None of the quotes below are mine:
This:
"Texas law will not allow anyone to purchase insurance for their intentional illegal acts. It's the same in every state. If you are found guilty, the insurance company cannot reimburse you, as a matter of law." -Charles Cotton
And this:
"My advice if you do decide to purchase one of these products would be to shop around. From what I saw when I was investigating, there are (at least) two different types of services: a. pre-paid legal services to help in criminal and/or civil defense, or b. insurance coverage to pay for monetary judgments brought against you. And there is lots of variation between different companies offering the same type service.
Personally, I chose a pre-paid legal service.
Again, take note of the different levels of service and benefits. I was unable to find any actual historical cases with incident details from any of the companies that I investigated. So all I had to go on was their terms of service. But, there is a lot of information there in the fine print - look at it carefully, and especially take note of what is NOT listed in those details."
http://texaschlforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=89075On CCW Safe:
"To be clear, we cover our members in critical self defense incidents where they in legal possession of a firearm. This is the same statement that you said US Law Shield made. Pretty simple.
When DOJ found the shooting of Michael Brown to be justified, Eric Holder had his team go after the PD and city. The only thing they could find was some old emails. These comments could quickly become twisted after a critical incident. I've written articles about this to include what happened in Ferguson. Nothing gets deleted ( Hey Hillary).
If you carry your gun legally and are involved in a critical self defense incident, CCW Safe with cover you. This is standard requirement for every company. Please keep in mind that CCW Safe cover you in all self defense incidents, not just shootings. If you are involved in a self defense incident and don't have a gun, but use your hands, we will cover you. If you are involved in a self defense incident and are in legal possession of a weapon, but don't use it, we will cover you. Again,
CCW Safe is based on the police union model. We follow the use of force continuum. You don't have to shoot someone to have protection.Look at our exclusions and compare our terms to our competitors. You won't find better protection. Again, read our terms. There are no weasel words or pages of exclusions. Your agreement is with CCW Safe, not someone else. This is an important point.
Again, thanks for letting me explain the benefits of CCW Safe. We don't do pressure sales or scare tactics. We try to work with Law Enforcement to make sure you are treated as a victim, not a suspect after a self defense incident. No caps on criminal and civil legal, investigators or expert witnesses. We respond to your scene and start working your defense from the beginning. We hire the best self defense attorneys to defend you. Our attorneys don't work off a commission program, but get paid for the work they perform. Our bond protection starts at $250,000 and goes up to $1,000,000. We recently posted a $500,000 bond for one of our members.
Our goal is to protect our members, just like our police unions protected us after a critical incident."
-John/CCW Safe
http://texaschlforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=80204&start=15And this:
"Thanks to a judge’s order late last month, carriers of concealed handguns in Texas are now a protected legal class. They can defend themselves against physical threats, but it seems they need all the help they can get against profit-minded lawyers.
Harris County civil court Judge Mike Miller ruled on July 27 that holders of Texas’s concealed-handgun license, or CHL, can band together in a class-action lawsuit against Texas Law Shield, a legal firm that’s ensconced itself deeply in the state’s gun-owning community — possibly in violation of the law, according to Texas Lawyer.
For a flat annual fee, Texas Law Shield says it will defend members against any civil or criminal charges that arise from their use of a gun. But now TLS itself stands accused of “barratry” — an archaic term that covers a host of legal abuses, from ambulance-chasing to excessive litigation to paying to receive clients.
It’s that last proviso that has TLS in hot water: A 2013 lawsuit by two Texas gun owners alleges that “most concealed handgun license (CHL) classes in Texas include a ‘pitch’ by a salesperson for Texas Law Shield, who encourages students to sign on to Texas Law Shield at a cost of about $130 a year for ‘peace of mind.'” In return, the suit alleges, TLS pays about 500 facilities that offer CHL courses — a prerequisite for anyone seeking a carry permit in Texas — $30 for each of their students that sign up for the company’s legal service. (The plaintiffs’ attorneys sought to make their suit a class action, inviting other CHL students who’d been solicited by TLS to join and receive compensatory damages from the company — whether they’d signed up for TLS’s services or not. Judge Miller approved that plan.)
TLS charges its members $131.40 a year if they have a concealed-carry license, and $89 a year if they don’t. But what members actually get in return — and who they’re getting it from — has aroused plenty of curiosity and skepticism among gun owners.
What exactly is TLS? It was founded in 2009 by a group of Houston lawyers after a public uproar over the case of Joe Horn, a 61-year-old Pasadena, Texas, man who fatally shot two Afro-Latino burglars, possibly in the back, outside his neighbor’s house after 911 dispatchers had told him not to interfere. A grand jury cleared Horn of any charges, but mounting a defense left Horn penniless and made his case a cause célèbre among Lone Star gun enthusiasts, who feared their use of deadly force could land them in court.
That left an opening for TLS to offer legal protection for uneasy gun owners. The company’s site claims that it’s not a law firm, but a “legal services provider.” Still, the company does employ six of its own lawyers to represent Houston-area members. The result is plenty of confusion even among well-informed gun owners as to what membership entails. Many who ask about TLS on Internet gun forums assume it’s insurance for those charged with a crime or sued in civil court; the NRA offers such an insurance policy that reimburses users for certain court expenses. But TLS refers its members directly to attorneys who handle their legal problems, purportedly at no extra cost. (A TLS spokesperson was not available for comment.)
“It is not a prepaid legal service, it is truly a retainer for a lawyer,” claimed Brian Mobley, a concealed-carry trainer in Texas who invites TLS to “discuss part of the Texas penal code in my CHL classes.” That distinction is important to many would-be members, as “prepaid legal services” have often been accused of bait-and-switch style scams, racking up fees for users.
But Charles Cotton — the controversial NRA board member and Texas attorney who helps run Texas CHL Forum, the comment board that Mobley commented on — insisted Mobley was mistaken. “Why do you say it’s not prepaid legal?” Cotton asked. “It is my understanding that the fee paid to Texas Law Shield is a flat fee annually. It’s not a retainer unless it’s a deposit against future billings.” Cotton added that he wasn’t telling readers whether or not to buy TLS’s coverage, “but if people are going to pitch these programs here on TexasCHLforum, I want to make sure our Members are thoroughly informed.”
https://www.thetrace.org/2015/08/texas-law-shield-concealed-carry-insurance-class-action-lawsuit/
