situation, the guy had no assets.
Griff Tonkin:So, unfortunately, there was no elegant result for our client. You know? She he didn’t have anything to get. But there’s been a lot of times, Chris, over our career where somebody was under insured and they had assets and they had caused significant damage to our clients where we did have to look into their assets. You look for the people on the other side of the desk from somebody who does what I do for a living, that’s a nightmare.
Griff Tonkin:You’ve worked hard. You’ve put away money. You’ve been successful, and now you’ve made a mistake, and we can all do it. Right? This is a driving mistake.
Griff Tonkin:This is a, this is a maintenance of your facility mistake. This is not necessarily something that comes with a ton of moral culpability, but it’s just an error. But your error caused significant injury to somebody, and now they’re looking at your personal assets. That’s a nightmare. You don’t wanna be there.
Griff Tonkin:So I’m gonna give you an answer that is probably not, overly exciting, but it’s it’s worth its weight in gold. Buy liability insurance. It’s really inexpensive. So this young lady I was telling you about, she actually, talked to me you know, we talked in detail about her insurance, and and you’d think I was getting a kickback from the insurance companies. I’m not.
Griff Tonkin:I said, well, look. Your insurance policy is terrible. I said, you know, when you go to Starbucks, what do you pay? She said, well, I’m more of a Dutch Brothers person. I said, okay, fine.
Griff Tonkin:When you go to Dutch Brothers, what do you pay? And she says, I’ll have my drinks about $8.25. I said, I’ll bet you that for $8.25 a month, so 1 Dutch Brothers a month or 1 Starbucks a month that you could increase your policy limits from 15,000 to a 100,000. Well, I was wrong. It was less than 8.25 a month for her to increase her limits.
Griff Tonkin:Wow. So as the business owner or as the as the person who’s putting away, increase your insurance policy limits. I just went through this exercise myself this week because we’re adding a different vehicle to our insurance policy, so I’d check. I got a teen driver, my son, who I mentioned earlier, who’s in in Arizona now, and we were able to adjust our limits up, increase our deductible because we got money sitting on the sidelines we’ve used for deductible and actually bring our overall rates down even though we have greater coverage. And as people get into their station in life, they’re closer to retirement or they’ve collected some assets, buy a personal liability umbrella policy.
Griff Tonkin:You can buy a umbrella policy. Like, I’m a high risk insured because I have a teen driver. I have a fast car that he’s insured on. I got a swimming pool and trampoline, and I live in a high fire risk area. So, like, to an insurance company, like, I’m deaf.
Griff Tonkin:You know, this is terrible. I’m a financial risk. My personal liability umbrella policy cost me a little over $100 a month and that’s probably very expensive, but I get a couple of $1,000,000 of protection. So the first if if, you know, heaven forbid, one of us makes a driving mistake, does something in error, the first couple of $1,000,000, if we hurt somebody terribly and and the vast majority of the cases that any personal injury result attorney resolves is well less than $2,000,000. So if we make a terrible mistake, the first $2,000,000 comes from the insurance company before anybody comes calling.
Griff Tonkin:It you know, put your head on the pillow and sleep easy. That’s the best way that your clients can protect themselves, and it’s probably a lot less expensive than they think. I mean, in my client’s case, it was, like, $7.
Chris Hall:I mean, like, you know, if we’re talking about, personal liability, like, umbrella policy, like, Tom, about, you know, yours is definitely, you know, on the expensive side, but, again, you have a lot of, like, risk that goes along with that. Mine is, like, $600 a year, so mine’s $50 a month.
Griff Tonkin:Month. Right.
Chris Hall:But once again, like, that’s $2,000,000 of coverage for $50 a month. That’s lunch. And I mean, nowadays, in today’s dollars, that’s lunch.
Griff Tonkin:I I wish you were wrong that that’s lunch, but the same kid who I’ve mentioned a couple times is off in Arizona. He was at my office doing an interview over Zoom, and we have crummy Internet at the house who’s using the office. Anyways, he calls me and said, hey, dad. I’m hungry. And I said, okay.
Griff Tonkin:I’ll get you something. And I mentioned one of our local restaurants. I mentioned, shoot. I I’ve drawn a blank, but, anyways, one of our local restaurants. No.
