Leila Miyamoto v. Systems Services of America

In July of 2016, our client, Leila Miyamoto, was a young mother taking her 8-year-old son to a doctor’s appointment in their Toyota minivan when a tractor-trailer rear-ended them at “low speed” on a surface street. Leila refused medical transport and went to her primary care provider later that day, who did not evaluate her pain complaints, told her it was strain and sprain, and sent her home without a concussion diagnosis. This was her first step on her years-long struggle, including hundreds of medical appointments and five surgeries, to obtain relief from the TBI and chronic pain symptoms that persisted despite her best efforts to regain the level of activity she enjoyed before the crash.

In the eight and a half years before she was able to bring her case to trial, the insurance companies for the trucking company threw the defense playbook at her, even disputing liability for the rear-end collision by saying she slammed on the brakes without a turn signal on such that the truck driver was unable to avoid the collision. Dana Fox had an investigator follow Leila and her family around with a video camera, and hired a slew of experts to testify that she exaggerated her symptoms, that all her problems were “subjective," even presenting biomechanical expert testimony that the probability she suffered a low grade concussion was less than 1%.

After a three-week jury trial, the jury returned a verdict of $21,375,000. A 6-year-old statutory offer to compromise by Plaintiff in the amount of $6.9 Million meant that over $13,000,000 of prejudgment interest and costs would be added to the judgment in addition to expert costs. The entire verdict, all pre judgment interest, and $100,000 in costs have been paid by the defense, something that was agreed to within a week of the verdict to avoid our motion for attorneys fees because of the frivolous denials of our many requests for admissions.

Nick Rowley, Keith Bruno, John Kawai, and the Trial Lawyers for Justice trial team achieved this by:

· Educating the jury about the medicine, including brain injury, spine surgery, and psychiatry experts and visuals.

· Lay witnesses who powerfully communicated how drastically Leila’s life had been affected

· Cross-examinations that exposed the foundational flaws of defense experts, that undercut the defense themes, and that turned most defense experts into Plaintiff’s experts.

· Using the defense’s sneaky sub rosa video surveillance footage against them.

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