While many pundits wring their hands over supposedly frivolous lawsuits, few lament the growing extinction of our most precious civil justice right – the Jury Trial.
The jury is the voice of the people. It tells all of us – rich or poor, corporation or individual, man or woman – what justice is.
In a one-week jury trial in Waukesha county last week, tried by Atty. Ann S. Jacobs, the people spoke. And our client received justice.
Our client – a mom and Sunday School teacher – was the unfortunate victim of not one but two rear-end crashes separated by a year in between. With a history of serious pre-existing issues, these two crashes added on a significant layer of additional pain and disability. In what can only be described as a complicated set of legal maneuvers, one of the attorneys (crash #2) stipulated to liability, meaning he agreed his client was at fault and a cause of injury to our client. The other (crash #1) insisted that our client (who was rear-ended at a yield sign while she was trying to merge onto a 45 mph road) wast at fault for the crash. This meant at trial, both responsibility and the amount of damages was at issue.
Pre-suit, the defendants each offered $25,000 (totaling $50,000) to our client to settle.
The jury awarded just over $180,000. It found our client did nothing wrong in the first crash, and found 100% responsibility on the striking driver.
So what do we take away from this verdict? First, being an “egg shell plaintiff” – someone who has a preexisting condition – doesn’t mean people get to hurt you. Juries can understand what came before and what came after. Second, Juries can understand when you’re actually at fault and when an insurance company is just trying to whittle down a verdict. Finally, if your lawyer doesn’t try cases, you’ll never have the opportunity for a jury to vindicate you. Many people call themselves “trial lawyers.” Not very many put their money where their mouth is. At Jacobs Injury Law, we try cases.
**Legal Disclaimer – past results cannot guarantee future results. The amount of the verdict may or may not be altered in post-trial motions (we won’t know for a while).
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