Griff Tonkin:No. No. Just fast food. And so he wanted a burger from a fast food joint. So here’s a quiz for you.
Griff Tonkin:A burger, an order of fries, large order of fries, and 2 large sodas. 1 for him, 1 for me. What do you think that cost?
Chris Hall:Where did you go get it or was it delivered?
Griff Tonkin:I went and got it.
Chris Hall:Okay. So the 2 of you together, minimum $35.
Griff Tonkin:It was $27 for a, you could figure out the restaurant, a western bacon double cheeseburger, an order of crisscutt fries, a diet soda for me, a regular root or a larger root beer for him. Yeah. It was like 20 I mean, it’s like, how do we sleep at night? I mean, I guess I’m turning into that old curmudgeon. This is crazy.
Griff Tonkin:These prices are terrible, but Right. Yeah. So for the for the price of 2 burgers, 2 fries, and, you know, 3 or 4 sodas, $50, you just covered yourself, as a business or as a as an individual with a ton of insurance that you really don’t have to worry about somebody coming after your assets unless it’s in the most severe situations. And when we’ve gone after businesses, when they’ve caused severe injuries and they were underinsured, it it’s a a terrible time for the business owner because most businesses are just mom and pop shops. Like, you you and I, we’re both business owners, but they’re small businesses.
Griff Tonkin:Right? The the the lifeblood of this country is a small business. Well, I I’m looking at the trucks you own, the equity you have in the trucks, the equipment, this the the things that you have on the shelves. What’s the value of your inventory? What’s your income stream?
Griff Tonkin:So that when you cry poor, I know that you’re not poor. And Right. That’s all. You you don’t want somebody doing that in your life. You can really avoid it with liability insurance, and it’s just a stewardship issue.
Griff Tonkin:Right? Like, okay. If you can spend a a couple $100 on nice office side chairs, well, buy yourself another $1,000,000 worth of coverage.
Chris Hall:So do you think, like, a umbrella policy for a1000000 would be enough, or do you do you kinda recommend based on the numbers you kinda gave that $2,000,000 would, you know, 99% of the time cover the deal?
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. I would say that, typically, it’s a the the best assessment is what is, your risk. Right? So if you’ve if you’ve paid off your house, if you’re have a lot of equity in your home, if you have a retirement accounts that aren’t in a structured retirement like a 401 k, there are different rules. And by by no means am I an asset protection, attorney, or specialist.
Griff Tonkin:So anything I say in the asset realm, your your listeners and your viewers ought to take a grain of salt and and verify, but, you know, there are certain counts that are exempt from or or have high exemption limits from attachment by an attorney’s coming to collect on a on a judgment, but there’s a lot of other accounts that aren’t. There’s equity that’s not. So if you just start now, you have no equity, have no retirement accounts, a $1,000,000 is probably sufficient for you. If you’ve started to put together a little bit of assets or you have a higher risk, you know, I have a dear friend who runs a lot of heavy trucks up and down the road. He’s got a lot of employees and they travel for the the work that he does.
Griff Tonkin:He runs a great blue collar business here in town. I mean, he needs to have 1,000,000 of dollars in coverage because the higher the weight of the vehicle, the more devastating the damage. The you know, an accident often involves multiple vehicles instead of just one. Like, a passenger car might be versus one other passenger car. A tractor trailer or a or a work truck pulling a big trailer might involve 10 vehicles.
Griff Tonkin:You wanna have 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of dollars of coverage in that situation.
Chris Hall:Well, that’s a that’s a good point too, the difference between a business owner and an individual. Right? So the business is gonna go through a completely different kind of insurance proposal, And, hopefully, they have a good commercial agent who’s going to say, hey. Listen. You are at risk with these types of vehicles, so you’re gonna get this.
Chris Hall:So I guess, really, the take home message is ask your insurance agent what they think is best probably.
Griff Tonkin:Ask your insurance agent and be be a good consumer. Right? So you’re recognizing like, when you go out and shop for a new car, you know, you consider features. If you’re financing, consider financing. Do the same thing with your, own, you know, your own business interests, your own personal interests.
