My personal injury trial of a three car rear-end auto accident.
Trial day arrived and I was assigned to defend the middle vehicle of a three car auto accident. The plaintiff sued both my driver and the driver behind my client’s vehicle for rear ending her and causing injury. I had no client at the trial as my client had returned to Mexico and was nowhere to be found therefore making my defense all the more complicated. Co-defendant’s lawyer made much of attacking the plaintiff’s injuries through a long list of boring medical records and diagnoses. I took a different approach. During my cross-examination of the plaintiff, I was able to get her to physically demonstrate her difficulties encountered while swimming shortly after her accident. She made very guarded motions to the jury showing how difficult it was to move her arm in the sweeping motions of swimming. I then decided to have a little “fun” with the witness and asked her how she swam before the accident and she was quick to demonstrate full range of motion with her swimming arm making huge sweeping motions. I then asked her “You’re not having a problem now are you?” Very quickly, but too late at this point, she stopped and pulled her hand close to her and responded “no” in the most timid of ways. The jury actually laughed and I sat down. The plaintiff’s lawyer was asked if he had any redirect and he looked stunned and answered “no” himself. At the closing arguments stage of the trial, plaintiff’s lawyer asked a ridiculous amount of money for his client’s soft tissue injuries. Co-defendant’s lawyer argued in his own closing, rambling on about boring medical diagnoses making the jury fall asleep. I stood up when he was done and argued in my closing that the plaintiff has full range of motion. She demonstrated it. You saw it. She isn’t nearly as injured as she would have you believe. In the plaintiff lawyer’s reply to my argument, he cut his demand in half and the jury came back awarding only half of the injuries she claimed through her lawyer. Ultimately, my client paid nothing as I was able to argue to the court that the statute governing the Illinois Insurance Guaranty Fund prohibits recovery against the Fund where the plaintiff has available motor vehicle insurance. Moral of this story: Keep it simple and hit the adverse witness hard wherever possible.
My client’s traffic case.
I was hired to represent a client for a traffic case in Will County. It was a cyclist versus motor vehicle contact case and I represented the driver on his ticket for failure to yield. As I was preparing the case, I appeared in court with my client for the first time and obtained a new status date, noting that the cyclist was present in court as the State’s key witness. I quickly obtained a new status date, but before I got the date, I took special note that the cyclist was a young man, a teenager, in fact. Therefore, I decided to set the next date to coincide on Valentine’s Day, figuring, teenager plus and Valentine’s Day might mean that special day may, in fact, take priority over attending court on a traffic matter as a witness especially where no injury was involved and there was no incentive to be present beyond being a witness for the State. Well, Valentine’s Day did indeed arrive and so did our case. No witness present. Ready for trial. Case dismissed. My client was very aware of my strategy ahead of time and was appreciative for the result and my forward thinking. Now was it Valentine’s Day that kept the witness away or was it for some other reason? Regardless, I take every tactical advantage I can get without telegraphing to the other side, my strategy. I practice law with a strong emphasis on the creative aspect of the practice where others may not.
The heat of arbitration.
I was hired to defend a client in an auto accident case involving a question of lights. Who had the green? Who had the red? Earlier in the discovery phase of the case, I was unable to get a copy of the traffic court file on the plaintiff as Cook County was unable to provide same. All the data went conveniently missing. I sent a request to admit facts to the plaintiff since it was the plaintiff who was identified as being ticketed on the police report as running the red light. The request to admit facts came back denying that the plaintiff pled guilty for running a red light. Since police reports are not admissible in arbitration of a the case per the rules, I decided to explore the traffic case during arbitration through “other means.” On my cross-examination of the plaintiff, I decided to ask out of the blue if he pled guilty to running a red light to which he responded “yes.” His lawyer was stunned and actually looked at his client and reinforced the answer by asking: “You did?!” I prevailed on the arbitration obtaining a defense verdict for my client. The significance of a guilty plea in a traffic case is that it becomes admissible in a civil law suit as evidence of negligence. My philosophy is not to cross the line though I may throw objects over the line to obtain the advantage. In this instance it worked.