A self-employed mechanic was struck by a driver leaving a fast-food parking lot. The insurer's defense: his injuries were pre-existing, and his job was to blame. A Jefferson County jury saw it differently.

Our client made his living as a self-employed mechanic, the kind of work that depends entirely on a strong back and steady hands. In October 2016, a driver pulling out of a fast-food restaurant parking lot struck his vehicle, leaving him with injuries to his back, shoulder, and wrist.

The defense had a ready-made theory. Our client had some pre-existing arthritis in his wrist before the crash. He worked a physically repetitive trade. Rather than acknowledge the collision had changed his life, the insurance company argued his injuries were mostly his own body, and his own job, catching up with him.

We didn't dispute the arthritis. We didn't need to. The distinction that mattered was simple: before the crash, that arthritis didn't require surgery. After it did, along with a future surgical recommendation for his shoulder and neck that had no history at all before the collision.

The insurance company's last offer before trial was $150,000, against a demand of $500,000. That gap reflected how much weight the defense was putting on its pre-existing-condition theory. We took the case to a jury instead.

At trial, the case came down to the injuries, and to whether jurors would accept a narrative that blamed a hardworking man's own body for what a crash had done to it. They didn't. The jury returned a verdict of $2,500,000, signed by eleven of twelve jurors. The lone holdout wanted the damages to be lower, not the liability finding to change.

As we put it after the verdict: this case was about more than medical bills. It was about a man's ability to keep doing the work that supported his family, and a jury that understood the difference between an old diagnosis and a new injury.