Another Victory for Joseph M. Toddy and the Defense Team

After a five-day trial in Philadelphia, attorney Joseph M. Toddy, with the assistance of attorney Brian G. Welsh, and paralegal Marina Abi Rached, secured a defense verdict for a national trucking company and its driver.

Joseph and his team represented the owner, dispatcher, and driver of a tractor-trailer that rear-ended a sedan just before 3 am on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. The plaintiff, a 28-year-old male, alleged that he suffered a flat tire and pulled off onto the shoulder of the highway to call AAA. He further alleged that while stopped on the shoulder with his hazard lights on, he was rear-ended by the defendant’s truck. The truck driver not only insisted that the plaintiff did not have his hazard lights on, but that the plaintiff was stopped in the right driving lane, not on the shoulder. The truck driver testified that he had no time to slow down once he realized that there was a car stopped in the driving lane and struck the car at 70 mph, obliterating the plaintiff’s sedan. Plaintiff allegedly sustained serious injuries and claimed to have suffered a traumatic brain injury, with an original demand in this case of $3 million.

The physical evidence at the scene supported the defense’s position that the impact occurred in the lane, not on the shoulder, as gouge marks, skid marks, and the debris field were all in the right lane. Importantly, there was only a narrow shoulder where the accident occurred and if the impact had happened on the shoulder, the tractor-trailer would have struck the guardrail with the right side of the cab and trailer, but there was no such damage to the guardrail or tractor-trailer.

The defense team was able to secure the plaintiff’s Turnpike records, which showed him traveling from South Jersey to Wilkes-Barre, PA and back to Philadelphia, where he then went to work, before getting back on the Turnpike to head to western Maryland around 1:30 a.m. Thus, in addition to the physical evidence, the defense was able to argue to the jury that the plaintiff, exhausted and fatigued from a long day of driving and working, only thought he was on the shoulder of the road when, in reality, he was stopped in the right driving lane. It took the jury less than an hour to return with a verdict finding the client was not negligent.