Terry Hummel
WHAT IS YOUR CASE WORTH?
Terry Hummel
Attorney
As a trial attorney at Schiff & Associates, Terry Hummel, Esq., handles a wide variety of litigation of personal injury claims. With more than 30 years of preparing lawsuits and successfully trying them to juries throughout the State of Ohio, Terry brings to his clients an ethic of work and service backed by substantial experience.
At Schiff & Associates, Terry observed: “we have dedicated, caring, highly-skilled and experienced attorneys and support staff. We have access to all of the resources and experts necessary to get the best results for our clients, always with the highest level of ethics and integrity demanded of the legal profession.
“As attorneys, our role in society is to obtain some level of justice for our clients,” Terry explained. “When someone is injured through the fault of others, an economic imbalance occurs due to expensive medical costs and loss of productivity. This impacts our clients, their families, and society as a whole. When we get compensation for our clients, we play a very significant role in restoring balance, which is the justice that our clients desire and deserve.
Many of our clients find themselves in a very bad place after an injury or death caused by another person. It’s very rewarding, both professionally and personally, to see how our efforts in obtaining settlements and verdicts help our clients get back to a better place in their lives.
Since graduating from the Capital University Law School (1982), Terry’s law practice and experience has involved thousands of personal injury and death claims in state and federal courts throughout Ohio and neighboring states, including Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. He has successfully handled a variety of injury and death claims involving all of the following:
Transportation: car, truck, motorcycle, train, airplane, bicycle, snowmobile, boat, personal watercraft;
Work and Premises: homes, businesses, shopping malls, stores, construction sites, manufacturing plants, warehouses, loading docks;
Medical and Nursing: drug companies, medical devices, nursing homes.
One memorable case for Terry was his fight for a widowed factory worker in her fifties who lived paycheck to paycheck. “Before her husband died, they owned and operated a significant farm in Northern Ohio. She was involved in a serious head-on collision and injured her back. After that she could not go back to her job and there were no other jobs that she was capable of doing. While waiting for her trial date her house went into foreclosure.
“Before the trial the insurance company refused to accept that she could not work and made a small offer to settle the case. We went to trial and the jury disagreed with them and returned a sizeable verdict and the judge awarded interest. That meant she could buy the farm that she and her husband had previously owned and she was able to manage it with the help of her adult children.”
Upon receiving his BA from Capital University in Bexley, Terry coached the Varsity debate squad for two years while attending the Capital University Law School at night. He also worked and mentored full-time at a law firm which handled a large number of personal injury claims, particularly railroad injury claims under the Federal Employers Liability Act (FELA).
He keeps a connection to Capital by judging mock trials at the law school, a commitment he’s upheld for the past five years.
Terry’s commitment to helping people, and his feeling that it is better to give than to receive, shows up in his relationship with clients. “A few years ago I had a client in his fifties come to settle a small personal injury case, and when he signed his papers I realized that this man could not read,” Terry remembered.
“I felt bad for him, so I offered to teach him how to read, and he agreed. So for the next six months he came to my office after hours, two days a week, and I taught him how to read. At the end of the process he was able to read a newspaper. He wrote me a letter afterwards and said it was one of the greatest joys in his life that he could read the newspaper every day.”
In order to stay on the leading edge of the law and tactics applicable to his craft, Terry is an active member of the Central Association of Justice, the Ohio Association of Justice, the Columbus Bar Association, and the Ohio State Bar Association. He participates as a learner and also as an instructor in at least twenty-four hours of continuing legal education seminars every two years.
Today, Terry lives in Blacklick, Ohio with his wife, Gail. He’s been involved with the business service organization Rotary for more than twenty years, and serves on the board at Gahanna Rotary. He supports the Buckeyes, and particularly enjoys basketball and football.