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 brain injury/car accident case and its proceedings.)
Ella Lee has been fully evaluated by many top independent medical experts to assess her brain injury, and has had a Life Care Plan assembled with the help of these experts by Patti Green, a highly respected life care planner. The future medical care costs for Ella Lee are in excess of $8,750,000. Her past medical bills are in excess of $430,000.
The defense experts estimate the cost of future care to be in the area of $5,000,000, but they have provided no life care plan through their experts. Instead, the defense takes the position that maybe Ella Lee is faking, and is a malingerer. However, their best expert on the subject acknowledges that her condition is just as likely to be quite real, and severe brain injury patients like Ella Lee often cannot control their emotions and make sense as accurate historians. Given Ella Lee’s pre-existing condition with mental illness, as a result of the new and devastating overlay of significant brain trauma, she know non-functional and requires the help the experts contend is needed.
To sum up the case which will be presented at trial, Ella Lee is seeking economic damages only. She will prove that the auto accident is the fault, in whole or in part, of Sacramento Police Officer Paul Black. Therefore, he is jointly and severally responsible for her economic damages. The City of Sacramento will contend the accident was completely the fault of Mr. Choo, and further will contend that Plaintiff’s injuries and economic damages claimed are overstated and not credible. Mr. Choo will contend, like Plaintiff, that the accident is in whole or in part the fault of S.P.D. Officer Paul Black. No one contends that Ella Lee is at all responsible for the accident or her damages. She was blame-free, stopped behind the Choo vehicle, minding her own business when the crash occurred.
The law of the case has been selected by plaintiffs in the proposed CACI jury instructions filed with the court and given to all parties, including a Special Verdict form, which mirrors that of the City’s. This is a simple negligence case arising out of a two-vehicle collision, a crash involving three vehicles, issues of speed, perception, reaction, foreseeability, avoidability, all of which a jury can readily understand from their own experience and with the assistance of expert testimony.
This motion is presented to ensure that the testimony that the jury hears is proper, and attempts to give the jury wholly false impressions of how the vehicles actually moved and crashed, or what their lines of sight were, or what they could see or not see that evening are kept from the jury, to ensure a fair trial. Once the bell has been rung, it is too late at trial. Therefore, these motions are presented prior to trial, based on anticipated evidentiary violations and issues raised in the discovery and by the experts thus far.
Under the Evidence Code and California case law, it is clear that these topics should not be addressed by any witness at the time of trial of this matter. (See Part 4 of 8.)
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.