and comments by the insurance adjustor, notes from her own lawyer, and a report from an IME (‘Independent Medical Evaluation’) carried out by a neurologist hired by the insurance company.
With a somber face, judge Good had his two toasts with butter and orange marmalade and his strong but creamy instant coffee with lots of sugar, without hardly saying a word or raising his eyes to meet his wife’s. He barely acknowledged her waving bye-bye and leaving before him. He already had pictured the accident in his mind and had an inkling of its repercussions, actual physical injuries to the occupants and pondered the situation, especially the legal reach, monies demanded, and the very validity of the claim.
And there were complications. The ‘accident’ seemed to him simple and mild enough judging by what he had read so far. But its very mild degree and yet having reached the stage of litigation, plus its having come to his court after two other judges had recused themselves, made it automatically complicated. Very complicated. And not as a tough judicial assessment, but in the likely repercussions that would follow after a decision, ANY decision, especially his. He wished he had tried harder to recuse himself as did his colleagues. His wife’s familiarity with the case should have been further argued with his Chief Judge enough to rule him out as ‘partial to the case,’ just as the lawyers in the case would accept and discard potential jurors… But he hadn’t been that lucky. Shocks!
At least he was consoled by having secured the presence of jurors and not a ‘one judge decision’ that so often mars State Supreme Court’s cases of liability, personal injury, labor, employment and even professional malpractice and misconduct. That -the presence of jurors for this case- had been his Chief Judge’s only allowance to him; and with that, he had agreed to be the judge – instead of the Chief letting Kenneth Good get away and ducking it altogether; with no more judges left, the case would have had to be sent to another venue if he had excused Good. Thus judge Good felt that at least the final outcome would not be on him but on the jurors…
The claim of injuries suffered followed what appeared to have been a trivial car-to-car bump from behind: The claimant did not hit anything with her head and had no external wounds or bruises. AND neither car had any visible damage to their respective rear and front bumpers! The law suit was all by the female front passenger in the car up front, the wife of the driver. He had no complaint whatsoever, but his wife claimed immediate, constant headaches, whiplash of her neck, and physical changes in her brain and eyes, all set in motion by powerful lawyers and backed by several medical specialists, expert witnesses for her. The moneys demanded were 1 million bucks.
The obvious important factor in the case was that the owner of the delivery truck that bumped hers was a large interstate company with big pockets. Hers was a much smaller sedan parked by a sidewalk in a gentle downhill with its front wheels turned to the curve. It appears, as agreed by both sides, that the delivery truck behind hers had been exited by its driver, apparently ‘in neutral,’ and that somehow, its break ‘slipped’ and the vehicle rolled down against the rear of the sedan which then was pushed with its front right wheel over the curve a couple of yards further down. Just that.
Issues that deserve further concerns on the side (chuckling to some) were, first, that the woman-claimant was herself an insurance adjustor, thus fully aware of the workings of the personal injury system, so often subject to sizable winnings, especially with her not having returned to work after 2 years since the accident. Second, her lawyer was a known high stakes liability and malpractice attorney who had just run a successful bid for an important the State post. On matters of claimed injuries, real or not, he almost always filled his clients’ pockets – and his!…
With judge Good presiding, the picking of jurors (six and one alternate) took the whole morning. Most candidates, a good twenty, recused themselves or were discarded because of their middle-to-high education, profession, and/or their acquaintance with injuries and liability pay offs one way or another. In late afternoon both lawyers gave their opening statements which brought out the details of the case making it clear how obvious was that one side demanded big money, no matter what, and that the other was hopelessly attempting a complete dismissal as ridiculous.
They finished that first day with just the two lawyers’ initial talk and blabber.
Early on Tuesday, that is by 10 AM, the claimant’s lawyer started with his experts, first an orthopedic surgeon, to explain how his client’s head was jolted violently back and forth even if it did not hit anything. X-rays of her neck only revealed to him mild, age-related arthritis. His bland testimony was no big deal to either side.
A chiropractor followed, also on his side, repeating the same thing and accompanying his explanations with a stand up partial skeleton of head-and-spine (plastic, presumably); its skull, freely pivoting, wobbled back and forth vigorously by the chiropractor as he spoke, all quite graphic for the jurors.
An ophthalmologist went next, testifying also for the plaintiff, explaining how in his opinion the woman’s bilateral, incipient cataracts were also due to such reported jolt. The insurance company lawyer, on cross examination made him admit that at the claimant’s age, her early 60s, millions of regular people without prior head or neck injuries have beginning signs of cataracts, so that just about 1/3 of all seniors have them… The matter was left there, the eye doctor’s testimony not having really helped the woman’s claim. Presiding judge Good wondered in his mind why this specialist had even agreed to testify for the woman; probably they’ve paid him well…
Last for the plaintiff came a neurologist, clearly a foreign born, probably a South East Asian, who asserted for the jurors, going over the pictures of the woman’s brain MRI, that a couple of tiny bilateral white ‘comas’ (which he called ‘scars’) in the white matter of the middle of her brain, were ‘post-traumatic’….
“Do you see those tiny spots, doctor, in many healthy people of her age who otherwise never reported any head trauma or jolts directly or indirectly?” asked the insurance company lawyer on cross examination.
“Actually yes,” the Asian guy admitted, “apart from M.S. we do see them often with advancing age and vascular disease, even in migraines, but most of the time we do not have an explanation for them.”
“And you even call those spots in her MRI ‘UBOs’ -that is, Unidentified Bright Objects- sort of taking away a significance of disease or severity, don’t you?”
………. “Aaaaah… Yes!”
“But you still call these ‘Post-traumatic,’ don’t you?”
“Well, yes. Given the sudden onset of her symptoms right after the accident…”
“And yet her symptoms are all subjective, unverifiable, aren’t they, doctor? Isn’t it all just her word?”
…“Yes, I guess they are unverifiable… But they still may be post-traumatic.”
“Yes, they may. All just for your authority, your word, for your paid testimony, doctor?”
“Objection!” screamed the plaintiff’s lawyer.
“I withdraw it, Your Honor. No further questions,” said the insurance lawyer.
“You may step down,” judge Good told the Asian expert. And so this doctor too left the room as had done the three previous witnesses. Judge Good wondered the same in his mind, all those experts attesting to the same ‘post-traumatic’ nature of a claim, without any proof. And he wondered too about himself, he judging the whole liability process of the case where big bucks make claims like this possible, so often with big, unfair winnings…
Done with the plaintiff’s four
