When injured victims seek out a personal injury attorney they are looking for someone with integrity. They have already been victimized. The last thing they need is to be further victimized by an attorney who lacks credibility or character.
On that note, let’s talk about Solomon Neuhardt, a personal injury attorney in Montana, who like personal injury attorneys has his own Web site and blog. He even bills himself as the author of several books that provide information for injured consumers. There’s nothing wrong with any of that. What’s atrocious is that some of the material he has posted on his blogs and passes off as his own appears to be plagiarized material, according to numerous sources.
Is it true Solomon Neuhardt that you copied word for word another attorney’s copy-written work and posted it as your own on your blog? Is the “Five Fatal Mistakes That Will Wreck Your Montana Accident Case” book that you offer to give to your Web site visitors a plagiarized book as well? I hope not, but I’m skeptical. Why? Here are the two sentences you use on your Web site to market this book, “Five Fatal Mistakes That Will Wreck Your Montana Accident Case”: “In this book I reveal what the insurance company will try to do to defeat or reduce your claim. I’ll show you how your own health insurance company may want to get your entire settlement for itself and what you can do about it.”
Let us now visit esteemed Virginia personal injury attorney and marketing guru, Ben Glass’ Web site and read his marketing statement for his ORIGINAL work “Five Fatal Mistakes That Will Wreck Your Virginia Accident Case.” Here it is: “In this book I reveal what the insurance company will try to do to defeat or reduce your claim. I’ll show you how your own health insurance company may want to get your entire settlement for itself and what you can do about it.”
Word for word – lifted from Ben Glass’ Web site? Apparently! According to e-mails that have been circulating the Internet this week, Neuhardt also posted a portion of Mr. Glass’ book on his Web site, passing it off as his own, only substituting the “Virginia” with “Montana.” It appears that the blog in question has since been taken down. But traces of evidence of plagiarism (as seen in the example above) still remain on Neuhardt’s Web site. When confronted, Neuhardt reportedly claimed that someone he hired to write for him plagiarized Glass’ work. He denied doing it himself. Well, at least Neuhardt’s writers chose to copy the work of an accomplished personal injury attorney and writer.
I don’t know how good or how competent an attorney Mr. Solomon Neuhardt is. However, if I were seriously injured in a car accident, I would think twice before approaching an attorney, who would take the easy way out, pluck out someone else’s words (a product of that person’s hard work, ideas and experience) and pass them off as his own. Such an act of plagiarism lacks integrity, character and class, in my opinion.