Accidentally, On Purpose: The Making of a Personal Injury Underworld in America

by Ken Dornstein

Accidentally on Purpose is the first book to document the making of America's most peculiar criminal underworld. Not centered on the traditional activities of organized crime, this improbable underworld has been built from the raw material of faked personal injuries.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1996

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was a Worker's Comp insurance investigator I read this book and laughed out loud. Worker's Comp claim fraud has been with us since the Industrial Revolution and this book brilliantly goes into exhaustive detail about its origins. There are tales of workers mutilating themselves in the hopes of getting insurance money. It travels all the way up to the present tense and tells tales of illegal aliens getting paid a salary to set-up fake road injuries with innocent motorists.

I thought this book was better than "Fast Food Nation" at tracing corruption in our commercialized, litigation-mad society.

[Rick Steinmetz · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a personal injury attorney, this book was fascinating. The lengths to which the characters in this story went to create fake claims using real injuries and ultimately causing a man his life is unreal. I can only think that if they worked that hard for legitimate purposes they would have succeeded as attorneys and people.