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.
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