Griff Tonkin:Like, what do I really have? What am I needing to protect? What is the real cost to me? You know, it’s that, ounce prevention is worth a pound of cure. That’s Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:Totally true in this situation. Talk to your insurance agent. A story to illustrate. Very early on in my career, I was involved at the tail end of the case. A guy had caused a terrible accident, taking the life of a a husband, a wife, and 2 kids.
Griff Tonkin:Oh, yeah. And he had significant insurance. I I don’t recall because it’s been 21, 20 ish years, but he had a 1,000,000 or $2,000,000 of coverage. Problem was he was, probably personally worth again, this is early 2000 dollars, something north of $50,000,000 personally. So he was way underinsured considering his assets.
Griff Tonkin:So we were on the defense hired by the in the firm I worked for was on the defense hired by the insurance company that had that 1 or $2,000,000 policy. That insurance company says, here you go. Just immediately, they put up their policy limits, and then the lawyer on the other side, a guy like me now, says, okay. Well, what do you got personally? Well, this guy, when he had to turn out his pockets, there was a lot to turn out and so he contributed a fortune of his own personal assets to resolve that case.
Griff Tonkin:You could have he could have avoided all that had he had proper insurance. I think in that case, he turned around and sued his insurance broker. I don’t know how viable that claim was, but, you know, somebody should have told him with this kind of resources, you you need more more insurance than than you actually have. And it’s my understanding again. I’m not an insurance professional.
Griff Tonkin:I’m not gonna kick back from Progressive or State Farm or any of these companies, but incrementally, your premium dollars go down as the limit goes up. So, you know, to go from a $1,000,000 of coverage to 2,000,000 doesn’t cost you the same amount as it costs you to go from 0 to 1,000,000. So as you get more insurance, it’s typically speaker.
Chris Hall:Correct. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. That’s my understanding, and that’s been my personal experience.
Chris Hall:So you had mentioned, like, with this case with this gentleman, but you had also mentioned, like, they cannot go after your 401 k. Is that something?
Griff Tonkin:Well, there are limitations within both federal and state law into what assets are attachable. I touched on this issue in a in a collections case years ago where the at that time, given the state of the law and the amount that was in the debtor’s 401 k, we couldn’t reach it. But I haven’t you know, that’s not my practice area, so I wouldn’t want somebody to hear this and take confidence with, well, I have all my assets in my 401 k. I’m fine. I’m not saying that.
Griff Tonkin:Right. I stick to what I said. Buy good insurance. Make sure you’re covered. And then if you’re really concerned about the, accessibility to judgment creditors of your retirement accounts, talk to an attorney who specializes in that area.
Chris Hall:Yeah. And probably same kind of the same rule applies, like, when you say talk to your insurance person. If you have a $1,000,000 in your 401 carrier, IRA, or $6,000,000 or something like that, you should probably have equal limits in an umbrella policy so they don’t try to come after that.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. You should a 100% talk to your insurance agent openly and honestly about what your financial position is and then tell them your goals. Right? You know, my goals here are to, make sure I’m protected. You know, take me.
Griff Tonkin:I I got, like I say, a swimming pool or and and, you know, while certainly we’re very vigilant, we have fences within fences in our pool, you know, dreadful things happen from time to time or we have a teen driver and and my teen driver, I think he’s great, but statistically, there are risk. That’s why insurance companies charge you so much for them because they’re very high risk. You can you can mitigate your concern about that by buying appropriate insurance.
Chris Hall:Yeah. 2 things about that. So with a teenage driver, I also have 2 teenage drivers right now, so I’m getting really handled.
Griff Tonkin:So what you mean is I’m buying lunch after this? Right. Absolutely. Okay. I got you.
Chris Hall:So but, you know, when it comes to them, you know, my my oldest is 19, and I had asked my insurance agent, hey. Can we get her out on her own? You know, put the car in her name, get her own insurance, you know, make her more of, like, a, you know, an individual instead of under dad, you know. And he basically said as long as she lives with you, she’s kinda still under dad, and the cost would be prohibitive for her to go out on her own because of being a young teenage driver.
