Bicyclist Awarded $300,000 For Considerable Injuries Sustained In Motor Vehicle Accident
By: J. Hernandez
Submitted: 2010-12-28 22:37:57 | Word Count: 567
Experienced lawyers realize that being able to show that a person was wrong or lied in regard to one aspect of their claim is frequently enough to be able to rebut their whole story. Reveal that one part of the defendant's story is not truthful and a jury could in fact disbelieve the remainder of the defendant's story. One way that may be effective is to look for too many details. People who are making up a story far too often fail to keep the story simple. They embellish it in an effort to make it seem credible.
Look at, as an illustration, a matter that concerned a motor vehicle accident which took place in a four way intersection. An SUV drove into an intersection as a woman was in the intersection riding her bicycle. There were no bystanders in the area who saw the accident. The bicyclist claimed that she had stopped at the stop sign prior to entering the intersection. The driver of the SUV, however, stated that the bicyclist was negligent due to the fact that she did not yield the right of way before going into the intersection. This would have been a simple, clean story. There would have been no way to invalidate it and it would simply be a matter of who was more believable - the driver or the bicyclist. Yet the driver did not stop there. The driver also maintained that the bicyclist was hard to see due to the fact that she was wearing dark clothes, and was riding a bicycle without appropriate 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 very important things were done right in this claim. First, following the accident the fire department spotted a dislodged bicycle light at the location where the accident occurred. Second, the law firm that represented the victim uncovered this information and called a member of the fire department to testify at the trial of the case. With this information the jury took just 1 hour to find for the bicyclist. The jury awarded her $300,000.
This claim presented an example in which the lack of witnesses to the accident might have prevented the bicyclist victim from recovering for her injuries. There is clearly no way for us to look inside the mind of a defendant to understand why he or she would distort the facts or even plain lie about how an accident took place. Presumably, the defendant had sufficient insurance to pay for the victim's compensation. There was nothing in the documentation of this matter to suggest that the defendnat was unaware of the extent of the injury the plaintiff suffered due to the accident. However, if not for the testimony of the fire department member, the defendant's statements about the circumstances of the accident (which the jury clearly did not find credible) could 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. To learn more about how a bicycle accident attorney may help you and about other cases including pedestrian accident cases visit the websites
