subject: When Evidence Showed Defendant In Vehicle Accident Was Lying Jury Gave Victim $300,000 [print this page] When litigating a vehicle accident case, it can in some cases be very important to be able to demonstrate that the defendant's story is not truthful. Sometimes all a lawyer has to do in order to show this is to show that the defendant lied or told an account that was false in some aspect. This is oftentimes sufficient to cause doubt on the defendant's entire story. Pull at one thread of a story and it may all come apart. The difficult part is discovering that thread. One method that may be useful is to look for too many details. Many times, when people are making up a lie, they try too hard to make the story consistent. One way they do that is by making up too many details - the kinds of details people would realistically probably not recall.
Consider, as an illustration, a lawsuit that concerned a motor vehicle accident which occurred in a four way intersection. A driver in an SUV drove into the intersection and hit a woman who was riding a bicycle. There were no witnesses to the accident. The bicyclist claimed that she had stopped at the stop sign prior to entering the intersection. However according to the defendant, it was the bicyclist who was responsible for the accident by going into the intersection without yielding the right of way. This would have been a simple, clean story. Without witnesses it would normally come down to whether a jury would believe the driver or the bicyclist. But the driver went further. The defendant also stated that the bicyclist was hard to see because she was wearing dark clothes, and was riding a bicycle without proper illumination.
The victim was thrown onto the pavement with so much force that she suffered a severe injury to her knee. As a result of this injury she had to have arthroscopic surgery.
Two very important things were done correctly in this lawsuit. First, after the accident the fire department found a dislodged bicycle light at the location where the accident occurred. Second, the law firm that handled the case on behalf of the victim learned about this finding and approached a member of the fire department to testify at the trial of the case. With this information the jury took just 1 hour to find for the bicyclist. The jury awarded her $300,000.
This matter presented an instance in which the lack of witnesses to the accident could have stopped the bicyclist victim from getting compensation for her injuries. There is clearly no way for us to look inside the mind of a defendant to understand why he or she would distort the facts or even plain lie about how an accident happened. There was nothing in the documentation of this case to indicate that there was insufficient insurance and that the defendant was worried that the victim would go after his personal assets. Presumably, the defendant understood the extent of the injury the plaintiff sustained due to the accident. Still, if not for the testimony of the fire department member, the defendants claims about the circumstances of the accident (which the jury clearly did not find credible) could in all likelihood have stopped the plaintiff from being compensated for her injury.