Griff Tonkin:We literally personally went through that on Monday of this week as I we’re looking to, you know, change out my wife’s car. She’s getting a different vehicle. Well, I said that exact same question. I said, okay. My son lives in Arizona.
Griff Tonkin:His vehicle is gonna be registered in Arizona. He he’s in the army. So when he’s not in school, he’s gonna be spending some time in Arizona with his army unit and and elsewhere not home. So the cost to keep him insured on our policy, was was x and then to put him out on his own and insure him in Arizona because they they wouldn’t even write him as an individual in California, the insurance company I was consulting with. Right.
Griff Tonkin:But they’d write him as an individual in Arizona. It was 6 x.
Chris Hall:Wow.
Griff Tonkin:I mean, it was just crushing. He couldn’t you know? Yeah. So it made no sense. So as a result, we have an umbrella policy.
Griff Tonkin:We kept him on ours and, you know, tell him to, abide by the speed limit.
Chris Hall:Yeah. It sure does make you wonder how, like, these these kids who grow up who don’t have parents, really active parents or maybe their parents are no longer with us or maybe they, you know, are estranged from their parents. Like, how do they make it, man? You know, how do they how do they afford just insurance for their car to get to work back and forth? It’s just like that’s that’s where I think it’s like, oh, I I get why it’s expensive, but, like, luckily for you, your luckily for your kids, they have you, and luckily for my kids, they have me.
Chris Hall:I I do feel for kids who have 6 x insurance policies, and they just have to eat it because they don’t have anybody to help them.
Griff Tonkin:One of my, son’s good friends, wonderful young kid, I’ll use just his his abbreviated first name, Matt, he’s getting killed on insurance because he’s on his own. And so his insurance is, you know, this is this is like, the best of us kind of kid. He’s industrious. He’s always got more than one job plus side gigs, and and he’s just doing it to basically keep insurance on his car and a roof over his head. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:It’s crazy expensive, and he’s got a terrible policy. You know, he’s got a $15,000 minimum policy in the state of California, but that’s all he can afford, and that’s a 6 x policy in in this state. So tough for him. In contrast, in another client, she would ask these very young lady, young mom. She’d ask these, like, really, really good questions, very insightful questions.
Griff Tonkin:She had great insurance coverage. She was struck by an uninsured driver who ran a red light that, you know, so had she had no insurance or no good insurance, she’d have been utterly without resources to recover against after this bad car accident. And she’d ask this question. I’m, like, okay. Where are you getting this information?
Griff Tonkin:Are you, like, googling and and researching every night? And she said, no. It’s my father-in-law. And so she had this, you know, guy lived a little, had a little wisdom, and he would, you know, talk her through things, and then she’d bring the questions to me. And as a result, it made all the difference because she had good insurance
Chris Hall:even though she was a young person. Yeah. Yeah. That’s great. With regards to the second question I wanna ask you is you had said you had had a fast car, and I
Griff Tonkin:need to know what that is. Oh, yeah. I have a little Audi Sedan, and you can you can get those in various states of trim, and you can make them go kinda quick. Yeah. Although, we’re about to go down your road.
Griff Tonkin:Last I saw you, you were driving an electric vehicle. Right? That’s what’s gonna replace my wife’s current car as an electric vehicle. And, you you know, you got a kid cruiser that’s doing 0 to 60. I told my wife this last night.
Griff Tonkin:You know, when we were we’re about the same age, so, we had Lamborghini Countach was a poster that was on, like, I don’t know, 8 out of 10 young male walls in the eighties nineties. Right? Yeah. That car went 0 to 60 in about 5 and a half seconds. Right.
Griff Tonkin:The 7 passenger electric SUV we’re looking at will do it in less than 4 and a half. Right. So my fast car is about to be, like, the fast ish car in the family. Right. So yeah.
Chris Hall:Yeah. It’s pretty crazy. You know, my only regret with my Tesla is that I didn’t buy it sooner. Yeah. That would be my only regret.
Chris Hall:Of course, you know, I’m sure they have issues like any other car, but that’s been really good for me. I built a house that had solar on it, so I literally charge it for free. I drive it for free now that I you know, besides what I owe the bank. But, you know, that’s that’s been a huge factor for me. I will probably see if I could hang in there as long as I can.
