In this case, the Plaintiff was an 82 year old artist who ran his own business. While visiting Charlottesville, he was rear-ended. While he wasn’t taken to the hospital, he felt groggy and went to a family member’s home to sleep. Over the coming weeks and months, he complained that he could no longer think through his art projects like before. As a result, his work suffered signficantly. To the layperson that didn’t know him, he looked fine. But to his co-workers and customers, he clearly had changed.
He incurred minor medical bills, approximately $13,000. Given the nature of his business, while he lost income, the ability to prove it in court was prevented given the rules of evidence. Stated another way, he paid his employees well, and paid himself very little, because he loved what he did. As a result, his business wasn’t very profitable, and therefore he had minimal provable lost wages.
Prior to trial, but after the accident, he also sustained a bad fall where he hit his head on the concrete. At trial, the defense pointed to this fall and his age to claim that his minor car accident (there was minimal property damage to the cars involved) didn’t cause any issues he was having with his art. Rather, he either was just at the end of his career or he injured himself after the fall.
At trial, we showed the jury the timeline – right before the accident, he was doing his job well, and there was an immediate drop in quality of work after the accident, which persisted through to trial. This timeline was unaffected by his age and his fall.
We asked for significantly more at trail. However, after polling the jury, we learned this to be a “compromise verdict.” Some jurors (those close to Plaintiff’s age) wanted to give the Plaintiff over $500,000, while two young jurors wanted to give him $0. Indeed, upon speaking with one young juror, I heard the term “ambulance chaser.”
What’s important about this case is that brain injury cases are really difficult especially when the injury isn’t visible to the naked eye and the victim is older or has a complex medical history. With that being said, at Abrenio Law, if we accept your case, we will give you our best guidance, and should it be in your best interest, put the case before a jury to give you your day in court.
IMPORTANT NOTICE: Every case is different, and the results depend on the unique facts presented. Nothing in our reported results is intended to imply that we would reach a similar result in your case. For every case that we accept, we complete a detailed evaluation for you (in most cases in writing) to provide you our analysis regarding what we think your case is worth. The only promise that we can make to you is to give you 100% effort and work with you as best as we can to attain the right result for your case.