Ken Amos and William Gula (St. Petersburg, FL) (Automobile Liability) obtained its second zero verdict in two months in a rear-end collision auto accident. The four day trial was held in Tampa, Hillsborough County before judge Herbert Baumann, Jr. It took the jury one hour to deliberate before returning a zero verdict in favor of a GEICO insured who was accused failing to maintain a safe distance between the Plaintiff’s vehicle and his vehicle, causing a rear-end collision. The Plaintiff put on four medical providers as witnesses to the case for causation and damages. Dr. Paul Zak testified that the Plaintiff had herniated discs from the accident at C5-6 and C6-7, requiring either a double discectomy or a double fusion at the cost of $126,000. He opined that regardless of which surgery she elected they were similar in cost. He also opined that she had future needs for MRI’s and x-rays at the cost of $2,200 for each MRI. He also gave a cost for future trigger point injections at $722 each.
Chiropractor Steven Steller testified that the 28 year old Plaintiff needed chiropractic therapy twice a month at the cost of $500 per month for the next 50 years, totaling $300,000. The Plaintiff had $26k in past medical bills. We had a $10k policy for the client. Total economic damages exceeded $450,000. The Plaintiff left it up to the jury to decide the amounts for past and future pain and suffering.
During the course of the trial, Mr. Amos was able to get Dr. Zak to testify that he was not sure within a reasonable degree of medical certainty that she would need the surgery despite his testimony to the contrary on direct exam. The Plaintiff conveniently telephoned Dr. Zak the Friday before trial to elect to have the surgery. This was introduced into evidence through the Plaintiff.
The Plaintiff treated with Chiropractor Steven Steller. Mr. Amos was able to get Dr. Steller to admit that he was treating patients with “bad employees” and that he violated his own standard of care to the Plaintiff. Mr. Amos discovered during cross examination that Dr. Stellar had altered his own records and failed to properly document his prescriptions for the MRI’s.
However, the deciding factor was liability and the fact pattern leading up to the collision. The Plaintiff was 26 years old at the time of the accident and had recently fallen in love with her boyfriend. She worked at a nursery less than a mile from the accident scene. She got off work at 1:00 PM. She was excited to see her new love. It was Saturday afternoon and the weather was beautiful. She was a typical young female excited about her relationship and it was time to decide what they were going to do on that Saturday night. We obtained her cell phone records and discovered that from 1:07 PM until 1:14 PM when the collision occurred that she had engaged in 18 text messages in 7 minutes and 21 seconds. Some of them were group messages. She denied it on the stand and said she only sent two text messages while sitting at the red light before making a left turn and slamming on her brakes when our client rear-ended her. We called an AT&T representative to explain the text records to establish that she lied. We also introduced evidence from our insured who testified that the Plaintiff swerved in front of him and slammed on her brakes, causing the collision. The angle of the impact of the Plaintiff’s tailgate on her SUV supported his testimony. So the theme for the defense was entitled, “Shifting the Blame”. What really happened was not what the Plaintiff was trying to sell the jury. We proved that there were four vehicles involved in the collision. Vehicle number one was stopped in the middle of the intersection for no reason, causing vehicle number 2 to slam on its brakes, causing vehicle 3, the Plaintiff, to slam on her brakes because she was switching lanes while texting and not paying attention to the road ahead of her, which in turn caused our client to hit her. The accident was unavoidable due to her cutting him off while texting and driving. The jury agreed.
Of note was an interesting situation during the course of the trial. Mr. Amos was in the restroom on day three of the trial and a juror walked in and began to laugh behind Mr. Amos’ back. The juror then blurted out, “She does not know what pain is.” Despite knowing that this juror was clearly in favor of the defense and no one else heard the comment, Mr. Amos held his integrity and candor to the Court and our judicial system. He immediately reported it to the judge and the opposing attorneys. We had no alternate juror for this case, so it was either going to be a mistrial or we stipulate to five jurors. Before a decision was made by the parties and the Court, the judge took a considerable amount of time recognizing Mr. Amos’ integrity and candor on the record for disclosing what appeared to be juror misconduct. Obviously, the parties agreed to move forward with five jurors and it proved to be the right thing to do. It was a clean trial and there are no appellate issues that hold weight for the Plaintiff. The defense has a $10k PFS that expired at the beginning of the case and the defense intends to enforce it and seek fees and costs.