Chris Hall:There is a lot of again, you know, not purporting any sort of stocks or anything like that. Just kinda saying like there is a lot to be said for hydrogen cells. And there are companies out there that are rapidly working on hydrogen cells, which the only exhaust from a hydrogen cell is vapor. Right. Water.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Water vapor. So, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty cool stuff, and there are companies out there actually getting it done. So, Rolls Royce is working on
Griff Tonkin:it. Really?
Chris Hall:Yeah. Rolls Royce is working on it, and they’re working on it for for actually, for, jet engines.
Griff Tonkin:Right. Rolls Royce. I I don’t know if this this is true, so don’t quote me on it, but, I mean, they’ve been an engine manufacturer for aircraft. I think longer than they’ve been a vehicle manufacturer.
Chris Hall:I’m not sure how long, but I do yeah. That’s something I don’t think people when they hear Rolls Royce, they don’t think about that being synonymous with jet engines, but that’s something they’re working on. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Well, and that brings us back to the insurance thing with cars being you know, like, a good used car used to be a few $1,000. You know? Again, I’m I guess I’m dating myself. Right?
Griff Tonkin:There’s no good used cars for a few $1,000. There’s terrible, awful cars that will strand you and have no air conditioning and have, like, flat tires for a couple $1,000. Right. So insurance, you wanna make sure your property damage limits are enough to cover you if you cause an accident because cars cost so much to fix, and they’re so costly generally. And similarly, if you’re in an accident, somebody has no insurance, you want coverage that’s appropriate for the value of your vehicle.
Griff Tonkin:So if you’re driving around out there in a $50,000 car and you got $25,000 of coverage, you you’re gonna be in a sorry state when you can’t get your car fixed or you can’t get the value of your car replaced if it’s destroyed in an accident.
Chris Hall:And my agent and I know that a lot of agents will ask us now. They they give it a thing called gap insurance. Mhmm. So it’s gonna pay the gap between what you owe on the car and what it’s really worth. That’s a that’s a thing.
Chris Hall:Right. I remember gosh. It was years ago now, probably 10 years or more. I was trying to sell a Nissan Altima SR, which was like a racing edition. I was trying to sell it so I could buy a truck, and I couldn’t sell it because when I bought it in Arizona, the guy had transposed 2 of the numbers on the mileage.
Griff Tonkin:And
Chris Hall:so it looked like I rolled the odometer back. And we even had the original paperwork that showed that it was the right mileage when we bought it, but he put it in the system wrong.
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:And so we were trying to figure out but by the way, this is years later, so he doesn’t exist anymore. His car lot doesn’t exist anymore. California doesn’t wanna do it. Arizona doesn’t wanna do it. Nobody wants to talk about it, and we’re trying to figure it out.
Chris Hall:A digger pine tree fell on this car and smooshed it
Griff Tonkin:like a pancake. Yeah. Where was your chainsaw when this digger pine tree fell? I’m I’m asking for a friend. I was asleep.
Griff Tonkin:K.
Chris Hall:I was asleep. Yeah. No. And it smashed like a pancake. And luckily for me, the insurance company actually paid me, out on the car, and it was it was more than what I had owed on it.
Chris Hall:I put a significant down on it. But my point is is, like, that’s, like, not a thing anymore. Like, they’re never gonna pay you more than your car is worth, you know, now you have to have that gap insurance, so it’s important to have. Yeah.
Griff Tonkin:The Internet’s a thing now. So one thing I mentioned earlier about being a good consumer, my clients all the time are, you know, talk to me about their property damage, which is generally something I don’t have to get involved in because you can just go on the Internet and you can find out what is a 2019, Nissan Frontier truck with these features in this mile sell for, and that’s what it’s worth. You know? Your your insurance company’s gonna pay you what it’s worth, pay you for the tax on that value, pay you for the proportionate share of your registration you have left, and and that’s it. You know?
Griff Tonkin:The fact that your favorite truck or you ventured in that truck or it’s your grandmother’s hand me down car, doesn’t matter one bit. The car is worth what it’s worth, and that’s all they’re gonna pay.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Another story on cars. So my daughter, when she was 15, was right during COVID. And so I don’t know if you remember, but Hertz Rent A Car was going bankrupt. And so we went down to Sacramento to a Hertz dealership and bought her, like, a Chevy Cruze for about $3,000 lower than wholesale book.
