Latest / Coopers' Code / Bicycle Cases: Common Injuries And Defenses (Law-Di-Gras 2023) [Video]

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Bicycle Cases: Common Injuries And Defenses (Law-Di-Gras 2023) [Video] · Coopers' Code

0:28
The. All right.
0:54
Guess we got to take a car now. I guess so.
1:33
Thank you so much for being here, guys.
1:35
I'm Steve Rosen. We're here today to talk about
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bicycle cases. We're going to all introduce
1:41
ourselves. We're going to take you in
1:42
bicycle cases from intake all the way through non economic
1:47
damages. We could cover a lot of this in
1:50
one panel per subtopic. So we're going to kind of move
1:54
through things really relatively quickly.
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Like I said, I'm Steve Rose and I own Rose and Law Offices.
2:00
I also have a nonprofit that's a safe bikeways that reports
2:05
dangerous conditions. There's an Apple talk about it
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in a minute. This is Danielle Linkords.
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If you don't know her, she's brilliant.
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Over $150 million so far this year in settlement, 67,000,038
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million, a 10 million bicycle case.
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She's going to talk about non economic, non economic damages,
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but introduce yourself. I'm sorry, I'm bragging about
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you. What else did they say?
2:30
Hi everyone. I, KISA, Danielle and Horace
2:33
work at the Holland Pro law firm.
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I'm going to be probably talking about well towards the end, so I
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encourage everyone to stay around.
2:40
Don't forget that I'll be speaking afterwards.
2:42
Thanks. Hi, I'm Miles Cooper.
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I'm from the San Francisco Bay Area.
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I'm with Cooper's LLP. About 70% of the cases that we
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handle are bicycle cases. We do everything from property
2:52
damage all the way up to fatalities and some trial work
2:58
along the way. I'm doctor Yogi Patel, pain
3:02
management in the all of the San Diego area.
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I'm Doctor John Austin. I'm an orthopaedic surgeon in
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the San Diego area. That's who we are.
3:14
All right. So I said we'd start with
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intake. One of the kind of themes you're
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going to get here are cyclists are typically kind of different
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type of people. And there's a lot of things that
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we do in intake to kind of figure out our clients.
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You want to do of course the basic facts surrounding loss,
3:33
casual rider or are they a cyclist you're going to.
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I'm going to be talking about tools in discovery that you can
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get to approve damages and actually help with liability
3:44
arguments as well. But whether or not they're a Rd.
3:47
cyclist or casual biker, that usually makes quite a
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difference. I'm just going to, we'll send
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you our PowerPoint. We're slide intensive, so don't
3:55
worry about writing anything down or taking pictures.
3:57
Just e-mail us and we'll do it. UMUIM insurance I'll touch on.
4:02
If you don't know, cyclists are covered as long as they're hit
4:05
by a motor vehicle. So I always, at the beginning,
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find out their own insurance. And if you have a friend that is
4:13
a Rd. cyclist, they will eventually get hit.
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So go tell them to have good UM coverage, please.
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We're going to talk about liability.
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Fall down police reports usually stink.
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We'll get into that. So here's some kind of cool
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stuff that I wanted to touch on. These are unique tools for
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fighting comparative fault, improving damages despite
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computers, mobile apps, video, and then the community.
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I'll touch on each of these separately, but having a cyclist
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as a client is having almost a guaranteed black box, OK?
4:47
You can find out so much data from a regular cyclist.
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And I'm not talking about, you know, an unfortunate situation
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where a child's riding a bike and gets hit by a car or
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whatnot. I'm talking about Rd. cyclists.
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The information you can get from them is absolutely amazing.
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So I'll get right into it by computers.
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Everybody's sort of a Garmin, right?
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So Garmin, the technology has developed incredibly.
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This is some of the stuff that you can get just by asking for
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their Garmin data. So I'm going to tell you the
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theme's going to be get it all right away.
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So if right when you're doing the intake, hey, did you have a
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Garmin on you? Usually it's on the handlebars
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or on the watch, right? Get all that data right away and
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I'm going to talk about Strava and get that as well.
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But some of the stuff that you can get from it and get from the
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mobile apps, I'm going to talk about location, route, duration,
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speed, elevation, grade and comparable rides.
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Completely separate stuff. One of the issues I I like to
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tell a story about a client that I had that came in and a police
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report basically said the wrong location.
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It happened over here at a really bad intersection.
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Over here is where the cyclist unfortunately was brought by
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some people. And then that police respond and
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they find them over there and they think it's a different
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intersection and they put our cyclists at fault.
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What we're able to do is go into the Garmin and the Strava and
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pull the actual ride. And I'll get into that in a
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second. But you could see a loop, right?
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And the loop was like average 17 miles an hour.
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And then all of a sudden there's this little cut over and that's
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like 2 miles an hour, right? And then there's a big straight
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line and that's like 50 miles an hour.
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So what did I get from that? It's, it's a basic story, right?
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It's on his ride, gets hit by a car, he stops there, then he's
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getting walked over 5 miles an hour, and then he's getting
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driven off by an ambulance. And I was able to show all of
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that by just pulling the Garmin and Strava data.
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Comparable rides I'll get into in a minute.
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But it's it's like having somebody that runs marathons or
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whatnot. You're getting an athlete that
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you can look at really what was their life like in their
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practice, in their athletics prior to and after.
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And you can tell that story. OK, other than that.
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So here's Strava Garment Knicks. Also really rad Mapmyrides
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getting more popular. We'll send this all to you.
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You see some of the stuff that it'll show the route, right?
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The average speeds. Strava Flyby is rad.
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And you can ask Miles about it because he's done it better than
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I have. But basically what it has is
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when you're using Strava and you go on for that day, you can see
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other people that took that same route that same day.
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So think about that. You have potential witnesses,
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OK, that you can go on and you can find and you can DM through
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this social media app who uses Strava here.
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Does anybody? Yeah, it's common.
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I mean if you run bikes when people typically have it videos
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are becoming more popular public private videos I will if I have
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a dangerous condition case I'll go out there we'll pull video
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off of a buildings. I have a case and we go to beach
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pull video off a building one week later found out that
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another cyclist found hit that same dangerous condition that
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went down both brain injuries with one week apart and we get
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video both from from the business right there.
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So it was really cool. There's I also have a group ride
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I have this case with Taylor Ernst where one of the group
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riders had a helmet GoPro and you see our guy hit a dangerous
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condition and go down and smack his head and let me tell you
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it's it's something. So go get that video and
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community help is a really, really great one.
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This is the last thing I'm going to talk about.
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Were you riding with the group? First thing I asked.
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Were you riding solo? Do you normally go on this
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route, all this fun stuff? If not, if it's a Saturday and I
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know it's a common place like Newport Back Bay or something in
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Orange County. I will go to local bike shops
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and look up local rides online and I will find people that were
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riding on that route that day to look for witnesses as well.
