Davis v. DOE COmpany

$1.03M

Can the right law firm make a difference?

Ms. Davis was crossing the street when she was hit by a drunk driver. Ms. Davis fractured her spinous process at L4-5 and suffered a closed head injury. Ms. Davis originally hired another law firm to represent her and they demanded $190,000 to settle the case.  When the drunk driver said no, the prior law firm filed suit against the drunk driver.  Several months later, the prior law firm lowered their demand to $175,000.

See $175,000 Demand, page 1.       See $175,000 Demand, page 2.

When the drunk driver said no again, Ms. Davis called our office for a free consultation.  We told her that her case was being severely undervalued and explained why in great detail.  Ms. Davis decided to fire her first law firm and hire us instead.

The first thing we did was to investigate the drunk driver's claim that his brakes malfunctioned.  In most cases, when a driver blames his brakes, it's nothing more than a bogus excuse for bad driving.  But it's our policy and practice to explore every lead even though in most cases it turns up nothing.

But in this case, our hard work paid off.  Through extensive discovery and investigation, and the retention of an exceptional brake expert, we were able to make a strong argument that the brakes were indeed faulty and that this was the fault of a brake repair facility that had repaired the brakes just three months prior to the accident!  The prior law firm did not even make a claim or sue the brake repair facility and so we amended the complaint to add the brake repair facility as a defendant.

After more than a year of contentious litigation, our law firm obtained a pre-trial settlement of $1,037,500.00.  The drunk driver paid $562,500 in cash and the brake repair facility paid $475,000 in cash. 

Note:  $236,075.00 of brake repair facility's settlement was used to buy a structured settlement that paid Ms. Davis payments over time.  See structured payments below.