Reported in the Lawyers Weekly
In July of 2001, the plaintiff was a passenger in a car driven by her daughter. She was proceeding on a main street when an electrical contractor’s truck made a left turn in front of them, resulting in a collision. As a result of the accident, the victim suffered a displaced fracture of the distal right femur. In addition, she suffered an oblique fracture through the medial femoral condyle with displacement of the fragment posteriorly. The fracture line extended into the knee joint and there was associated lipohemarthrosis. The plaintiff's right wrist was also injured with a right radial styloid fracture. She required surgical intervention in the form of an open reduction internal fixation of right femur.
The plaintiff was required to stay in a rehabilitation facility for almost three weeks and had $78,000 in medical bills.
The defendant’s offer was only $50,000.00. As a result, the case went to mediation and eventually settled for $250,000.00. There were two at fault entities and each contributed $125,000.00. This was extremely difficult given the fact that the plaintiff testified during her deposition that her daughter did nothing wrong and was not negligent. As a result of this, the defense attorney moved for summary judgment (an effort to dismiss the case).
This motion was heard by the judge assigned and our attorneys were able to successfully avoid the dismissal. Our firm argues that the plaintiff’s testimony is not dispositive on the issue of negligence.