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It works great. Bike safe Bike ways I'm going to
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plug. We started this nonprofit.
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What we do is we record dangerous conditions.
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People submitted to an app you can get in an Apple store and
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you recorded dangerous condition and then we reported to the miss
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municipality. So you can come to us if you
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have a dangerous condition case and say, hey, have you ever
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reported this or something similar within the city?
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And and we'll help you out. So thank you so much.
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That's kind of my part, I think. Right.
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Oh, no, sorry. Last thing, USA race results.
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This is real. This is somebody you can go on.
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Just Google USA Cycling race results.
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If you have an avid cyclist, I'm going to trial and this week and
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I their big thing is your guy ran, excuse me, your guy rode a
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race four days later. I can go on and show his race
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results up to and then how crappy he did four days after
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this event as well. They can also get this.
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They'll just go on. It's all public.
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If your guy rents rides for USA Cycling, he has a license
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number. That's the easiest way, but you
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can also search it by name and then all of this stuff.
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I wrote an article that's back there.
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I know I'm rushing through things.
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Grab it or e-mail me and I'll give you more information.
10:22
Miles. Thank you.
10:23
Down, down, Harold. You too.
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So Steve mentioned the flybys and I'll just do a a quick piece
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on that. We had a case where the
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liability was contested and the only person who was there to
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talk about it was the driver. By using Strava flybys, we were
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able to find a couple of cyclists who had been by the
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location and had actually seen it, but not had an opportunity
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to stop. Officer hadn't been interested
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in taking their statement. Obviously cyclists like cyclists
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and while they're probably not going to lie, they're going to
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be biased in favour of the cyclist, so Flybys is a
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incredibly powerful tool to help connect the dots when you've got
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a liability issue in the case. So turning to to this slide
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right now, anyone who's ever handled A bicep case, what's
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wrong with this picture? What?
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What is an adjuster or a juror going to say?
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Exactly? No helmet.
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So I want to talk a little bit about the the lens, though.
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If you talk to a cyclist, what would a cyclist say is wrong
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with this picture? This goof is wearing spandex on
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a mountain bike. He's using a late model mountain
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bike. It's 26 inch, not a 27 plus, and
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what the heck is he doing with a suspension fork out on that
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road? And so the reason I I focus on
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this is it's all about the lens. And on the lens, most of your
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jurors, definitely all your adjusters are going to be people
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who have a windshield view of the issue.
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What's a windshield view? They spend 90% of their time
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behind a windshield. Same with the cops.
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The cops who show up and investigate are going to be
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looking at this from the view of a windshield.
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So the first thing you're going to want to do is question
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authority. Whatever is in that police
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report is going to be wrong, I guarantee it.
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And the reason it's going to be wrong is because the cops don't
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know the vehicle code, and the cops certainly don't know the
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Muni code. So another trick question, is it
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legal to ride on a sidewalk in California anyway?
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No. Yes, Maybe.
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Depends. The answer is, it totally
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depends. And the reason it totally
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depends is it's governed by the Muni code, not by the vehicle
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code. So yes, you can ride on a
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sidewalk as long as the municipality has not come along
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and enacted a rule that says you can't.
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And within a city. So I live in San Francisco.
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My kid can ride on a sidewalk. I can't.
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You you go to San Jose. You can ride on some of the
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sidewalks, but not the sidewalks in the downtown corridor.
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Why is this important? Because the cops often times
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will put your your cyclist at fault because they have been
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riding on a sidewalk as they go into an intersection and
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obviously you can't be on a sidewalk, therefore you're at
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fault. So one of the first things
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you're going to be doing is questioning the liability
13:16
finding in a case because you would have to be dealing with
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it. Even though we all know that the
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officer's finding is not admissible at trial.
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You're going to have to deal with the with the adjuster who's
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putting the value on the case. Go next.
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So 70% of the cases you're going to be dealing with are going to
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be motor vehicle incidents. Another 25% typically are going
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to be premises cases. So great, great, right.
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So this actually is a great that was installed at the parking lot
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under the Deyoung Museum within the last two years.
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So most of the great cases don't exist anymore because Caltrans
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and Nachto and Astro, the governing agencies that do storm
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rates. I've done a pretty good job of
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coming up with ways to make sure that they don't eat wheels
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anymore. However, you will still find
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cases where wheels get eaten and you may.
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This then goes to the question the the premises.
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We had a case in South San Francisco.
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A young woman was riding to Genentech as a commuter.
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A car starts making a right hand turn in front of her.
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She drifts to the right. She goes over the handlebars,
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has no idea what happened. The driver gets out, thinks she
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has hit the cyclist. She is so apologetic.
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Both driver and cyclist think this is what's going on.
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We pull the building camera footage nearby.
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There's an ATM that was perpendicular.
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What happened her we as she drifted to the right, Storm
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Grape was out of compliance. It had been slid a little to the
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right and so her wheel dropped into the storm Grape and she had
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rotated her over the front. This wasn't a vehicle case.
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This was a dangerous conditions case and South San Francisco
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paid a significant amount of money that the young woman broke
14:55
her jaw. And this is where cycling pieces
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and Danielle's conversation will get interesting.
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She broke her drawing 4 weeks later with her jaw wired shut
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and ran the Boston Marathon because that's what recycling
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clients do. Yeah.
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So on the premises side, you're going to want to be focused on
15:14
potholes, storm breaks and the Sunshine Act.
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So for anyone who has not been using the Sunshine Act as their
15:21
ready made discovery weapon of choice, the Sunshine Act will
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get you everything that has ever happened, been reported, talked
15:28
about, complained from the traffic engineering department,
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from Ferrarios. 311 people call in and make complaints about
15:36
these things and you'll get things like you got to fix this
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pothole That's right in front of my house.
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I saw a cyclist go down last week and nearly kill them.
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Somebody else is going to be hurt really bad.
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We need to establish that notice piece.
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So with the Sunshine Act, you're going to find all sorts of
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wonderful things. And for those of you taking the
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PMK of somebody at the municipality later on, the
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Sunshine Act people never talk to the city attorneys for the
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most part. So I've been in depositions
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where and then backing up I learned about the Sunshine Act
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midway through a case was taking the deposition of the PMK.
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The PMK and the city agency gave me 0 in the way of documents I
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learned about the Sunshine Act. I asked for it.
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It was after my discovery had already been turned over.
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I started grilling this guy on the street paving index and why
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this road was at 65% alligator cracking all over the place.
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They knew it should have been replaced and the the city
16:28
attorney was apoplectic. Where did you get this?
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Like your Sunshine Act department gave it to me two
16:34
weeks ago when you didn't in discovery because I was a little
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surprised that you didn't have any documents on this
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intersection. So remember the Sunshine Act
16:42
when you're doing these types of cases on the premises side, can
16:44
I say? Something about that, because
16:45
brilliant. So great cases.
