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 car accident and personal injury case and its proceedings.)
The XYZ firm also submitted a 16-page mediation brief including all of the facts supporting plaintiff’s claims of liability and damages against the defendants. Prior to the mediation, the XYZ firm also made a section 998 demand for the defendants’ automobile policy limits of $100,000. The firm offered evidence at the mediation that Mr. Black’s economic damages totaled $124,000 and his total damages approached $250,000. At the mediation on April 8, 2010, the defendants’ counsel agreed that if the XYZ firm’s damage calculations were correct and if Dr. Lee would confirm under oath the information about medical damages and causation the firm had collected and presented at the mediation, defendants would accept plaintiff’s statutory offer to settle the case for their auto policy limits of $100,000.
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.
Defendants took Dr. Lee’s deposition on May 13, 2010, which Ms. Brown personally attended. While being questioned by the defense attorney, Dr. Lee was unable to give an opinion related to plaintiff’s need for future surgery. Ms. Brown then presented Dr. Lee with exhibits she had prepared depicting the MRI findings, asking him a series of questions relating to Mr. Black’s injuries, whether the accident was the causative factor for those injuries, as well as his need for future surgery. She was able to rehabilitate Dr. Lee’s testimony related to questions asked by the defense attorney at the beginning of Dr. Lee’s deposition.
After reviewing Ms. Brown’s exhibits, Dr. Lee changed his opinion and testified that Mr. Black would require future surgery. The day after Dr. Lee’s deposition, on May 14, 2010, defendants offered their automobile policy limits of $100,000, and the case settled in Mr. Black’s favor.
The section 998 demand that plaintiff made to defendant, which defendants eventually accepted, occurred before White even intervened.
In contrast to what the XYZ firm did — whose sole efforts, from case inception in May 2009 to case conclusion one year later, led to the creation of the $100,000 settlement fund, as detailed above – White had the following nominal involvement in the case: It filed a lien in the amount of $2,827.05, on August 19, 2009. On March 22, 2010, ten months after the case had been filed, White intervened, seeking $23,717.22 for its lien amount.
White attended the mediation. Its mediation brief, a form brief, focused only on its own entitlement to its workers’ compensation lien, and said nothing about the bases for plaintiffs’ liability and damages claims against the defendant. Its counsel telephonically appeared at the Lee deposition and asked only a few questions, indicating that he didn’t even have the medical records that were key to this case.
White did nothing else. (See Part 5 of 8.)
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.