The case was against the world's largest for-profit school bus company, First Student. They left a school bus driver behind the wheel after receiving direct notice from the drug testing company that he was on two medications that legally disqualified him from driving a school bus. The next week, he caused this wreck. Unfortunately, our motions judge handed down some very difficult pretrial rulings against us dismissing our punitive damages claim and opening the door to defense admitting liability three days before trial.
When that happened, the judge excluded every piece of evidence outside of the facts of the wreck itself and our client's injuries. The compensatory damages model was a tough one. Our client is a young lady who was an 18-year-old high school senior at the time of the wreck. She has a brain injury but no accompanying bodily injuries outside of a neck strain that resolved within a couple of weeks. She was on police body cam footage telling the police she was fine after the wreck, did not hit her head, did not lose consciousness, and declined an ambulance at the scene.
When her mom took her to the emergency room a few hours after the wreck, she told the emergency room doctor that the only thing that hurt was her shoulder where the seatbelt had been. The first signs of her brain injury did not appear until she became nauseous and went back to the emergency room the next morning. Defense also made hay on some pre-wreck medical records related to her pre-existing anxiety where she received treatment for many of the same symptoms she was experiencing from the brain injury.
Despite the proof issues, the brain injury was devastating for her. She went from an honor roll student with a full scholarship at the University of Oregon with plans to go to medical school to failing out of over half of her classes her first 4 years. Her friends and family talked about the significant impact the brain injury had on her daily life and the physical manifestations (nausea, vomiting, migraines, light sensitivity, jumbled thought patterns, lack of emotional control, etc.) that she dealt with daily.
Pretrial there were no legitimate negotiations. Defense never offered more than our costs when we had mediation. They increased their offers every day during trial with a firm and final the night before closing. They never gave us an offer as high as the verdict.