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To give you an example, Sunshine act working we did a public
16:51
records request on a great case in that Metro owns the great 4
16:56
cyclists in the span of three weeks went down.
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We just like that we'll go to the local police and ask for
17:05
public records as well. We often get another bike
17:08
accident where the police responded.
17:09
So Miles is absolutely right. Utilize that and they make you
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file government claims. Before you file a lawsuit, ask
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do a public record request within that six months.
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So finally, the the the smallest fraction of cases that you're
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going to deal with in the in the Cycling World are going to be
17:27
product cases. I used to say that they were all
17:30
carbon. Now they're all carbon and cheap
17:33
E bikes and the joke the your carbon based death forms.
17:37
I do ride some carbon. However carbon is where we see
17:40
some of our absolute worst cases come from.
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Worst meaning what's happened to the person this picture is from
17:45
a a real incident. This was a time bike, an early
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model time. Look back when they laminated
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and glued so you get carbon tubes and they'd go into lugs
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and this be laminated. When she was going 12 miles an
18:00
hour and a small stick came up in her spoke as she rosated
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around she found herself holding her handlebars in the ground and
18:05
then picking up her teeth on the on the.
18:09
The carbon cases are challenging because you want to drop between
18:13
20 to 50 grand into the case before you know you have a case
18:16
frequently. And one of the one of the best
18:18
ways to do that, if you have a good manufacturer, is to reach
18:21
out them at the beginning and say, look, we got a catastrophic
18:24
incident. I don't want to go through a ton
18:25
of discovery. Can we agree to a testing
18:27
protocol where we can figure out if there actually is a void in
18:31
this carbon? And backing up, what's a void?
18:33
Because that's what you need to know about on the carbon cases.
18:36
Carbon my my expert described it this way.
18:39
To me, carbon is in essence like spaghetti, where with the
18:42
spaghetti you fill in glue in between.
18:44
If you just have a bunch of spaghetti, dry spaghetti it's it
18:46
breaks easily, but when you fill in the stuff in between it
18:49
becomes incredibly strong. In your carbon cases, what
18:52
you're looking for is did the. The issue that's that's sudden
18:56
breakaway of carbon because carbon gives no warning unlike
18:59
steel. Is that sudden breakaway caused
19:01
by a crack that worked its way from the outside in?
19:04
In which case it's your client's fault because they dropped the
19:06
bike and didn't know about it, where they had some previous
19:08
crash, or is it a void? Is there a small space inside
19:12
that carbon where a crack started working and kind of
19:15
onioning its way out? And the only way you're going to
19:18
be able to tell this is with some fine slicing and usually
19:21
some CT imaging work. It's super expensive, it's worth
19:24
it in the right case, and you'll often times find that there is
19:27
indeed a void in a Bianchi case we did not too long ago.
19:31
Bianchi couldn't even tell us what factory out of Taiwan this
19:35
bike had been made at and so you Start learning.
19:38
You know how how even these $10,000 bikes are pieces of shit
19:42
when you make them in terms of the carbon.
19:44
So the the cheap E bikes you'll see a ton of these as well.
19:49
It's mismatched parts and often times it'll be a a long pole
19:54
caliper with a short pole lever. Meaning the E bikes have to have
20:00
special brake levers where as soon as you pull the brake
20:02
lever, the motor cuts out because otherwise the motor will
20:05
keep going. The the levers often times don't
20:08
match the back end and they've gotten they've gotten an $800
20:12
motor and a $2.00 brake to get $1000 E bike.
20:16
So what you find with a lot of your E bike cases is that they
20:19
are they are not well made bicycles and those are actually
20:23
pretty easy cases to do because you don't need to spend 40 grand
20:27
to do destructive testing to figure it out.
20:31
I think that's it Will. You give a minute on doring
20:33
cases, or you do a lot of them. Yeah, in in the top five urban
20:39
bicycle cases, dorings are probably #1 in terms of what's
20:43
going to happen. And that's it's just it's bad
20:45
design. But by bad design, it's they
20:49
they build the bike lanes right next to the parking lanes and
20:52
drivers are idiots and they open the door and they pulling the
20:55
door right into traffic. And whether the cyclist gets
20:57
hurt from the door or the cyclist gets hurt from the door
21:01
bounced into traffic and run over and killed, which
21:04
unfortunately frequently happens.
21:06
Doorings are super straightforward cases in that
21:10
there is a vehicle code on point that says you cannot open a door
21:13
into traffic. So when somebody opens a door,
21:16
they become liable where you have issues with adjusters as
21:19
they start arguing that the door was open for a while, and you'll
21:21
also begin find cops who will find your cyclist at fault even
21:26
though the dumb driver opened the door.
21:28
Is that enough? That's perfect.
21:30
All right. Thank you.
21:30
And the hands to down is the next slide.
21:38
So, so I'm Doctor Patel. So I started with dislike
21:41
intentionally. So again, I think TBI or head
21:44
injuries is a very, very big a part of bicycle injuries.
21:47
About 25 to 50% of all bicycle injuries will have this.
21:52
And I think even with the helmet.
21:53
So you know, obviously there's more, you know more serious
21:56
injuries like bleeds or fractures.
21:58
But the point here is that TBA itself can present with a
22:01
variety of symptoms. And as a provider and or intake
22:05
manager is very important that we ask the client or the patient
22:09
in detail these symptoms. My bigger colleague here, Doctor
22:13
Paul Jane, manages a lot of a TBI in the audience and he'll
22:16
he'll attested this that patients will not tell you that
22:20
they have your symptoms unless you ask them in detail.
22:23
You have one by one, you have ringing in the ears, you have
22:26
forgetfulness, you have moodiness.
22:28
Once you start listing these different symptoms, they will
22:30
then be able to connect those symptoms that they're
22:33
experiencing to the injury. So again, this is a very
22:35
important thing when you're managing individuals in any
22:39
accident but specifically bicycle accident that you were
22:42
screening for TBI. So I'm just going to quickly go
22:47
over just kind of the common injuries that we see in bicycle
22:50
accidents. Obviously this is sometimes more
22:54
damaging than those individuals in, in motor vehicle actions
22:57
because a bicyclist doesn't have a protective metal box to
23:00
protect them, you know, so facial injuries are very common,
23:04
eye trauma and death injuries are very, very common,
23:07
especially when you have the debris from the road flat flying
23:11
into somebody's eye. So that's always very important
23:13
to look for. Again, there's protective shield
23:16
that the the bicyclist has on that protects them from their
23:21
internal organs. So you can have lacerations of
23:24
internal organs, rib damages, lung damages, and again also
23:28
janitor urinary regions can be injured.
23:30
You need to ask your patients about sexual dysfunction.
