Let me be the first to say this seems like a outrageous verdict by the jury.
How a jury could have awarded the plaintiff $$ under these facts is just baffling.
I don’t even have a funny witty reply to the verdict. It just seems crazy to me IF the facts are as they were reported below in this case by Online Reporting.
And for injury lawyers like myself this case is an absolute DISASTER.
Why?
Because this verdict will become the poster child of the insurance industry telling you the public why ALMOST ALL jury verdicts are like this.
Pittsburgh Wrongful death, medical malpractice, slip and fall car accident and criminal defense attorney Bernie Tully can tell you with absolute certainty that in 90% of the cases the jury gets it right. In fact if anything juries at least in the Western District of Pa. tend to give defendants and insurance companies the benefit of the doubt.
There is one ? Pittsburgh Wrongful Death,Medical Malpractice,slip and fall,car accident and criminal lawyer Bernie Tully will ask the readers of this blog.
Why is it when an injured victim of a car accident or medical malpractice or slip and fall case gets a $0 dollar verdict aren’t those cases reported?
Why isn’t that picked up by the newspapers?
Those decisions in which the victims are not at fault and get $0 dollars are just as outrageous as this one.
Yet those verdicts never get reported in my experience.
Why?
Its because those verdicts are so common these days.
And that is just as much of a tragedy as the case below.
“Lawyer Joseph Wilson said he knew he faced an uphill climb in suing on behalf of a woman who struck her head on the ladder of a bucket-truck lift that had been lowered across a sidewalk, partially blocking it.
The ladder the woman walked into was bright orange, and she had walked past the truck three times prior to the accident. But most damning was video footage showing the woman engrossed in her cellphone as she struck the ladder and collapsed onto the concrete.
“The common-sense argument [the defense] was making was that this woman wasn’t paying attention,” said Wilson.
But a DeKalb County jury found that Wilson’s client, DeToya Moody, was only 8 percent liable for her injuries, which means she was awarded 92 percent of a $175,000 verdict.
Wilson said he had no idea where the 8 percent figure came from. Even after the reduction, the $161,00 award was $6,000 more than he had asked for at closing, and well beyond the $5,000 the defense had offered to settle the case.
Robert Finlayson II who defended the company that was using the truck said via email that he would contest the verdict.
“We were disappointed with the verdict, and we do plan to challenge it at the trial level and on appeal,” said Finlayson.
Well that is how I see it.
What do you think about this?
Thanks for reading.
Bernie the Attorney