Claimants suffered horrific injuries in 2018. At the time, the claimant was operating a roll-off truck. His job was to pick up and move dumpsters from construction sites.
On the day of the accident in question, the claimant dropped the dumpster off at the yard of his employer and left the yard to drive to another job location. Ultimately, while on the highway, the boom on his truck was in an elevated position, striking the overpass. The end result was that his vehicle stopped instantaneously, and the claimant suffered spinal cord injuries rendering him a partial paraplegic.
The case was denied by the insurance company for multiple reasons. The original counsel for the claimant contacted Reinhardt | Harper | Davis for help with the case given the significant injuries. At the time our office got involved, the carrier had raised two defenses: one, that the claimant had violated two safety rules: 1. He operated the vehicle with the boom in the upright position, 2. They alleged that the claimant failed to follow safety rules and Virginia statute by not wearing his seatbelt at the time of the accident. Given the disputed nature of the case, we hired an expert to examine the truck to see if there were any mechanical defects with the truck.
The expert made it clear that there were no mechanical defects with the truck in terms of the boom operation but was able to state that the warning light and buzzer that should have told the driver that boom was in the upright position were not functioning. Upon deposing multiple witnesses to the defendants, attorney Stephen Harper was able to get them to concede that at no time had the buzzer or warning light for the truck ever functioned. With regards to the seatbelt issue, we obtained a medical opinion that the claimant, based on the medical injuries, was wearing his seatbelt at the time. The defendants obtained a medical opinion stating the opposite and also, presented the evidence of multiple witnesses, including the claimant’s supervisor, testifying that he had a habit of not wearing his seatbelt and had been reprimanded by the supervisor previously for not wearing his seatbelt.
Given all of those issues involved, the parties agreed to mediate this case. Because of COVID, this mediation was delayed for a significant period of time. Ultimately, we were able to convince the carrier to pay $345,000 to settle the claimant’s case, despite their significant defenses to the client. In the interim time period, the claimant did qualify for Medicare and was receiving Social Security Disability. The parties were able to agree to a settlement with a proposed MSA of zero that was submitted to CMS and given the denied nature of the claim, CMS agreed to the zero MSA, and thus, none of the claimant’s settlement proceeds had to be set aside for a Medicare account.