$300,000 Jury Award For Victim Serious Hurt In SUV Accident
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-11-05 00:09:09 | Word Count: 620
When litigating a motor vehicle accident case, it can sometimes be necessary to be able to show that the defendant's story is not truthful. In certain cases all an attorney has to do in order to show this is to show that the defendant lied or told an account that was false in some aspect. This is frequently sufficient to cause doubt on the defendant's entire story. Show that one facet of the defendant's story is not truthful and a jury could in fact discount everything else the defendant says. One technique that may be useful is to look for too many details. Many times, if people are telling a lie, they try too hard to make the story appear consistent. One way they do that is by making up too many details - the types of details people who are telling the truth would normally not be likely to remember.
Take into account, for example, a lawsuit that concerned a motor vehicle accident which took place in a four way intersection. An SUV went into an intersection as a woman was in the intersection riding her bicycle. There were no witnesses to the accident. The bicyclist claimed that she had stopped at the stop sign prior to entering the intersection. However according to the driver, it was the bicyclist who was responsible for the accident by entering the intersection without yielding the right of way. This would have been a simple, clean story. Without witnesses it would normally be a matter of whether a jury would believe the driver or the bicyclist. But the driver went further. The driver also maintained that the woman was hard to see due to the fact that she had on dark clothes, and was riding a bicycle without proper illumination.
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The impact threw the bicyclist onto the pavement where she landed on and injured her knee. She ultimately needed arthroscopic surgery on the knee.
Two very important things were done right in this case. First, following the accident the fire department discovered a dislodged bicycle light at the location where the accident occurred. Second, the law firm that helped the bicyclist uncovered this finding and approached a member of the fire department to testify at the trial of the case. As a result the jury took only 1 hour to deliberate and came back with a finding in favor of the plaintiff in the amount of three hundred thousand dollars.
This matter presented a sample where the lack of witnesses to the accident could have prevented 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 how an accident happened. There was nothing in the documentation of this case to suggest that there was insufficient insurance and that the defendant was worried that the victim would go after his personal assets. There was nothing in the report of this lawsuit to suggest that the defendnat was unaware of the extent of the injury the bicyclist victim sustained as a result of the accident. Still, if not for the testimony of the fire department member, the defendant's statements about the circumstances of the accident (which the jury obviously did not find credible) would in all probability have blocked the bicyclist victim from being compensated for her injury.
Author Resource:-
Joseph Hernandez is an Attorney accepting bicycle accident cases. To learn more about bicycle accident and about other cases including motor vehicle accident cases visit the websites