23:33
They may be not upfront about talking about that, but a good
23:37
review of system is going to be important especially in these
23:39
type of patients because again they're not going to connect
23:42
their injuries or their symptoms to the injuries unless you go
23:46
into in detail. We all know about myofascial
23:49
skin, abrasions, contusion scars, we take scars likely
23:52
sometimes but for some individuals scars the big mental
23:56
stress for them and important that we recognize that not just
23:59
blow off scars as well. My colleague here, Doctor
24:02
Austin, is going to kind of touch base on all the
24:04
orthopaedic injuries. I'm more of interventional pain
24:07
guys, so I'm going to focus on the spine injuries.
24:09
I put CRPS here just kind of bring to people's attention.
24:12
Not that the CRPS is from the bicycle injury, but a lot of
24:15
these individuals suffer broken bones, have to undergo surgery
24:20
and sometimes they don't heal or respond to treatment as
24:23
expected. So we should always as providers
24:25
keep in the background of my back of our mind.
24:28
If individual is not progressing, not responding to
24:31
therapy, not recovery from surgery, are they developing a
24:34
very, very bad disease called CRPS which we don't have time to
24:37
go into? But yeah, everybody should be
24:39
aware of this. OK, So again, the one thing just
24:44
like just with the mental screening questions, when doing
24:47
an examination, you have to ask patients individual body parts
24:51
have you. Every time I ask my patient
24:53
where you hurt, they're going to tell me the main one.
24:55
My my head hurts, my neck hurts. But if you don't ask in detail,
24:59
how's your elbow? How's your knee?
25:00
How's your wrist, How's your hand?
25:01
They won't tell you. Once you ask that, they're going
25:03
to say, Oh yeah, my elbow is a little sore.
25:05
So this is where you need to, you know ask and evaluate for
25:08
all the deep soft tissue injuries as well because again
25:11
those are important maybe in a pain physician.
25:15
Obviously I'm always focused on the spine and I think that this
25:18
is the area that I think a lot of case managers, attorneys and
25:21
patients have a tough time understanding what exactly are
25:25
the spine injuries and how do we help them.
25:27
And so I try to explain to patients to make it simple that
25:31
you know, think of their spine as three layers, the muscle
25:34
layer that kind of supports the spine, the joints that help us
25:37
move and obviously the distance support our spine as well.
25:40
You often see you know, recommendations from physicians
25:43
involving epidurals that seems to be the most common.
25:46
And why is that? Because epidural pills here or a
25:48
result or. I'm sorry, epidural steroid
25:50
injections, we typically use those because when somebody has
25:54
a significant impact and sustains a disc herniation, as
25:56
you can see there, this has a pointer too.
25:58
No, no, yeah, that's OK Well, you can see that disc herniation
26:03
there on the left, so you can see what happens.
26:05
It's like a Jelly doughnut. And that disc herniates and
26:08
causes a lot of irritation. You can see the redness on that
26:10
nerve root and that is very, very painful.
26:13
That will make a grown man cry just like paying taxes.
26:16
So it is very, very uncomfortable.
26:18
And that's why you know even though individual may sustain
26:21
multiple injuries to the spine, we focus on epidurals initially
26:25
and again on the right there you see some of the facet joints of
26:29
the low back and those obviously can get injured.
26:32
Typically people call that whiplash, the ligaments, things
26:35
like that. And again when I try to explain
26:38
people a lot of times the patient will say well I don't
26:41
want to small, I don't want to injections only going to give me
26:43
temporary relief. I want to be, I want to fix, you
26:45
know, And again the idea here is this was a typically a normal
26:49
individual didn't have chronic pain, didn't have any type of
26:52
pain, has this trauma, and now has significant inflammation,
26:56
unable to go back to numerous activities, sometimes very
27:00
severe pain. And the purpose of our treatment
27:02
is to reduce the inflammation. None of my injections can fix
27:06
the discarnation. I can't fix the tears, but if I
27:08
can reduce the inflammation, I can hopefully help them heal
27:12
faster and better as the way I describe them as I tell them.
27:15
Look, think of yourself as a forest.
27:17
This injury has resulted in a few large fires in your forest.
27:21
My injection is a plane of water.
27:23
My epidural is a plane of water. That steroid injection, steroid
27:27
medication is that water. I'm going to dump that water on
27:30
your fire. I'm going to put your fire out
27:32
and what you have leftover is burnt wood.
27:34
But the forest can't rebuild unless we get that inflammation
27:37
gone. So we need to reduce everything
27:39
we can with conservative therapy, even injection therapy.
27:41
Anything we can do is to reduce the inflammation so that
27:44
whatever is leftover, all that burned wood can rebuild into a
27:47
New Forest. Unfortunately, the human body is
27:49
not so good at recovering 100%. So this is the same thing for
27:53
the neck. Same idea how we look at joint
27:56
whiplash, type pain and also disc herniations and the goal to
28:00
reducing the redness. When you hear a lot of confusion
28:04
with attorneys, off to actually what's a facet, what's the MBB,
28:08
the terminology for facets. A facet injection is something,
28:11
there's different ways to treat them.
28:13
You've been injected to the facets of a facet injection, a
28:16
medial branch block. Also referring to facet
28:18
treatment. Radiofrequency ablation is the
28:23
cauterization of those branches of the nerves that go to the
28:26
facet. So when you hear these
28:27
terminologies, they're dealing with facets, and, and I don't
28:31
often tell people that typically a facet or joint pain tends to
28:34
be axial, doesn't tend to radiate as much.
28:37
But when things start shooting down the arm, shooting down the
28:40
legs, you get numbness and weakness or even shooting to the
28:43
shoulder blade. We're looking for disc
28:46
herniation. Again, not individuals will have
28:49
multiple injuries together. And so last thing I'm going to
28:54
talk about here real quickly is, again, unlike a person driving a
28:58
car, you don't. A cyclist doesn't have the
29:00
protection of a metal box there and so often when they get hit
29:06
and thrown onto a very hard pavement, there were sustained
29:09
spinal cord injuries and those are very, very devastating.
29:13
Depending on where the injury is will determine if the patient in
29:16
the quadriplegic paraplegic, you know.
29:19
And so it's very important to have a good neural exam looking
29:22
for any weakness, numbness, a bottle, bladder dysfunction,
29:26
those things are very good. So it's a very unfortunate.
29:29
So that covers my injuries. I'm going to hand off to Doctor
29:32
Austin here. Good afternoon.
29:38
I'm John Austin. I'm an orthopedic surgeon right
29:39
here in San Diego. I've been taxed with talking
29:42
with you with some of these extremity injuries and cyclists.
29:45
So as our panelists have alluded, there's more and more
29:48
cyclists with each passing year, 80 million in the US we've
29:52
talked about some professional cyclists.
29:54
Now we see these E bikes with children going to school, four
29:57
of them past my house every 5 minutes at 8:00 AM.
