Five Mph Crash Said To Cause Loss Of Vision In One Eye - Auto Maker Settles
27 Jul 2007
The accident occurred at just five mph and the plaintiff wasn't wearing her seatbelt.
Even worse, the defendant auto manufacturer had sent out a recall notice two months before the accident offering to fix the defective part for free.
Yet one week before trial, the auto maker settled in the high six-figures.
On May 10, 1996, a 41-year-old California housewife was approaching a stop sign at the end of a highway off-ramp in San Luis Obispo, Calif., when the bench seat in her 1993 pickup fell into full recline position. The truck continued through the intersection, hit a curb, ran up an embankment and stopped.
The Plaintiff alleged that the low-impact accident caused her to hit her head, which resulted in a loss of vision in her left eye and mild brain damage.
There was little or no damage to the truck, and a highway patrol officer said he didn't see any injuries on the Plaintiff's body. The defendant automobile manufacturer had sent out a recall notice that warned of the defective seatback and offered to fix it for free. Although the Plaintiff claimed that she never received the notice, the defense produced a microfiche document showing a mailing list of thousands of names - the Plaintiff's included.
The defense claimed that the Plaintiff was also at fault for not wearing her seatbelt.
If the defense had such solid arguments, how did the Plaintiff get such a large settlement?
First, one of the primary defense arguments - that the Plaintiff couldn't have hit the front of her head because the seat fell backwards - was faulty.
The angle of the impact was not straight on. The Plaintiff was driving straight but went off to the left.
So the plaintiff's attorneys argued that she banged the left side of her forehead on the B-pillar - the piece of metal that runs from the bottom of the vehicle to the roof and is adjacent to the driver's shoulder.
Furthermore, the Plaintiff argued that the seatbelt defense was irrelevant because a seatbelt would not have protected her once the seat fell backwards and she was lying in a prone position.
As for the recall, the Plaintiff said she never received the notice.
There were written medical reports documenting the Plaintiff's six-day hospitalization immediately following the accident for a concussion and blurry vision. It was argued that these reports of a rather extensive period of treatment right after the accident showed that the treating physicians attributed loss of eyesight to the accident.
The defense never contested that she lost her eyesight, but it was contested that she lost as a result of the accident.
Attributing post-accident injuries to totally unrelated conditions or diseases is a common defense tactic that must be met head-on by experienced injury attorneys.
The result in this case demonstrates the need for an experienced attorney to address each defense argument or theory.
