Paraplegia and Quadriparesis $6.4 million settlement $6.4M - Automobile Accident
A tragic auto accident in 1997 left a 44-year-old man a quadriplegic. During an eight-day trial, NC&H partners Jack Hamilton & Sammy Cacciatore presented critical evidence that the accident was caused by the driver of a rented (Enterprise Leasing Company) 1998 Cadillac sedan. The defendant denied being in the driver's seat at the time of the accident.
On Friday evening, November 28, 1997, our client was driving his Dodge pickup truck south on I-95 toward Palm Bay, Florida. As he approached the Eau Gallie interchange, there was a collision with the 1998 Cadillac. The impact caused his pickup truck to topple forward and roll over three times before it came to rest in the median. Due to the extreme force of the rollover, the roof of the car was crushed, and he sustained a compression injury to his spinal cord.
Five minutes earlier, the defendant had driven the Cadillac into the rear of another vehicle, causing that car to spin off the road, down the embankment to the west. He claimed he left his car to check on the occupants of the car he had hit, and that he was not in his rented Cadillac at all, when the collision with our client's pickup truck occurred.
This was not true, and Jack Hamilton and Sammy Cacciatore hired a professional engineering expert to prove it. This expert demonstrated how a deformation in the Cadillac's driver's seat and console area did prove that this defendant was indeed seated in his car and pulling out into the roadway at the time of the collision with our client's vehicle.
There was also extensive testimony regarding the angles of impact of the vehicles, including an attempt by the defense to use a computer program to try and prove that the Cadillac had been parked on the side of the road.
The defendants had offered $3 million to settle the case before it went to trial, but Jack Hamilton and Sammy Cacciatore took the case to court. After eight days of trial and seven hours of jury deliberation, the partners obtained a $6.4 million settlement for this deserving client.