30:00
They're on their cell phone, by the way, going 30 miles an hour.
30:03
So are the Teslas, by the way, driving the other way?
30:05
They're on their screen. So there's a lot changing with
30:08
these E cycles in the space right now.
30:11
As of 2020, according to the National Safety Council, over
30:14
300,000 cycling injuries. Most not serious, obviously some
30:17
are very serious. The other panelists have talked
30:22
about this at length. What are the circumstances of
30:24
the accident? Helmet where device is a factor.
30:27
Devices are becoming a factor on both sides of this equation more
30:30
and more. Just yesterday morning I saw
30:33
some kid going to school on his phone.
30:37
Tesla going by on their phone. I just it's just unbelievable.
30:41
So lots of devices coming into play, screens coming into play,
30:44
night factors, reflectors, lights, clothing, all this
30:47
effects liability, road conditions we talked about that
30:50
distracted drivers rather obvious regarding orthopaedic
30:55
injuries. There's severity beginning with
30:57
cuts which are relatively minor, very common up to more serious
31:02
lacerations involving the subcutaneous tissue, which is
31:04
the fat tissue into the myofascial ligamous tissue,
31:07
which is the outer packaging around your muscles, right, and
31:09
down to bone, nerve, artery. So they can be relatively minor.
31:12
They can be very serious. I've seen them all, bruises and
31:15
hematomas. Again, there's a big hematoma in
31:17
the upper right there of the thigh.
31:18
That's probably a unit of blood. And somebody's thigh or thigh
31:20
can have two units of blood in it.
31:23
And if it's subcutaneous, it's fine.
31:24
If it goes intramuscular can be a compartment syndrome.
31:27
We'll talk about that a little bit.
31:28
It's a great case if that happens when you're an attorney
31:30
and there's liability. Myofascial injuries, tendon
31:33
injuries. So remember, basic orthopedics,
31:35
tendon connects to muscle, to bone.
31:37
So your quadriceps tendon connects your quadriceps muscle
31:40
to your Patel and ultimately your tibial tubercle.
31:43
Ligament injuries connect bone to bone.
31:45
So your anterior cruciate ligament connects bone to bone
31:49
fractures. We'll talk about that
31:50
compartment syndrome, it's a surgical emergency.
31:53
It's the number one reason orthopaedic surgeons are sued in
31:55
the ER. Ms. compartment syndrome
31:57
released many compartments back when I took ER call.
32:00
I don't take any more. Thank God, TBI.
32:03
We've alluded to that. Spinal cord injuries.
32:05
Rare but serious, of course. Death compartment syndrome, most
32:10
common in your leg, your tibia if you will.
32:13
There's four compartments. I won't bore you with the
32:16
medicine, but basically, if you have that hematoma developed
32:19
within your muscle, the fascia surrounding that muscle can only
32:22
expand so far. And if that muscle swells enough
32:26
due to inflammation, bleeding, it can cut off the blood supply
32:30
to nerves and blood vessels in that compartment.
32:33
You're in the deep posterior compartment.
32:35
The red compartment in that leg lies your posterior tibial
32:37
artery in your tibial nerve. If that if compartment stays
32:40
swollen for 24 hours, you have a permanent neurologic injury.
32:44
I've seen it. Unfortunately, if that
32:46
compartment has to be urgently released within 24 hours if
32:49
there's permanent neurologic and possible vascular injury, I've
32:52
seen those not released and I've seen them released.
32:54
Whenever you get that call you, you need to be very aggressive
32:57
about releasing that ASAP. That's when I'm saying clear the
33:01
OR Now we are not waiting. Those are a big, big thing we
33:06
got to think about. And this is a compartment
33:07
syndrome in a leg in the upper left.
33:09
You see it's tense and swollen. This is not a time for mentally
33:12
invasive surgery. This is a time for big incisions
33:14
and complete releases. You're you're saving their leg.
33:18
And if that's missed, it can be a big deal.
33:20
These are cases we routinely involve plastic surgeons and
33:22
vascular surgeons. There's a lot of morbidity, even
33:24
if they're successfully released.
33:26
You can see in the lower left this gentleman had bilateral leg
33:29
compartment fasciotomies. He saved his leg, but you can
33:32
see those scars. There's significant concavities,
33:35
significant scarring. There's a lot of morbidity even
33:37
when they're successfully released in time.
33:40
Regarding fractures, of course, that's what everyone thinks.
33:42
I can think of orthopaedics. This is a study last year out of
33:47
the archives of orthopedic trauma surgery.
33:49
They looked at all the cyclists. This was studied was out of
33:51
England, but the same data applies the United States.
33:54
You can see lower limb, the neck of the femur extensor, your hip
33:57
bone, femoral shaft, tibial shaft, most common lower
34:00
extremity injuries in cyclists. Older cyclists are more at risk
34:03
than younger cyclists. They have more body mass, their
34:06
bones, they're more likely to have a little osteoporosis,
34:07
they're just more likely to break stuff.
34:09
Regarding upper extremity injuries, you can see in the
34:11
upper right that's a displaced clavicle shaft fracture with a
34:14
vertical medial butterfly fragment.
34:16
Clavicle is the most common bone broken in the upper extremity by
34:19
far in cycling injuries. I fixed a number of them from
34:22
cycling injuries. We'll show you how we fix them
34:24
in the next slide that would get a surgery with me and your you
34:27
know your clavicles, your only osseous connection from your
34:30
whole four quarter an arm to your thorax.
34:31
So that's why it tends to break. It's also right there it's
34:34
subcutaneous so it's it's right there.
34:36
It doesn't take a lot of force to break it.
34:38
Your radius is your wrist. Essentially that's in the middle
34:41
left there. Your your radius is the bone in
34:43
your forearm on the thumb side of your forearm, your own nose,
34:45
that skinny one on the pinky side of your forearm.
34:48
You can see your radius covers most of your wrist there.
34:50
So that's why it tends to break when you have a foosh injury
34:52
which is a fall out and outstretched hand.
34:54
And that happens if you don't go over the handlebars, you go off
34:56
the side and guess what? You put your arm out, you break
34:58
something. This is how we treat these
35:01
injuries. Femoral shaft here in the lower
35:03
left gets an intramedullary nail with proximal distant unlocking
35:05
screws. In short, we put a little rod
35:08
down their bone through small incisions, minimizes soft tissue
35:11
stripping and further morbidity. Unfortunately, with the clavicle
35:14
and wrist fractures, we can't do that.
35:16
We can get those in through smaller incisions, but that gets
35:18
a plate screw construct. The distal radius fractures
35:21
attacks, Amazing. There's locking screws now, so
35:22
the screws heads actually have threads that lock into the
35:25
plate, which allow us to do a lot more surgery with a lot
35:28
worse fractures than we used to with some less invasive
35:31
techniques. And that's all I have.
