Court Case Part 1: The Accident through Opening Arguments

For those of you who don’t know, this case stems from a minor accident I was involved in on June 10, 2006. Basically, it was the day of Garett’s graduation party and my dog, Emma had developed an itchy sore on her neck due to not being dried all the way under her collar at the groomers. Since my parents were really busy with the party, they asked me to take Emma to the vet. My friend Chris got in the car with me and we headed to downtown Toledo. I wasn’t familiar with the area and passed the place, so I turned around to look for it and, when I saw it on the right, I began to move over into the right lane to turn and I bumped into a dodge neon that was next to me (I was in our Ford F-150). The rearview mirror of the neon put a big dent in the fender of the truck, but the neon just had a scratch on the mirror (it didn’t break) and a scratch down the side from our running board. We all pulled over and exchanged information but decided not to call the police because I was concerned about getting Emma to the hospital and there didn’t appear to be any damage to their car, just to mine.

Well, we decided over the course of the evening and the next morning that we should probably meet back up with them and file a police report for the accident. We did that the next day by going into the Toledo Police Station and reporting the accident. They handed me a ticket and we all went on our merry way. The police report read that there was minor damage and no injuries (the 2 people who were in the neon never mentioned being hurt at all). Well, 6 months later, I get a letter saying that I am being sued for $25,000 worth of medical costs as a result of the accident. We were all floored because the accident was SO minor that there was NO way that they were hurt. It really just wasn’t possible.

Our insurance company (Allstate, God bless ‘em) agreed that they were not injured and hired a lawyer to represent me in the lawsuit. The case was scheduled to go to trial in October, 2007 and I even traveled back to Ohio for the trial, but it got dropped at the last minute. Then, they re-raised it in the last year and the trial was scheduled to start last Tuesday (my birthday). That’s the whole reason I came home (in fact, Allstate paid for my ticket).
So that’s the background and essentially all I knew coming in to this week. I also knew that the plaintiffs were claiming that they had bumped heads in the car, but even that is not at all believable.

So on Tuesday, my mom and Taylor and I headed to the Lucas County Courthouse for the trial. It ended up lasting for 2 and a half full days before the jury got to deliberations. I’ll provide a brief overview of the way the cases were presented and the witnesses that were called. I find it all really interesting and hope you will to, but if this bores you, well….I can’t make you keep reading

We spent the first half of Tuesday on jury selection, which is actually a really long and annoying process by which the lawyers and the judge question 20 potential jurors about their lives, experiences, biases, etc. Once they have done this, the judge will dismiss people who have clear bias “with cause” and then the lawyers have the opportunity to dismiss up to 3 other jurors “without cause” meaning for no reason whatsoever if they feel like it. By 12:30 on Tuesday, we finally had our jury of 8 people and 1 alternate. We broke for lunch and returned at 1:30 to begin opening statements.

The Plaintiff’s Opening

Since both passengers in the accident were suing me, they actually had 2 lawyers representing them. That means that both of them presented an opening statement before my lawyer did his. To summarize, they essentially said that the case is about 2 failures. My failure to maintain my lane (which I had already admitted to and was not up for debate. We were not arguing that I was responsible for the accident, we were arguing that they could not have been injured) and my failure to take responsibility (ie. Pay) for what that first failure caused. They basically described how their clients were injured, treated appropriately, and now simply wanted compensation for that treatment.

My Lawyer, Patrick Schomaker’s, opening

It wasn’t until my lawyer stepped up to do his opening that anyone realized that the “appropriate treatment” that these women supposedly received consisted of 64 combined visits to a chiropractor over a course of 9 weeks totaling a bill of $8,000. This chiropractor found their names on the police report for our accident (the one I insisted we file the day after the accident). My attorney basically just laid out in his opening that the plaintiffs at no point indicated that they were injured either the day of the accident or when we saw them the day after. The police report clearly says “minor damage, no injuries.” And, the Plaintiffs clearly thought they could get something out of me even though they weren’t hurt. Zing.

Wha wha wha what would you do?!

Do you remember this show?



Well, really only the title has anything to do with this post, but enjoy it nonetheless :)

So, yesterday, it was pouring rain when I got out of the subway after work. We're talking torrential downpour and of course I had no umbrella. I knew I had some leftover pad thai that I wanted to eat, but just ask my fiance, I can't eat anything without the proper condiments, so I had to go find some soy sauce and some Sriracha, which is definitely my favorite hot sauce.


