GIVING BACK

I felt distraught, absolutely devastated at the fact that somebody else harmed me and I wasn’t able to have the medical attention that I felt I deserved.

When you’re in an accident, you expect your car insurance to have your back. Katherine learned the hard way that sometimes that doesn’t happen.

Mother-of-five Katherine Monroe was on her way to a friend’s house when she was rear-ended by a young man who was driving a service van while on his phone. “I guess he thought it turned green and he rammed right into the back end of me, totaled my whole car, everything,” she recalls. The two of them pulled into a nearby parking lot to exchange information. She knew that her car was totaled but thought, health-wise, she was in pretty good shape.

Until later that day.

“The pain didn’t hit me till about an hour afterwards, but something told me to go seek help and I did,” she says. She went to the hospital and discovered that she had six bulging vertebrae and three herniated vertebrae. “They feel like something has attacked your spine all at once and that your spine just compressed really quickly.”

She needed twelve weeks of rehab to get her spine back in alignment. Imagine her surprise when her insurance denied her claim for physical therapy. “I pay for a service and I expected the service and I did not get it even though it wasn’t my fault,” Katherine says.

That’s when she realized she needed an attorney. She was familiar with Morgan & Morgan’s commercials, but she scoured the internet to find reviews and first-hand experiences. She was impressed with what she found and placed a call to the law firm. “The first phone call was very comforting to be honest with you,” she says. She was treated like an individual and not just a number.

Katherine kept in close contact with her case manager, Cindy. Since she was stuck at home in bed, it was a relief that she could communicate via text and email. She says, “I was guided by Cindy and she took care of me. 

She literally held my hand through the whole entire thing, which was amazing.”

Morgan & Morgan went to work and got a settlement that was the maximum value of her insurance policy. The only time Katherine had to go to the ofice was to receive her settlement check.
After she had won her case, Katherine recommended Morgan & Morgan to a friend, who also won her case. 

“My day-to-day life is taking care of five kids and my husband. Morgan & Morgan made my life so much easier,” Katherine says. She’s still not back to 100%, but Katherine is improving every day, working hard for herself and her family. 

Attorney Quote:
“Empowering clients with personalized care and leveraging technology, we secured justice and maximum compensation for Katherine, exemplifying our commitment to making a difference.”
- Dane Jordan, Trial Attorney

Our 1,000+ attorneys are whip smart, bighearted and passionate — people who wouldn’t hesitate to go the extra mile for their clients. Each solely focuses on a specific area of law, fine-tuning their skills and knowledge until they excel at what they do. We are proud to have them represent Morgan & Morgan in the office and the world.

Each week, we'll highlight one of our attorneys who made extraordinary strides this year, in recognition of their outstanding contributions, unique approaches, and incredible advocacy in their communities.

Meet Danielle Blandford, Justice with Grit

Tenacious. Unrelenting. Passionate. Those are just a few words to describe Danielle Blandford. She uses that tenacity to fight tirelessly for her clients. She has a passion for helping people and fighting for justice for those who need it the most. Danielle came from humble beginnings, her mother being a school bus driver and embodying for her what it meant to have grit and hard work to persevere.

Since joining Morgan & Morgan, Danielle focuses her practice on auto litigation, fighting for those who have sustained catastrophic injuries at the expense of another’s negligence. She uses her grit, determination, and competitiveness to fight against insurance companies who refuse to fairly compensate her clients. She has routinely obtained six figure verdicts and numerous seven figure settlements when the insurance company had previously offered $0.

Danielle is also committed to her local community and a devoted mother. Most recently, she was pivotal in helping pass Lily’s Law in the state of Kentucky, which makes a death caused by a drunk driver a vehicular homicide. When she is not in the courtroom or advocating for her community, you can find her on the baseball and football field cheering for her two sons. For anyone blessed to have Danielle as an attorney, she is not only an incredible advocate but also treats her clients like family.

On April 1, 2024, Mayor Eric Adams and the New York City Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) announced delivery platform companies like Uber Eats, DoorDash, and Grubhub must now pay their delivery workers in New York City a minimum rate of at least $19.56 per hour. However, the rate increase isn’t a shock to anyone in the city as in December 2023, New York City became the first major U.S. city to implement a minimum pay rate for app-based restaurant delivery workers. 

Before the law was passed, delivery workers in the city were paid below the minimum wage rate of $5.39 per hour before tips. The law implementation was considered a breakthrough for New York City delivery workers, as initially, the new pay protections were heavily challenged by the platforms through which the workers were employed. 

Karol, a driver who has worked in the delivery industry for several years, says her family has depended on the tips left by customers to fill in the gaps left by the companies, “it’s good to continue putting pressure on the city by demanding the minimum wage,” she claims that the delivery companies demand they do their jobs efficiently, however, refuse to pay them a liveable wage.

In 2023, the Appellate Division First Department court ruled the pay protections could become effective, and the DCWP began enforcing the minimum pay rate of at least $17.96 per hour. Since then, on average, more than 60,000 delivery workers cumulatively earned roughly $16.3 million more per week, which is an increase of 165% in wages as compared to before the law was passed. Overall, workers earned an additional $847.6 million in income annually. 

With the new increase, workers can expect to take home even more, as the minimum pay rate has increased from $17.96 to $19.56 per hour. The nearly $2 increase reflects the 2024 phase-in rate of $18.96 plus an added inflation adjustment of 3.15 percent. Next year, on April 1, 2025, according to the regulations, the minimum pay rate will again increase and reflect a base pay of $19.96 per hour plus an adjustment for inflation. 

From then on, New York City delivery workers will continue to see annual adjustments announced annually.

Delivery Drivers Locked Out of Apps?

While the new law is a significant victory for minimum-wage workers in New York City, the fight doesn’t end here. One primary concern many delivery workers fear is company retaliation. Many fear the apps may try to restrict the number of deliveries workers can receive or lock them out of the platforms altogether. Justice for App Workers (JFAW), a national coalition representing more than 130,000 rideshare drivers and delivery workers, is calling for change.

JFAW has vigorously supported the minimum wage law but also believes that in order to ensure the new changes make a real impact, the government should include lockout protections in conjunction with the wage increase. However, earlier this year, a spokesperson for the DCWP told StreetsBlog, an online news platform founded in 2006, that “mass lockouts” were not occurring.

According to the DCWP, they’ve found the number of orders received by the app stands at 2.6 million per week, which reflects the same numbers before the DCWP began enforcing the minimum pay rate. The change seen may be due to the options provided to the app companies through the new law, which allows them to choose one of two methods to calculate pay for workers. 

The first method allows the company to pay its workers a rate of $17.96 an hour, which includes the hours the worker is logged into the app and waiting for deliveries. The second allows the app to pay its workers a rate of $29.93 an hour; however, the hours included are only for the time it takes the worker to make the delivery, not the wait times.

According to the delivery workers, the apps have mostly opted to use the second method and have also begun pre-scheduling shifts to decrease on-call time. As a result, many workers have claimed to have not only lost their ability to choose their work hours, but if they fail to pre-schedule their shifts, they are unable to log into the app. 

If you are an app-based worker located in New York City and believe your hours have been restricted due to the new wage increase, we may be able to help you. For more information, connect with a Morgan & Morgan attorney by completing our free, no-obligation case evaluation form today.