35:41
Hi everyone. As I introduced myself earlier,
35:44
Danielle and course I work at the home and poor law firm.
35:47
And why are liability and injuries so important?
35:52
Because we need damages. We take these cases on to make
35:55
our clients whole. That's what damages are if you,
35:59
in the eyes of the law, the only way that we can provide our
36:03
injured clients or the family that had suffered a loss is
36:07
monetary damages. And so that's what we have to
36:10
do. And then the question is how
36:12
much are these things worth? So as attorneys, we seek justice
36:18
in seeking justice, we have to make our clients whole.
36:20
We don't want to make them 50% whole.
36:23
We don't want to make them 75% whole.
36:26
We want them to be 100% whole. So how do we do that?
36:30
So when you have a wrongful death case, I've often hear
36:35
people say, oh man, if they survive this, you know the value
36:40
of this case would have been so much higher if they just lived.
36:43
If I have a personal injury TVI case that is worth so much more
36:48
than a wrongful death case. That's not true.
36:50
That's not true at all. Just this year we've had
36:53
multiple wrongful death cases. We've had multiple wrongful
36:57
death cases that went to verdict last year exceeding $30 million.
37:02
We had a three-year old toddler riding a big wheel out in the
37:08
street, ran over by a car. He did not survive.
37:13
The question is, how much money is the loss of a mother's love?
37:19
How do you argue with that? How do you argue that it's
37:22
admitted liability so none of the bad facts come out.
37:26
Nobody hears anything about it other than this mom lost her
37:31
son. How much is that worth?
37:35
If you don't know how much that is worth, you need to do your
37:38
homework not just for you, but you need to educate the defence.
37:44
You need to educate the insurance representative and ask
37:48
people how much are you getting on these types of cases?
37:52
When's the last time that you tried a case on these particular
37:56
facts and what did you get? We do that at the home pro law
38:00
firm all the time. Hey Gary.
38:02
Hey Brian. What did you get on this case?
38:05
Can you send us your three top cases in this category with
38:09
these facts and then share that information?
38:12
You have to know what your case is about in order to get full
38:17
value for your case. Again, you want to make the
38:20
clients 100% whole and you have to know how to do that.
38:27
Let's talk about another case, cycling case.
38:31
Our claim was an attorney, a very well known white collar
38:36
criminal defense attorney, and he's just casually walking
38:41
around or cycling around his neighbourhood hit by a car.
38:45
The helmet literally fractures $300.00 helmet.
38:49
He suffers A mild TBI. He's still trying cases, and
38:55
he's probably the smartest guy in the room.
38:58
So during his deposition, you have several defense attorneys,
39:02
you have plaintiff attorneys, and he was definitely by far
39:06
still, after sustaining this mild brain injury, the smartest
39:10
guy in the room. He even was more fit than anyone
39:15
else in the room. He would go to the gym with a
39:18
personal trainer every single day.
39:21
So he's still trying cases. He's working out.
39:24
He looks good. He presents well.
39:27
What do I do with this case? How do I prove that this guy
39:32
sustained A mild traumatic brain injury?
39:35
So, you know, you have to meet him.
39:37
You have to figure out what are his losses.
39:41
And it wasn't just a brain injury case.
39:43
It was also PTSD. You never forget PTSD cases.
39:49
Your clients are not going to know if they had PTSD.
39:54
They're not going to volunteer to you, especially a guy that he
40:00
thinks he's the guy of, guy's manly guy.
40:03
He's not going to admit that he has a fear.
40:05
He's not going to tell you, oh, I avoid this because it's scary
40:09
or that these things happen to me.
40:11
No one's going to admit that. Part of being a good lawyer is
40:15
to know the good questions to ask your clients.
40:17
It's knowing which experts to go.
40:20
Send your clients to so they can assess them to make sure that
40:24
all of their injuries or potential injuries are
40:26
addressed. Otherwise you can't make a
40:28
client whole. So he was an avid cyclist.
40:35
Every single day he would go out and start cycling.
40:39
And whether it was just for a couple miles around his
40:42
neighbourhood 10 times or whether he spent an entire day
40:46
cycling around. And I asked him, can you still
40:49
ride a bike? Yes, he can still physically
40:53
ride a bike. He can just sit on the wheel or
40:56
he can sit on the seat, he can pedal those wheel, those pedals,
41:02
he can pedal the pedals and he's like, but I can't do it anymore
41:07
because I'm scared. I cannot ride a bike outside.
41:11
He's like, I bought a peloton. He's like, I can do that just
41:15
fine. I still do it.
41:17
But it's not the same. My entire life I grew up cycling
41:21
around, driving my bicycle around.
41:24
That's what I love to do. That's made me me.
41:27
That was my identity. I associated as being a cyclist.
41:30
And I'm like, OK, but you can still ride a bike.
41:34
Yes. You still do peloton.
41:36
Yes. OK And you still try cases?
41:39
Yes. OK, What do you do with this
41:42
case? We ended up getting policy
41:45
limits 10.25 million. Know the value of your case.
41:52
You have to understand the injuries.
41:55
You have to humanize them. Let's say we hear people on the
42:00
news every day of someone dying. It doesn't affect us.
42:05
It doesn't affect us at all. But if you get a phone call that
42:10
you just heard a loved one pass away, that's going to change
42:14
your life. That's going to change your life
42:16
forever, because you can associate memories, you can
42:20
associate feelings, and you can associate just how much better
42:25
this world was because that person was here.
42:30
You have to humanize the person that died.
42:33
You have to humanize your client.
42:35
And you have to share that with the defense if you want to
42:39
settle your case. They said down, but I'm not sure
42:46
which way it is. OK, So in knowing the value of
42:53
your taste, don't forget the jury instructions.
42:56
We'll use the jury instructions all the time.
42:59
During trial. We try to use it in opening for
43:02
allowed to. We always use it.
43:04
In closing, refer to it. Let your clients know what it
43:08
is. Know what you can be compensated
43:10
for. Break it all up.
43:13
The loss of love. How much money is the cost of a
43:18
hug from your mom? How much would you pay to have
43:24
one more text message from your dad that says I'm proud of you?
43:30
How much money would you pay to be able to have one more
43:35
Thanksgiving? You can't forget these little
43:39
things. There's some cases where we ask
43:42
the entire family, send us your best memories, put it on video,
43:48
write it down. And then you know what?
43:51
We have 50 people telling their stories that we put in a
43:55
mediation brief so the other side can see what kind of person
43:59
this is. That when this comes out at
44:01
trial, they're going to be paying a lot of money, Millions
44:05
and millions of dollars, PTSD. Again, some of our biggest cases
44:16
are just PTSD cases. And those cases, the clients
44:21
don't tell you, you have to look for it.
44:24
I get very passionate about my cases.
