Personal Injury Lawyer Blog
(Please note: the names and locations of all parties have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the participants in this bus accident/personal injury case and its proceedings.)
Plaintiff Molly Chance moves this court to vacate judgment in this matter and order a new trial under C.C.P. section 657.
INTRODUCTION
Following five days of testimony, a jury rushed to verdict within minutes of electing a foreperson. Despite sworn testimony of all four non-party eyewitnesses clearly seeing Plaintiff Molly Chance ( Chance ) before being struck by a bus, a jury found Defendant’s employee, Paul Davie ( Davie ) who had a closer and less obstructed view than any of the other witnesses, not negligent in failing to see Chance either before or while making a left turn consequently hitting her with his employer’s bus. As will be discussed in the following points and authorities, this travesty of justice was the product of jury misconduct motivated by extreme prejudice fomented against Chance by objected, inflammatory, irrelevant and otherwise inadmissible evidence.
In contravention of the court’s instructions, there was no deliberation concerning the law and evidence that addressed Davie’s duties and conduct. Only the jurors’ collective recall of an investigating traffic police officer’s unfounded opinion that Chance was jaywalking when struck by defendant’s bus was deliberated. Already biased against Chance due to irrelevant and prejudicial evidence of a ten-year-old accident, the policeman’s opinion was enough for a majority of the jurors to place all the responsibility for the incident on her In the interest of serving justice, this verdict should be set aside and a new trial ordered. (See Part 2 of 13.)
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.