My feelings about personal injury lawyers are not universally negative, despite numerous examples of their misbehavior. I even harbor a certain tenderness toward them. This is because of their many clever billboard advertisements in Houston, which bring me daily amusement during my various commutes around the city.
“Advocatus sed non latro, res miranda populo.”
The above Latin tag, usually applied to St. Ives (or Yves or Ivo), Patron of Lawyers, can be translated, “A lawyer but not a crook, a thing wondrous to the people!” It has the amusing implication that, in the case of lawyers, bare honesty itself can count as a miracle worthy of canonization. Some of my lawyer friends bristle when I deploy it. Others grimly smile at its truth. Your legal mileage may vary.
Perhaps no group of attorneys is more associated with such cynicism as the variety known as personal injury lawyers or, more popularly, ambulance chasers. We all know the destructive ridiculousness of such attorneys who pursue suits against MacDonald’s for making the coffee you spilled on yourself “too hot.” Such lawyers will sue the weather station for getting the prediction wrong, thus causing the plaintiff to dress wrongly and catch the flu. Personal injury lawyers will even sue New York City on your behalf after you got injured trying to commit suicide by laying down on the railroad track. I would like to say I made up these well-known actual cases, but the claimed torts are stranger than fiction. In the last-mentioned case, the plaintiff was awarded $14 million.
The ambulance chasers are in the news again for reasons that, unfortunately, give grounds for popular cynicism. Earlier this year, the trial of two attorneys accused of orchestrating what has become known as Operation Sideswipe began. Operation Sideswipe is a massive fraud operation in which New Orleans attorneys hired people to load up in cars in Louisiana, enter I-10 in spots where they would not likely be seen or recorded, then cause collisions with eighteen-wheelers. The lawyers sued the trucking companies. They also worked with doctors who would then bill insurance companies massive amounts for the injuries, real and imagined, of the “slammers” who caused the collisions. The operation went on for years until a federal investigation began in 2019 that yielded dozens of convictions. We are finally getting to the alleged real evil geniuses behind it.
Yet, despite this most recent long-running example of misbehavior, my feelings toward this particular breed of lawyers are not universally negative. I even harbor a certain tenderness toward them. Part of my positivity comes from assenting to the words of attorney friends who bristle at my lawyer jokes. As they rightly remind me, the line of good lawyers extends beyond St. Ives and that other patron, St. Thomas More—a good thing, considering that we must sometimes face the bad ones.
The other part you might find frivolous, but, in the words of a famous naval hero, “I yam what I yam.” The ambulance chasers bring me daily amusement.
Houston is a massive city in size and in numbers. The city of Houston alone is 640 square miles with 2.3 million people. Greater Houston is many, many times bigger both in size (over 10,000 square miles) and population (more than 7.8 million). Unless one is blessed to be in very particular neighborhoods, it is a driving city. One spends a great deal of time in the car, sometimes moving at great rates of speed, often creeping along or even sitting as five of six lanes of freeway are blocked for construction or accidents.
Since moving here four years ago, I have seen more cars completely engulfed in flame than in my previous forty-eight years of existence. Recently, I crept by a car that lay turtle-like on its top shell, having flipped off the twenty-foot-high express lane running in the middle of U. S. 59. Because one spends so much time in the car, Greater Woodlands-Houston-Pasadena-Sugar Land (or whatever the demographers now call it) is a cornucopia of billboards.
The billboard advertisers range from restaurants to universities to insurance companies to you-name-it. But the greatest of these are ambulance chasers. In the twenty-one mile stretch of 59 I traverse every day from Sugar Land to my university job, there are literally dozens of personal injury billboards to choose from.
Some of those advertisements betray a desire to row against the current of untrustworthiness that too many ambulance chasers bob along in. These ads usually feature middle-aged men (black, white, Asian of some sort) in suits staring seriously out at us motorists above the words “Personal Injury Attorney,” a phone number, and a website. Some dip their toes into heartfelt statements of concern. Gallo and Uwalaka, two attractive black women attorneys of Nigerian descent, exclaim, “We take your injury seriously” as they look down with nearly menacing faces and crossed arms. As I look, the voices I imagine they speak with say, “We Nigerian-Americans are the smartest ethnic group in the country and have the most Ph.D. degrees, but, if we had to, we would physically fight for you.”
Morgan and Morgan, the largest personal injury firm in the country, similarly uses a largely straightforward approach. Their ads often use double entendre to boast: “Size does matter.” The current ad on my commute, however, uses images more than words: a wizened, rich-looking old white guy (founder John Morgan, I presume?) points a solitary finger in the air as if he were Moses or Hammurabi. As with Gallo and Uwalaka, I am somehow comforted looking at it.