44:26
If anyone knows me, they will tell you that I get very
44:29
possessive over my cases. I believe that as truth seekers,
44:35
that is justice seekers. We had not only an honor but a
44:38
duty to our client to be the best attorney that we can for
44:42
them. I heard a lot of people saying
44:44
throughout this conference, other conferences, you have to
44:48
have a good client. Your client has to be likable.
44:53
Sometimes we can't change who our client is, but you can
44:57
decide who you are. Having a good attorney, being
45:01
able to put down the work, being able to be passionate about each
45:06
and every case. Knowing that it's our job and
45:09
our duty to seek justice and pursue it.
45:13
One case at a time, one client at a time.
45:16
And just make sure that we seek and get entire full justice.
45:21
Which means, again, 100% of the value of the case.
45:27
And if you don't know what that value is, please ask, be inform
45:31
yourself and inform everyone else.
45:34
Thank you. So we covered two or three
45:40
things. So if anyone has questions to
45:43
follow up on anything, we're happy to answer whatever
45:46
questions you have. We can go back to slides.
45:48
You can get these slides, You can e-mail me at
45:50
steve@cyclinglaw.com and we'll give them to you.
45:54
But do anybody have any questions for any of us?
45:59
Yes. Hi.
46:01
Would you find it doesn't have a home at all?
46:02
How do you get over that signal with the failed buffer and the
46:07
that's a turn? I think we can all kind of talk
46:08
about that, but I yell at my client first.
46:14
You kind of like a dad first before I'm a lawyer.
46:16
But it happens. You you buy it.
46:24
You're just honest. I mean, we can alltel you how to
46:26
respond to bad facts and stuff. I think everybody's going to
46:29
tell you the best way to respond is say, yeah, we'll acknowledge
46:34
that. We'll acknowledge he made a
46:35
mistake, he's human and there's still this issue.
46:40
So anything else with that? Yeah, well first of all, it
46:44
comes up in 100% of cases, meaning if your client is not
46:49
wearing a helmet, it gets raised it.
46:52
And I mean, if you really want to go nuts, read the comments on
46:55
any article involving a cyclist. Was the person wearing a helmet?
46:58
There was a a child who was run over by a gravel truck in
47:03
Campbell. His head was run over by a
47:05
gravel truck. And the questions where was he
47:08
wearing a helmet Wouldn't have made a fucking what a
47:10
difference. It was a gravel truck.
47:12
And yet that's what you're seeing in the comments.
47:15
So most cases helmet doesn't make a difference.
47:19
Like my, you know, all these collarbone risk cases, helmet
47:22
doesn't make a difference. So the response to that is why
47:25
are we talking about this? Yeah.
47:27
How would a helmet have made a difference here Miss Adjuster,
47:30
tell me how a helmet would make a difference.
47:32
Jurors tell me how a helmet would have made a difference.
47:35
Why Why is that important to you?
47:37
Well it's important because you know maybe they were careless.
47:39
Well it it doesn't matter. So the other piece is and and
47:43
different lawyers have had different success with this is
47:45
keeping it out on motion eliminate if it's not relevant
47:47
to the fact pattern they don't get it.
47:51
There are also people who have been successful on the on
47:54
keeping it out because it is not required.
47:56
If you're under 18 you have to wear a helmet in California over
47:59
18. There's no law on that.
48:02
So again you go to that egg shell plaintiff, the driver
48:05
takes the client, the client in the the cyclist the way they
48:08
were found. So there are various tactics
48:11
that you can use to try and overcome it.
48:12
The the final one is to use a bio mechanist and a neurologist
48:17
to start talking about how the helmet would have not really
48:20
made a difference because helmets are crap anyway.
48:25
Anything else? We're here, all right.
48:31
I I before we're done, yeah, please.
48:34
I'm guessing folks can tell that the the people up here are
48:37
passionate about these types of cases.
48:39
So one thing that I'll speak for myself, but I'm guessing
48:42
everyone is going to say yes as well.
48:44
We want the best results recycling clients across the
48:47
boards. We love spitballing.
48:48
These types of cases reach out to us a a a 10 minute phone call
48:53
can make the difference between getting a policy and getting a
48:56
$2000 offer on a case sometimes. Yeah, I mean, yeah, definitely.
49:02
We. Discussed the issue of police.
49:05
Support and the civil. Law of how they placed the cycle
49:08
of the sidewalk. I want the issue riding on the
49:11
opposite side of the. Rd.
49:13
Yeah, that's a hard one. I mean, maybe you can talk to
49:16
that. So I want to touch on a couple
49:19
of those things because we skipped over them really
49:21
quickly. Police reports, 70% of my cases,
49:26
80% of my cases are psyching cases.
49:28
Of those 70 to 80% the police reports are bad for us.
49:33
I have cases where cyclist is in a bike lane going straight well
49:38
within the speed limit, so it takes a left turn and T bones
49:42
them and I still get a police report that puts them 50% at
49:46
fault for not watching out or whatever the cop decides to do
49:49
it. Police reports are not great for
49:53
cyclists, so I I kind of wanted to touch on that and we talked
49:57
to our cycling clients about that, about the police reports,
50:02
what was the actual? The actual question was what
50:05
happens when you got a person running on the sidewalk going
50:08
the opposite way of traffic? Yes, so sidewalk depends on
50:10
municipality. The California vehicle code says
50:13
you have to go with traffic. So I that's the one set of facts
50:19
that I really strongly dislike. But have you had success
50:22
fighting that one? We're dealing with one with a
50:24
kid right now, and the argument that we're making is that, one,
50:30
you're allowed to be on a sidewalk, 2 You're allowed to be
50:32
on a sidewalk as a kid in this particular municipality.
50:35
And three, if you look at the scrode out there, Scrode being a
50:39
derogatory term for a high speed arterial, that this was the
50:42
safest place for this child to be on his way to school and
50:45
crossing three lanes in One Direction, 3 lanes in the other
50:48
direction, going 45 miles an hour.
50:51
He should not have had to go all the way around, do 3 crossings
50:54
to get from point A to point B. So there there are various
50:58
cactus get around it. But I agree with Steve, it's a
51:02
bad back. Yeah, it's a it's really hard.
51:04
Sidewalk is easier if they're going the wrong way, but they're
51:06
on the sidewalk, it's a little easier of an argument, but
51:10
that's really common. I get calls on that all the
51:13
time. The other one really common is
51:15
they're on a sidewalk. Someone's pulling out of a
51:16
commercial center, pulls out and hits them or they hit the car as
51:19
it's pulling out. That you look at the
51:22
municipality, every single one's going to have different law on
51:24
that. Hi, I was going to ask the whole
51:30
panel, by the way. Really impressive panel.
51:32
I love your passion about it. Curious to know how much overlap
51:35
everything you guys have discussed as the scooter slash
51:39
birds. I have an opinion on that, if
51:44
you have an opinion. Yeah, those are horrible.
