$300,000 Jury Verdict For Victim Considerable Hurt In SUV Accident
Experienced attorneys recognize that being able to show that a person was wrong or lied in regard to one portion of their claim is ofttimes enough to be able to rebut their entire story. Pull at one thread of a story and it may all come apart. The hard part is discovering that thread. One technique that may be very effective is to look for too many details. People who are making up a story far too often do not keep the story simple. They embellish it in an effort to make it seem believable.
Consider, for example, a matter that involved a vehicle accident which happened in a four way intersection. An SUV went into an intersection as a woman was in the intersection on her bicycle. There were no bystanders in the area who saw the accident. According to the victim, she had entered the intersection only after having stoped at the stop sign controlling the intersection. The driver of the SUV, though, claimed that the plaintiff was responsible because she did not yield the right of way before entering the intersection. T
This would have been a simple, clean story. Without witnesses it would usually come down to whether a jury would believe the driver or the bicyclist. But the driver went further. The driver additionally stated that the woman was hard to see because she was wearing dark clothes, and was riding a bicycle without proper illumination.
The woman was thrown onto the pavement with such force that she suffered a serious injury to her knee. As a result of this injury she had to have arthroscopic surgery.
Two very important things were done right in this lawsuit. First, following the accident the fire department discovered a dislodged bicycle light at the scene of the accident. Second, the law firm that helped the bicyclist uncovered this information and called a member of the fire department to testify at the trial of the case. With this information the jury took only 1 hour to find for the bicyclist. The jury awarded her $300,000.
This lawsuit presented an example where the lack of witnesses to the accident might have prevented the plaintiff from getting compensation for her injuries. It is impossible to say what motivates a person to distort the facts or even plain lie about the way an accident happened. Presumably, the defendant had enough insurance to cover the victim