The Louisville Zoo's train derailed on June 1, 2009. Ten days later, Larry Franklin, a 1967 UofL law graduate (and the subject of this extensive profile in the Louisville Courier-Journal) filed the first lawsuit on behalf of one of the families injured in the derailment.

Another graduate of the Law School, Shawn Cantley of Bahe Cook Cantley & Jones, was among the first attorneys to comment on the zoo train derailment. His blog post on the incident took note of a judicial order preserving evidence regarding the train and its history.

The spotlight in this unfolding story has now come to shine upon another graduate of UofL Law. Hans Poppe, through an entry in his Twitter account, informed me of his blog post, Leveling the playing field. Hans responded to "the sarcastic and baseless attacks that were launched . . . in the comment section" accompanying the Courier-Journal story covering the lawsuit filed by Larry Franklin.

"What people don't understand," Hans wrote, "is that most personal injury lawyers don't file baseless lawsuits." His explanation shed light on the business model and practices of lawyers who work primarily on the basis of contingency fees. "Contingency fee lawyers are just like any other business owner," he wrote. "[T]hey must turn a profit to pay the salaries of their employees, the rent, and other overhead and expenses. If they fail to do so, they are not in business long."

Thanks to Hans Poppe's commentary, the Louisville Zoo train derailment and the litigation surrounding that incident offer this community the chance to understand the work of contingency fee lawyers. Those lawyers' business model is best understood as through a comparison to venture capitalism.

John Day, a contingency fee lawyer in Nashville, explains: "Every case is an investment, and every good investor engages in due diligence before investing. Part of that due diligence requires not only analysis of risk but also an understanding of costs." That analysis includes the "time and money" that the lawyer must "invest[] in a potential case," plus "the likelihood of winning and the likely recovery range."

John Day's bottom line? "Any VC fund that does not undertake that analysis quickly goes broke. Any lawyer asked to do contingent fee work who does not undertake that analysis will do the same." Maxwell Kennerly, a Philadelphia trial lawyer, has made this point even more colorfully: "[Plaintiffs' lawyers] have as strong an incentive against taking frivolous or vexatious claims as they have against investing in unprofitable businesses. The last thing I want to do is spend years of my life and five, six or seven-figures pursuing a case that returns nothing."

The Louisville Zoo train derailment injured nearly two dozen people. Graduates of our Law School have already figured prominently in the litigatiion surrounding that incident and in educating the broader public about the business of law.