Well, the normal grocery store did not sell the Sriracha, so I ended up at the "International Food" deli by my apartment. The store's prices are ridiculous and they have a $10 credit card minimum. So I just grabbed a six-pack of Sam Adams Summer Ale, which was $14! Insane. Anyway, so the "What would you do" conundrum occured at the checkout.

There was a man in front of me who had just been rung up and his total was (I think) $7.80. He handed the clerk a twenty. The clerk looked in the drawer and saw that there were no tens or fives, so he went to this little envelope of money next to the register and pulled out a couple of fives. He then messed around with his drawer a little more and handed the guy two twenties and two ones and some change ($42.20, probably). I think his intention was to give him two fives and two ones, but he got confused somewhere in there.

So, the guy ends up giving the customer $30 more than he should have gotten ($42 vs. $12) for change. My question is two-fold:

• What would you do if you received too much change?
• If you were (like I was) fully aware of this happening in front of you, would you say something if the person receiving the extra $$ did not?

My answer is that I would give it back if I was the recipient. And in case you're wondering, the dude in my story kind of looked at the money, realized he was getting way too much back, hesitated, and then sheepishly put the two twenties in his wallet. He did not point out the mistake to the clerk (who probably owns the store).

But the second question made me wonder. I watched it happen and kind of felt bad for the clerk who clearly got confused. But should I say something and risk the dude getting mad at me for jipping him out of $30 that wasn't really his? I didn't, but I'm curious what you think...should I have pointed it out?

Family Reunion Weekend in Northern Michigan :)

Family Reunion

Last week went by without too much happening…until Thursday that is. Wednesday night we went to a fundraiser for a non-profit that one of Taylor’s friends started. After that, he went out to see some friends who were in town for a wedding and I crashed in the apartment. Thursday morning, I packed for our trip to my house. I basically had a small carry-on for 9 days, so packing was a little tough, but I managed. I headed off to work on Thursday, and was planning to leave work early for my flight. Taylor’s flight was about an hour before mine, so I said goodbye to him.

Well, Thursday ended up being more eventful than we thought. Everything was fine with the travel, but Taylor got a little behind schedule because he got a call Thursday morning from Covenant House, a place he interviewed at soon after he got back from Indonesia, and they offered him a JOB!!! J J That’s right, Taylor is not employed and officially starts work on August 10. I am so proud of him and happy for him. As you can imagine, this had been hanging over his head for some time and we could really use the second income. So we are very happy. I’ll give more details about his position once he starts, but suffice to say it’s pretty nice to have that out of the way!

So we arrived in Detroit, Michigan at about 8:30pm on Thursday night. Our family reunion was taking place about 4 hours north of Detroit near our cabin in East Jordan, Michigan. My brother and his girlfriend picked us up at the airport and we headed straight up north. We didn’t get on the road until about 9pm, so we didn’t make it to the cabin until 1am. A bunch of my family was already there and had waited up for us. We had a drink and sat around the fire for a little while before claiming our spots on the really comfy couches and passing out J

Friday morning, we woke up early and took a drive to Traverse City, Michigan. Traverse City is a beautiful bay town in northern Michigan about an hour from our cabin. I wanted to go there because there is a winery there that sells some wine I wanted to get for the wedding. My brother, his girlfriend and my cousin-in-law Miranda all came with us. We got to the winery at about 10am (the perfect time to start drinking, in my opinion) and did a tasting. We ended up buying a case each of these really good blend wines they make called “Old School White” and “Old School Red.” Interestingly, their tasting room is in an old school house and they also sell wines called “Detention” and “Homework.”

We returned from Traverse City in the early afternoon. Despite the fact that it was July, it had been cool and rainy all day. We had planned to go canoeing and decided to still do it. The weather was starting to clear up and actually did end up being very nice for our 3 hour canoe ride. Everything would have been perfect if Taylor and I hadn’t capsized about halfway through! That’s right, our canoe flipped completely over. I went 100% under in the 60 degree water. Luckily, my brother was there to help us right the canoe and his girlfriend (her name is Allyson, so I’ll just call her that J) let me borrow a dry shirt. We were the talk of the trip that’s for sure!

After canoeing, we went back to our cabin and everyone pitched in and cooked dinner. We also showered and went for a four-wheeler ride through the trails around our cabin.

