Defense Verdict Secured in Philadelphia Rideshare Injury Trial Despite $600K Future Medical Claim

Frank Love again successfully defended Zarwin Baum’s client, a rideshare driver faced with a bodily injury claim from the driver of another vehicle in a two-car motor vehicle accident at trial.  Faced with a challenging liability defense and a Future Medical Cost Projection of nearly $600,000, Frank won a defense verdict at trial in the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas in front of Judge Vincent L. Johnson.

The Plaintiff, herself a rideshare driver, alleged that she was injured in the accident when Frank’s client swerved her vehicle into the Plaintiff’s lane of travel immediately after making a left turn.  Plaintiff alleged that Frank’s client was distracted and/or not paying proper attention to the roadway and slammed into the front driver’s side of her vehicle.  There was superficial body damage to both vehicles.  With the help of his client who testified in Plaintiff’s case-in-chief as on cross and in the defense’s main case, Frank defended the case on negligence, arguing that Plaintiff’s version of the events did not meet the burden of proof to establish negligence against Zarwin’s client.

Plaintiff did not seek emergency medical treatment, even though her husband came to the scene to pick her up. She went to physical therapy for about four months, and received a radiofrequency ablation to her lower back.  At trial, Plaintiff’s medical expert and cost projection expert testified that Plaintiff would need a litany of future medical treatment including physical therapy, epidural steroid injections, repeat ablations and surgical intervention.  The Medical Cost Projection report set her life expectancy at an additional 44 years; hence the nearly $600,000 claim for future medical costs.

At trial, Love cross-examined the Plaintiff with facts tending to impeach her credibility; including that Plaintiff did not seek any medical treatment until her lawyers sent her to a therapist four days after the accident, that her lawyers directed her entire treatment course, and that her experts did not even review her entire treatment records.  With respect to the radiofrequency ablation performed by Dr. Burt, Dr. Burt read one MRI report from a radiologist he never spoke with.  Dr. Burt did not review any other treatment records, did not review the actual MRI film and had never even heard of the Plaintiff until he walked into the examination room.   Frank argued that the radiofrequency ablation and any claim for future medical costs was against the weight of the evidence and not supported medically.

Love elicited testimony from Plaintiff’s medical expert that she had only seen once and declined to revise his testimony even faced with the fact that Plaintiff had not had any of the treatment included in his report over the preceding two and a half years and that he had not reviewed and incorporated all of her treatment records as Plaintiff treated for another month after the date of the expert’s examination.

Similarly, Love elicited testimony from the Medical Cost Projection expert, a registered nurse, that she had no information about Plaintiff’s current medical condition and despite being a nurse, was not concerned with obtaining more information about the Plaintiff, or even speaking with her, before testifying that she required $600,000 in future medical costs.  The expert testimony was committed to video before the motions in limine were decided.

After deliberating for a little over an hour, the jury fully agreed and found for the rideshare driver, concluding that Plaintiff did not prove that the driver’s conduct was a factual cause of Plaintiff’s claimed damages.  The verdict indicates that the jury rejected Plaintiff’s inflated medical cost claims and likely also found Plaintiff’s testimony not credible. In light of the difficult liability case and the exorbitant future medical costs claim, this marks another outstanding outcome for Love and the firm.