You could well be right.Honestly, it sounds like a lawyer read the story and had dollar signs register in his eyes like they used to show in cartoons. Folks like that used to be called ambulance chasers. I can't say if that's what happened in this case but it was the first thing I thought of when I heard there was a lawsuit.
Another thing that could point towards not only an ambulance chaser, but perhaps a low skill ambulance chaser is the speed at which the suit was filed.
I know that US BAR ethics restrict ways in which attorneys can contact people for legal services. Though it is entirely possible that the family found the attorney, if the attorney found the family, how did he or she do it? Can attorneys "cold call" potential clients?