My dad’s uncle has a really nice house on a harbor in a town near our cabin, so after dinner Taylor and I decided to take a ride over there just to see their place and the town. My great-aunt gave us a tour of the house and then we took a walk through the marina across the street. I just love looking at nice boats and dreaming of one day owning one J. After that, we noticed that there was a carnival going on a little ways around the bay. We took a ride over there and decided to ride the ferris wheel. It was so much fun! We actually ended up being on it at sunset which was really beautiful. After that, we grabbed some ice cream at Dairy Queen (no trip to Northern Michigan is complete without a trip to DQ) and headed back to the cabin. Everyone was there roasting marshmallows and hanging out, which was fun J

Whew! All this and I’m not even to the reunion yet! So Saturday was the day of the reunion. Taylor and I had planned to get up and run, but the weather was rainy so we told ourselves we’d do it on Monday in Perrysburg (we did). Instead, we got ready and headed to the reunion at around noon. The weather wasn’t that good, but 60 members of our family still showed up. The kids did the piñata, everyone participated in the family meeting, Taylor was formally introduced to the family and managed to remember many names, and I participated in at least 3 game of euchre (a Midwestern card game). All in all a very successful reunion. It was very good for Taylor to meet everyone and for them to meet him. Unfortunately, we can’t invite everyone to the wedding for space reasons, but it was still good to see them.

Taylor and I at the reunion :)

After the reunion, we headed back to the cabin for some more four-wheelin’, marshmallow roastin’ and drinkin’. Typical Lucyk way. We woke up Sunday and everyone who was still in town from the reunion came over for breakfast. It was delicious and good to see everyone one last time before we headed back downstate to our house. We traveled again with Garett and Allyson and stopped on the way at a place on a lake where some friends of ours were renting a cabin for a couple weeks. They took us out on their boat and Taylor even learned how to kneeboard for the first time! I kneeboarded as well and did a 360 (my only trick) on my first try.

We got to my house in Perrysburg on Sunday night, unpacked our bags, and crashed from a weekend of too much activity!

I owe you big time!

I have 3 consecutive blogs ready to go to make up for not posting for 2 + weeks!

Hello there blogland. I’m so sorry for the delay in posting. I have been very busy and I think it’s time for an update. Since you last heard from me, Taylor and I have traveled to New England to see Joel McHale perform in Hampton Beach, New Hampshire (my first time in New Hampshire!) and then to my home turf of Ohio/Michigan for a week of fun and not-so-fun times. We came home for 2 reasons, the annual Lucyk (well, actually Rothermel/Pavlak) family reunion and a much, anticipated court case resulting from a “car accident” I was in in June 2006. You read that right, June 2006.

I’ll break this up a little just to keep from information overload. So here’s the story of the trip to Hampton Beach to start.

Taylor and I left New York on Thursday, July 9. My company has its main offices in Cambridge , Massachusetts, which is near Boston and is much closer to where we were heading for the weekend. So, rather than battle traffic leaving NYC on Friday, we left Thursday and I arranged to work from our Cambridge office on Friday.

We got up to the Boston area at about 9:30pm and stayed with some family friends of Taylor. They were very nice to let us crash with them at the last minute. On Friday morning, I actually took the train in to Cambridge with the husband. I worked on Friday. It was a very quiet day at the office. So quiet, in fact, that I left at 3:30pm. Taylor didn’t have to work, so he had spent the day just hanging out. He went to visit his Oma (Dutch for Grandma) who is in failing health at her nursing home. Then he came and met me. We had some time to kill so we actually went to HomeGoods (yes, the home furnishing store. I know, exciting). We bought a rug that ended up being too small for our apartment and we’ll have to sell it and also a cabinet for our bathroom which is perfect.

After HomeGoods, we met up with a friend of Taylor’s for dinner. I had requested seafood and he tried to take us down near the harbor in Boston, but it turned out that there was some big ship fair thingy in Boston, so every restaurant had like a 2 hour wait. We just went back inland a little and grabbed dinner at a Legal Seafood, which was actually really good for a chain. Then we headed out to where we had reserved a hotel for the weekend in Tewksbury, MA. I found the hotel on Hotwire for $45/night. It was a holiday in, but it was actually quite nice!
On Saturday, we got up and went for a 6 mile run. I haven’t really mentioned this (because it hasn’t fully registered with me yet…) but Taylor and I are running the New York City Half Marathon on August 16th. So we’re trying to force ourselves to do some significant running. It’s been hard, but I think we’ll do ok

After our run, we got dressed in some beachy clothes, packed a bag, and headed to Hampton Beach, NH for the concert that evening. We stopped at a couple HomeGoods along the way (Taylor is SUCH a good sport) and eventually made it to the beach at around 3pm. Unfortunately, there was some RIDICULOUS traffic getting into the actual city of Hampton Beach, but we eventually were out of the care at about 4:30 or so. The show was at 8pm so we took some time to walk around and eventually stopped at a little beachside restaurant with outdoor seating upstairs and some live music. We got a pretty good dinner and headed toward the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom.

