One of the major problems we have at trial is proving injuries when there is very little property damage – or none! This is an issue that effect many Baltimore county auto accident victims.
That is what the defense is going to base their defense on -their argument throughout the trial. The Defense will present blow up pictures of the car, they’ll have a doctor who has examined or has looked at the records of the Plaintiff and is willing to testify that there’s no way in the world that this Plaintiff could possibly have been injured from this accident – Impossible.
We’ve identified the weakness of the case. What do we do to strengthen it?
First of all, we don’t put our heads in the sand. We recognize that this is a problem and we get to it right at the start. I will mention it in the opening argument, that this is the situation and this is what the Defense is going to bang at the entire trial and it’s our job to prove to you that the injury did occur.
We can bring in an expert in regard to crash science, who will be able to testify that even though there is little or no property damage, the inertia that occurs when the car was struck is enough to cause injury to the Plaintiff. We will have the Plaintiff’s doctors come into court to testify, live or on video deciding how we want to play that, testifying that notwithstanding the minor property damage there was clearly an injury.
We will argue that the Plaintiff did not exhibit symptoms consistent with his current injuries prior to the accident. If available we present MRIs or CAT scans or X-rays taken after the accident and hopefully, be able to match them up with those taken prior to the accident.
Then there’s the Plaintiff, who quite frankly, has got to carry the ball in these situations because he’s got to be believable. Our Plaintiff must be able to convince the jury that he’s not lying, he’s telling the truth and that the injuries that he’s complaining about are real.
Those are the ways in which we combat this particular weakness in a case. We may not win all the time but this is the plan of attack that one must take on to win these kind of cases. They are winnable.