Griff Tonkin:Okay.
Chris Hall:So great deal on this car. Very happy, you know, to do it. Fast forward to last year, my son is 16, and he is trying to find a car. I have been looking for 8 months before he turns 16 to try to buy him a car and looking for exactly what we talked about. I just want, like, a 5 year old car with 80,000 miles on it, maybe a 100,000 miles on it, you know, for, like, $10.
Chris Hall:Well, they didn’t exist. In fact, the right before I bought my son’s car, that car I just described was $24,000 used. Right. So I went and bought him a brand new Honda Civic for $23,000.
Griff Tonkin:Right.
Chris Hall:Because because it was cheaper than buying a 5 year old 100000 mile car.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. There it’s not. So Yeah. I should have talked to you. Right?
Griff Tonkin:You’re a financial guy. I helped make people make good financial decisions. We bought what we thought would be a good first used car for our son, and it was a a a German car, a Volkswagen, about 10 years old, 11 years old time we bought it with about a 100000 miles on it, but it seemed like a solid car. We put almost what we paid for that car into it in repairs in the 1st year. It was a terrible car to the point where at the last set of repairs, I just sent the car down the road, and we started a a fresh.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Yeah. A good used car is a difficult proposition.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes, they actually have pretty decent when I say resale value, you can buy them fairly inexpensively. But, yeah, if you get a repair on them, they’re they’re a monster.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Pricey. Pricey stuff.
Chris Hall:Yeah. Toyota, Honda, Nissan, those are all gonna be really good. Like, if they have a repair, it’s gonna be a decent repair. It’s not gonna be ridiculous. So
Griff Tonkin:But we’ve been talking about increased prices. You know, when I first was working for the insurance industry as a as an attorney, you know, they would just set your rates. We’re gonna pay x number dollars an hour, and that’s what we pay you. All of the shop rates, even for your domestics, your Japanese manufacturers, and and then certainly German manufacturers, the shop rates are greater than what attorneys charged for insurance defense work less than 10 years ago. I mean, the cost of everything is going up.
Griff Tonkin:So, again, a great way to protect yourself is, and I hate to sound like a grandfather here, but obey the speed limits. Don’t drive distracted. Turns out cell phones are terrible to have around where you can touch them while you’re driving and, and have good insurance so that you’re covered for all these things because really is getting more expensive out there.
Chris Hall:How many do you think of, like, when you’re representing or, folks and they’ve been injured, how often is distracted driving, like, let’s just say automobile accents only. How often is distracted driving, eating something, playing on your phone, put fiddling with the radio, how much does that play into those accidents?
Griff Tonkin:Number one cause of accidents, in my experience in auto accidents is speed and inattention, and they often go hand in hand. So I would say if you lump speed and inattention together, you’re probably you know, because then your other your other options for what causes an accident is, you know, some kind of severe weather condition or or a failure of the vehicle. Right? A tire goes flat, some sort of manufacturing issue. Those are exceptionally rare.
Griff Tonkin:So probably 95% plus of all automobile cases. And and, again, I’m using every sort of vehicle type. Right? Whether it’s a motorcycle, a a passenger car, commercial vehicle, big rig, bus, whatever, 95% are speed or distracted driving. Splitting between those 2, you know, formerly speed would have been the huge part of that pie between speed and distracted driving, but the trend line is up.
Griff Tonkin:Right? As our lives become more connected, more Internet based, especially with younger drivers, you know, that have grown up with smartphone. Like, you know, you and I had a phone on the wall, right, as as kids or or we had a cordless phone, but you couldn’t get too far away from the base because then they don’t work anymore. These kids, you know, have grown up with smartphones, so it’s nothing for them to have in their hands. I’d say distracted driving versus versus speed or, it’s probably 30 70 split.
Griff Tonkin:Okay. But, yeah, I mean, the the best thing you can do for yourself is if you’ve got a wireless Android audio or or plug in Android audio or Apple CarPlay, plug your phone in, put it where you can’t touch it, and talk to this car. You know? Yeah. You look like a psycho.
