Thorough Investigation By Lawyer Increases Value Of Matter Involving Severely Hurt Bicyclist
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-09-11 22:36:57 | Word Count: 559
Experienced attorneys know that being able to show that a person was wrong or lied about one portion of their claim is frequently sufficient to be able to disprove their whole claim. Pull at one thread of a story and it may all come apart. The difficult element is discovering that thread. One technique that can be useful is to look for too many details. People who are making up a story far too frequently do not keep the story simple. They embellish it in an effort to make it appear believable.
Consider, as an illustration, a matter that involved a motor vehicle accident which happened in a four way intersection. An SUV drove into an intersection while a woman was in the intersection riding 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, however, stated that the bicyclist was negligent because she did not yield the right of way before going into the intersection. This would have been a simple, clean story. There may well have been no way to rebut it and it would simply be a situation of who was more credible - the driver or the bicyclist. Still the driver did not stop there. The defendant also claimed that was difficult to see the plaintiff since she had on dark clothes, and was riding a bicycle without proper illumination.
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The impact threw her onto the pavement where she landed on and injured her knee. She eventually required arthroscopic surgery on the knee.
Two critical things were done correctly in this matter. First, after the accident the fire department discovered a dislodged bicycle light at the scene of the accident. Second, the law firm that handled the case on behalf of the victim learned about this information and called a member of the fire department to testify at the trial of the case. As a result the jury took only an hour to deliberate and came back with a finding in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars.
This lawsuit presented an example in which the lack of witnesses to the accident could have stopped the plaintiff from recovering 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 took place. There was nothing in the report of this matter to suggest that there was insufficient insurance and that the defendant was worried that the plaintiff would go after his personal assets. Presumably, the defendant knew the extent of the injury the bicyclist victim suffered due to the accident. Yet, if not for the testimony of the fire department member, the defendant's claims about the circumstances of the accident (which the jury obviously did not find credible) would in all probability have stopped the bicyclist victim from being compensated for her injury.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting catastrophic injury cases. For additional information on bicycle accident and about other cases including motor vehicle accident cases visit the websites