Yet, if it were only these tame ads, I would not be entranced. Other lawyers, perhaps not trusting to their intimidating or obviously successful looks, use a variety of dramatic and humorous effects summoned by imagery, language, or both designed to be unforgettable on their own.
A common theme is that the attorney is some sort of weapon. Nationally famous Jim Adler, “The Hammer,” uses ads with an 18-wheeler being struck by a giant sledge. I like the gavel-bearing, enormous hat-wearing black lawyer D’Angelo Lowe, who looks as though he belongs in an early-eighties rap group and advertises as “The Insurance Outlaw.”
The best of the weapon-wielders, however, is Husein Hadi, “The Texas Torch,” whose offices are in a building owned by my children’s school. His ads feature himself firing a blowtorch at the hypothetical defendant. What adds to his charm is that he (or his ad men) apparently believe that people are motivated to read ads that are upside down. I think he’s right since I instinctively turn my head even though the ads are recognizable. One suspects such adjustments for reading the ad may have contributed to an accident at least once, but, then again, that’s true of lots of ads.
Hilda Sibrian, a Spanish-speaking attorney, has no weapon but her pretty face, but looks out at us on the highway beside a large, bearded, Latino-looking guy in sunglasses, cowboy hat, and suit holding up a wad of bills. I think we get the idea.
Brian White’s gimmick is, I suppose that he will deliver the money (slogan: “Get Brian! Get Paid!”) by using the deadly weapon that is himself. He is currently doing a flying ninja kick on his billboard as his tie blows in the wind behind him.
As a word guy, I appreciate linguistically clever ads. I’m as impressed by Steve Lee’s simple dad-joking ads as I am by his pictures of Astros All-Star shortstop Jeremy Peña. The 2022 World Series MVP’s image sends the message that famous people trust and hang around with Lee—he must be good! Of course, he uses Mr. Peña in conjunction with another pun to introduce his catchphrase: “Big hit? Follow the LEEder!”
Former Texas prosecutor Matthew C. Stano has “CALL STANO” in dramatically large letters behind his picture. This ad subliminally appeals to those who remember Jack Lord’s character on Hawaii Five-O signing off by telling his partner, Danny Williams, “Book ‘em, Danno!”
One female attorney uses simple rhyme to both teach you how to pronounce her name and cement it in your memory. “Something wrong? Call Ann Phoong.” My favorite in this category, however, is the firm Pusch and Wynne, who have provided a great deal of drama since I moved to Houston.
Four years ago, the ads bearing the legend “We Push! You Win!” featured Anthony Pusch, a cueball-bald short Germanic white guy, and his tall, goateed Vietnamese partner, Chi-Hung David Nguyen, whose surname is usually pronounced “Win.” In addition to their own name joke, they sometimes had pictures of the main ingredient of guacamole and the phrase “Avocados at Law” in one corner of their ads. This little joke on the Spanish name for lawyers, “abogados,” forever endeared them to me.
In 2024, however, trouble entered this legal paradise. Pusch sued Nguyen over a variety of claims of legal and financial wrong. At some point in 2024, the two made amends and even put up some ads that alluded to their feud. However, by April 2025, the troubles proved intractable. Pusch pushed Nguyen out into the wind.
To save the slogan, however, Pusch got attorney Bob Wynne to join the firm. Pusch & Nguyen was now Pusch & Wynne. Importantly, for brand recognition and my drive-time delight, the firm can still both Push and Win.
I see more visual possibilities. Wynne is an enormous, long-haired, bearded doppelgänger for the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Thor. I keep waiting for Wynne to appear in a winged helmet and swing a massive hammer. Thus far, I am disappointed. On 59, he merely towers over Pusch, joining him in a Wonder-Twins-power fist-bump. Perhaps Jim Adler has trademarked even Norse mythological hammers?
Of the making of advertising, there is no end. Maybe I am too much of a modern, but I am glad there isn’t. My maternal grandfather used to say that the ads were more clever than the shows on television. You might object that the reason they are more clever is that advertisers are even more crooked than the lawyers. They sell you products and services with the somewhat blasphemous promise of a this-worldly salvation that will distract you from permanent things.
It’s probably true at some level. Even so, I know at least one ambulance chaser whose advertising makes clear the limitations of what he can do for you. Willie D. Powells III, a dashing black Houston lawyer with a neat mustache, flamboyant dreadlocks, and a glorious tuxedo, greets me every afternoon as I enter 59 from the Richmond Avenue ramp. With his head tossed back in a triumphant laugh, he declares to us through the sign: “Jesus Saves! Willie Wins!”
That kind of honesty in advertising? A wonder to the people.
__________
The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will you help us remain a refreshing oasis in the increasingly contentious arena of modern discourse? Please consider donating now.
The featured image is “Lawyer Going to Court” (c. 1860), by Thomas Couture, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