Griff Tonkin:Right? You’re sitting there at the at the stoplight and you’re like, hey, Google. Play this or, you know, hey, Apple. Do their hey, Siri. Do this.
Griff Tonkin:You look crazy, but it’s way better than, not getting home because that’s an alternative that
Chris Hall:happens. Right.
Griff Tonkin:And, I can do the best job that I can do as a lawyer. I could do the best job any lawyer has ever done in the history of lawyering. Yeah. And if your child is dead, I did nothing. Right.
Griff Tonkin:I mean, I I assuaged your guilt one one hundredth of 1 or not your guilt rather, but you’re you’re paying one one hundredth of 1%. Right. It’s way better to get home.
Chris Hall:Never. Yeah. That’s right.
Griff Tonkin:Just get home.
Chris Hall:I saw it was probably what a month ago. There was a 19 year old who was driving, but but a Ventura, and he got an accident, and somebody in that accident died. And it was correlated to him. You know, like, the the death was correlated to him. And I just thought, like, a, you know, probably gonna go to jail for a while, you know, for manslaughter.
Chris Hall:But, b, you know, like, even if he doesn’t, like, to to know that you took someone’s life. Right. Because realistically, he was probably, you know, on his phone or he was probably maybe drunk or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, there’s there’s a reason why you get in an accident typically speaking.
Chris Hall:It’s not usually I was just driving down the road doing everything right and I got an accident. Not if you’re the cause of the accident.
Griff Tonkin:Right.
Chris Hall:I should say. Like, you could be an accident and not be the cause, but in this case, they were saying that he was the cause of it. And I just think, like, you’re 19 and, like, you know, your life is drastically changed forever. And the kids of the parent I mean, the parents of the kids, their life is drastically changed forever. So so I try to remember that.
Chris Hall:You know? I’m not perfect by any means, but I do try very hard to remember to just, like, set the phone down and and, like you said, look like a goof and
Griff Tonkin:Yeah.
Chris Hall:You know, yell at it. And I was not what I said.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Yeah. I my my car’s system, I I got frustrated with it the other day, and I and instead of just saying cancel like an adult, I yelled shut up at an inanimate inanimate object in in my vehicle. And then it responded. It says, you know, I may not be real, but, you could still choose better words or something like that.
Griff Tonkin:Like, it corrected me, and I’m like, okay. Too weird. And I just turned everything off, and I just drove down the road. You know? Because because if you and I mentioned, you know, whatever red sneakers, of course, our phones are gonna be filled with, red sneakers for sale after we we leave here today, and, my car scolded me for telling us to shut up the other day.
Griff Tonkin:So yeah. But no. I mean, to your point about about these these driving mistakes, no one ever thinks it’s going to happen to them one way or the other. Right? Whether they’re gonna be the cause or whether they’re gonna be the victim in these situations, but I literally have made a living for 21 years off of that happening to people 100 of times a year.
Griff Tonkin:We’ve turned through so many cases. We’ve been so blessed with good business, great clients, And here’s an awful here’s an awful truth. Repeat business. You you know, it can happen to you more than once. Right?
Griff Tonkin:If I sold you a burger or or whatever, I was a steak house. I’d want you to come back and eat dinner with me once a week. I tell my clients all the time, I never wanna see you again. Sometimes I do, though. I mean, sometimes I do I do see him again.
Griff Tonkin:It it it happens. So, yeah. You know? Again, one more like grandpa, don’t be distracted. Don’t drive fast.
Griff Tonkin:Modern safety features and vehicles are amazing. Wear your seat belt. They’re incredible. They keep you alive. People sometimes say to me, oh, they don’t build them like they used to, the good old cars.
Griff Tonkin:No. Those things were death traps. Right. You want to be Right. In a 2011 Subaru, not a 1965 Impala.
Griff Tonkin:Right. I mean, it’s a 1000 times safer.
Chris Hall:Right. No crumple zones. Just an just a big old sled.
