Jury Verdict After $50,000 Offer

Jury Verdict After $50,000 Offer

Our client, a forty-seven-year-old wife and mother, sustained what was first believed to be two disk bugles of the cervical spine when an eighteen-wheeler rear-ended her vehicle. Our client’s condition was later re-diagnosed as cervical dystonia, a rare, but serious, muscle disorder.

Before jury selection, the defendants admitted fault and agreed to pay the unpaid car repairs plus a 50 percent penalty, which totaled $2,000. The defendants argued our client suffered only a soft tissue injury, that she should have taken epidural steroid injections, and that the dystonia was not properly diagnosed nor was it caused by the wreck.

The defendants presented surveillance videos of our client shopping, walking, and driving. However, our firm presented proof that the injury was indeed serious, and that the activities shown on the video were the result of successful muscle injections, which she would need three to four times a year for the rest of her life. Sadly, the treatment requires that each year our client is incapacitated and in pain for two weeks.

Before trial and during jury deliberations, the defendants offered $50,000.

Through our firm’s tenacity, we secured jury awards for $41,837 for past medicals; $480,000 for future medicals; $100,000 for past mental pain and suffering; $1.3 million for future mental pain and suffering; $150,000 for loss of enjoyment of life; and $26,000 for loss of consortium to her husband, a local pediatrician.