Now, there’s not actually a casino in Hampton Beach, it’s more like a large arcade along the beach. Before we headed into the actual ballroom, we spent $5 in the arcade. We played some skee-ball (I am the hands-down better skee- ball player of the 2 of us), guitar hero, basketball, and even got some of those strips of photos from a photo booth. They are pretty darn cute, I must say! Taylor actually bought a frame and put some of them in one for me for my birthday
We went to the show, which was really good. I like Joel more as the host of E!’s the Soup than as a standup comic, but it was still good. After the show, we headed back to our hotel and the next day we pretty much just drove back to the NYC area (stopping at Friendly’s and HomeGoods along the way).

Our move-in so far...

I realized today that I haven't blogged in 9 days (bad girl!) and so here goes.

Well, the last 9 days have been spent getting set up in our new apartment. Taylor and I finished moving all of our stuff (that we currently own) into the apartment last Sunday. It was actually not as grueling as I thought it might be. Taylor and I came up with a system band it worked pretty well. What we did was, since parking is virtually impossible in New York, we would pull up in front of our building and unload everything into the lobby area. Then, one of us went to park the car while the other started carrying this up to the apartment. We live in a 5th floor walkup (that's New Yorkish for saying we have to climb 4 flights of stairs to get to our apartment. Not so much a "walkup" as a "trudge up and end up gasping for air" but that's just semantics), so after about 2 trips, you're spent. Once the car was parked, we took turns and one person would carry a load of stuff from the first to the third floor, and the other would carry the stuff from the third to the fifth floor. The great thing about this was it allowed neither of us to have to climb more than 2 flights without getting a rest to go back down for the next load.

Of course, it wouldn't be New York City if someone didn't get irrationally mad at you for no good reason. When we were unloading, someone yelled out their door that I should stop slamming our door. Apparently, when I was walking in and out of the apartment with my hands full of things, I was disturbing their mid-afternoon slumber (it was 2pm on a Saturday so clearly this was an angry person with no life who was holed up in their apartment on 4th of July weekend...loser). Then, on Monday night, we got a little note (probably from the same loser) on our door saying that we should really put down carpet because it was very noisy. Yeah, sure. When I can see the floor, then I'll put down a rug, thanks.

So anyway, that's where we are right now. We have decided to take a break from New York City and are going to New Hampshire this weekend to relax and see Joel McHale (host of E! Television's The Soup) do stand-up. Should be fun! I'll try to post some photos next week of our place!

Glorious!

As you probable know, living in New York city is - among other things - cramped! When Taylor and I were looking at apartments, we saw a whole range of troubling arrangements, from kitchens that were essentially just a wall of the living room to apartments with just 1 tiny closed to showers in kitchens (ok we didn't really see one of those, but they are fabled far and wide). The apartment we ended up choosing did not have any of these "charming" features. We thought the size and layout were really ideal for our needs.

So yesterday, we got to the apartment. Taylor hadn't seen it in a couple weeks besides some pictures I took. When he walked in, he was like, "This is smaller than I remember." Thud. I was so sad! I expected him to just jump for joy (or Earl, heck, I didn't care...inside joke). I was undeterred though. I kept remarking how we could put this here and that there and how great it would be. We went about our business setting things up. Taylor put up the shower curtain (which was about 6 inches too short for our inexplicably tall tub!) and I put together the bed. I have a queen size bed, and I wasn't really paying attention while I was assembling it until Taylor walked in and was like, "Wow! Look how much space there is besides the bed. This is much bigger than I thought!" Hallelujah! Seriously, though, I am pretty shocked by how much space there is in our room besides the bed. It is really exciting! :)

Now we're thinking about couches, desks, dressers, TVs, shelving, painging, dimmer switches, you name it! I feel so domesticated!