Griff Tonkin:Yes. Yeah. No. You your body you watch the old crash test where they take old cars and do crash tests. It’s what anybody ever survived an accident 50 years ago.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. So Yeah.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So that’s really all I have for my questions today. Well, we did cover quite a bit. Is there anything that, you’d like to tell the folks if they’re listening, that they should, you know, do for their financial safety and security? Or
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. As it relates to, you know, the intersection between our businesses, I think there’s a couple of them. 1, I’ve hammered on a lot today, which is make sure you’re you’re properly insured, you’ve properly oriented your financial future, talk to somebody like you, get started early, and then protect those assets through appropriate business or personal decisions with insurance. Then I would say that, you know, folks that are that are listening that have been involved in a personal injury incident, contact an attorney like us at Artover and Tonkin. We consult with you for free.
Griff Tonkin:At the resolution of your case, you know, you’re gonna have some financial resources if things go as we expect them to go, and then they should immediately consult with somebody like you about how to make those, resources last and how to give them some longevity and, like, see the miracle of compounding interest. Right? How hey. Look. I left my money alone for 7 years, and now I have twice as much money.
Chris Hall:Right. So when it goes back to that, you you know, I it used to be, and I don’t know that this is the same way, but your guys’ or is it one of those things where you don’t usually get paid unless you win? How does that work?
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. There was a old and well respected attorney here in California, and he argued that all attorneys should work on a contingency fee basis, meaning you don’t get paid unless you win. Well, the only practice area that really does that is mine. We’re a personal injury firm, which means all our fees are contingent. So that means we recover a portion of the total settlement, but we advance all the costs.
Griff Tonkin:In some of these cases, you know, costs can be in the tens of 1,000 or 100 of 1,000 of dollars. We put that money up, and that’s really our bet on you as a as a client. We think that we’re gonna be able to do good meaningful work for you, get our cost back, you know, our experts, our accident reconstructionists, our biomechanical analysis, all those sorts of things, get our cost back, and then make it worth our time and and be able to put resources in your pocket to take care of you for the rest of your life. So all contingency fee work at Arcoff and Tonkin. Yeah.
Chris Hall:Is it, I think it’s Japan. Is it Japan that, like, because they don’t want frivolous lawsuits, it’s one of those things where, like, everybody pays their own attorney fees, but if you lose, you have to pay the other person’s?
Griff Tonkin:That’s the British model. I’m I’m utterly unfamiliar with the Japanese justice system in any way, but, yeah, the British model is, the loser pays the winner’s fees. The American model is everybody bears their own fees and costs, attorney’s fees and costs, unless there’s a statute that says the loser pays the winner or unless there’s a provision of the contract that says, you know, in the in the event of a dispute in this over this contract, the loser will pay the winner the reasonable attorney’s fees. So pretty pretty rare in the United States under our model that, the loser pays the winner’s fees, but much more common under the British system. Okay.
Chris Hall:Yeah. So but for the take home message for the people listening is that, you know, if they’re in one of these things, you know, to contact someone like yourself, and that, you know, there’s really there’s no cost to them to talk to you. Once they talk to you, you know, whether you make a game plan or not, like, you know, if you’re gonna take them on as a a client, then there’s still no cost to them unless unless you win.
Griff Tonkin:That’s correct.
Chris Hall:Okay. Alright.
Griff Tonkin:Yep. We just had that yesterday. A great client, real informed consumer. He called. He had a bunch of questions about the fee agreement, and we went through it and, you know, so at this point, I’m representing them.
Griff Tonkin:It’s all my firm’s resources that are going into their case all our time. And then if we recover for them, then and only then do we get paid. And then, you know, your old cell phone bill used to show you were on the phone 1 minute and 33 seconds, and it cost you x number of dollars and cents a minute. Our our breakdown is just like that. We’re hyper accurate with our accounting to our clients, and we don’t, you know, we don’t get paid unless we win for you.
Chris Hall:I love that. Okay.
Griff Tonkin:Putting our money where our mouth is.
Chris Hall:I love that too. Yep. So awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Thanks for having
Chris Hall:me. Avenue. Yeah. It was great. We’ll definitely have to do it again.
Griff Tonkin:Okay. Sounds great. Thanks, Chris.
Chris Hall:Thank you for your time.
Griff Tonkin:Yeah. Take care. Alright.