51:49
I mean, they should be completely outlawed.
51:51
It's insane, right? We have a couple cases with.
51:55
I was talking to someone earlier with E Bikes from rental
51:59
company, same rental company. Three brain injuries, no
52:04
helmets. OK.
52:06
And it's crazy. And so I'm going, Hey, look, you
52:08
guys are renting it. You have to, you know, scooters.
52:12
No, you pick them up on the street.
52:14
Usually drunk. I mean, right?
52:18
I've seen many attorneys and we all know riding these drunk at
52:22
these conferences through San Diego.
52:24
And no, they they signed liability issues.
52:28
Some of the California vehicle code kind of overlaps, but
52:33
they're super hard cases. I know Simon Law Group has
52:36
gotten a couple successfully, but I also know that they're
52:39
super picky about them. I won't take them.
52:42
It happened to actually one of my very close friends got a
52:45
brain injury because I and I, I said you don't have a case.
52:48
I mean, you're drunk, You hit a curb when you're doing this.
52:51
I can argue about helmets, but nothing in the law requires that
52:54
they provide you helmets. So that's a thing.
52:57
That law probably needs to change more than anything, but
53:01
hard case is super hard. Thank you.
53:07
Cool. I'll just mention, if we have a
53:09
little extra time that you know, in any of these cycling cases,
53:14
one of the biggest defense arguments is always going to be
53:18
compared to fault. How much can we blame the
53:21
cyclist for doing something wrong?
53:23
So in this case, you know, the driver had a stop sign and the
53:27
cyclist was going down a hill in a residential area and the
53:31
vehicle should have stopped the stop sign and our cyclist was
53:35
going and then he was hit by the car that was making a left.
53:38
And there's like, the driver of the vehicle testifies at our
53:43
depot. You know, he looks so unsturdy.
53:47
The bike was shaking. You know, he was tapping his
53:50
helmet as if he was talking on the phone.
53:52
So he's talking on his phone. He's looking at his thing.
53:55
He's shaking. He's going way too fast.
53:58
He should have seen me. I was already in the
54:00
intersection. They're going to always do and
54:02
say whatever they can to avoid liability and avoid
54:05
responsibility. So one of the most important
54:08
things to do is make sure that your client is always credible,
54:12
is always genuine, and try to find holes in the statements of
54:16
the defense attorney or the the defendant to try to make them to
54:20
realize that they're not telling the truth.
54:22
You know, it's a every single time they say, oh, we weren't on
54:26
the phone, we weren't on the phone.
54:28
You don't know that until you actually subpoena the records.
54:33
We subpoena the cell phone records all the time and usually
54:37
it comes with the fight. They're like, but we said we
54:39
weren't on the phone. Well, subpoena them anyways and
54:42
you'll be surprised how many times they're actually on the
54:46
phone at the time or within a window and small enough to where
54:50
you can argue with them. And that always helps reduce
54:54
their credibility. And when you're telling this
54:58
cyclist that has competed in several of the, what's it
55:03
called, the France Tour de France?
55:08
Yeah, there you go. He did that Tour several times.
55:12
So you have an avid cyclist that knows how to ride these bikes,
55:17
that literally has eight of these bikes at home in his
55:20
garage, and you're going to tell him that he was going 20 mph and
55:24
he was unsturdy and didn't know how to operate his bike?
55:28
I don't think so. So any comparative false
55:30
arguments, I say push the defendant, make sure that you
55:34
find something that they're lying about because they're
55:38
always lying about something, and if you find it, that's going
55:42
to destroy any comparative fault.
55:44
That's really just a he said, she said.
55:48
I don't have siphon cases where liability is accepted.
55:53
Maybe when it comes to trial, but I have a case she literally
55:56
made an illegal U-turn going to trial next week.
55:59
A legal U-turn over double yellow lines.
56:01
My guys is going straight. The cop gave us a little bit of
56:05
comparative fault and defense counsel is fighting and asking
56:08
for 5050. I'm you're insane.
56:11
She went over a double yellow line.
56:13
She stopped in A2 lane, was lost and just turned around and hit a
56:16
cyclist. But we're dealing with
56:18
comparative faults, so get to, like everybody says, get to know
56:21
your client, argue about their experience and riding a bike and
56:28
you know, just get prepared to push back on it.
56:32
I'm going to add one thing on this and that is it is really
56:36
whether it's formal, informal, or talking to people doing a
56:39
focus group to get some thematic pieces.
56:42
It can be really clutch, and I'll give you an example.
56:45
We did a focus group on that. We were looking on the damaged
56:47
side, thinking the liability was established.
56:49
Our cyclist was a biomechanical bioengineering PhD student at
56:56
Stanford and a she's coming down at the Sense.
57:00
Up above the Stanford campus. A doctor turns left directly in
57:03
front of her. She goes flying.
57:05
Orthopedic injuries, brain injury.
57:07
She is still the smartest person in the room, but less smart than
57:11
she was before. And so in our focus group we
57:15
were shocked. So doctor gets out, says I'm so
57:19
sorry, this is completely my fault.
57:21
Exception liability. In the focus group, three of the
57:25
nine panelists wanted to talk about why it was wrong that the
57:28
doctor was admitting fault because she was doing 30 in a 35
57:31
mile per hour zone as she was going downhill.
57:34
Clearly that is too fast to be going on something this small.
57:38
So you start hearing some things that make you go, oh shit, how
57:42
do I how what do I do to to to fix this before I get in front
57:46
of a jury? And I'll make one last important
57:48
point that you know, if your client is being managed by their
57:51
primary care doctor, make sure they're being managed by a
57:53
physician that does personal injury because it's very
57:56
important to screening tools you have to screen for TBI PTSD.
58:00
So if your client is not being seen by somebody who's doing a
58:02
thorough job, make sure you get them to a physician that can
58:05
actually do a full screen. Never forget also that let's say
58:11
you have a cycle versus auto car accident case.
58:15
Never forget to look for other issues of liability.
58:18
Sometimes we bring product cases against the helmet
58:21
manufacturers. Sometimes there's something
58:23
wrong with the helmet, sometimes there's something wrong with the
58:25
bike. And on this last case that I
58:27
mentioned with the defense attorney, we actually brought in
58:31
the HOA of this community that he was cycling around because
58:35
the Bush kind of prevented his sight from seeing the car that
58:40
was turning in front of him. And so we had policy limits from
58:44
HOA as well as the driver. So never forget to really
58:49
evaluate, go out there, look at it yourself, see what's wrong
58:52
with it, see how the injuries were actually sustained, see
58:55
what you know people could and couldn't see and really what
58:58
caused this. And always evaluate the case
59:01
from multiple side. Think outside of the box and I
59:04
promise you to get a better result.
59:07
Great. Thank you guys so much.