In early March of 2020, our client was struck from behind by a top-50 national trucking company on I-70, on her way to a funeral.
Immediately, based on body cam footage and 911 calls, the trucker blamed our client. He claimed she had "cut him off" and "stopped short."
Our client wasn't sure of her injuries at the time. She refused medical attention even though she didn't feel well. Her car was totaled. The trucking company already had its narrative in place, and it was on tape.
When we initially got the case, we could tell our client was in some serious discomfort. She is a wonderful woman, a wife, a mother, a grandmother. She had just started a new job and could not keep up due to the pain. Eventually, she was forced to quit her job to focus on her physical health.
As her treatment progressed, we began to see she needed major surgeries. In the middle of COVID, she needed a shoulder surgery and a neck surgery. Fortunately, she was able to get them done, starting with the shoulder, then a multi-level disc replacement in her neck.
While she was recovering, we pushed forward on liability.
Our client had released her vehicle prior to hiring us, so we needed to find it. We needed the data off it. Alex tracked the car by the VIN and found it down in the bootheel of Missouri. He got in touch with the new owners and we arranged a download using our Bosch CDR, a Crash Data Retrieval tool we own and use in cases like this.
The data showed exactly what we expected. Our client was not swerving. She was not stopping short. She gradually came to a halt based on traffic, and there was zero evidence of her cutting into the lane in front of the trucker.
The computer doesn't lie.
We also obtained old employment records that showed what a great and determined person she is. We focused hard on those facts and kept the pressure on.
After aggressively litigating the case and sharing all of our information with the defense, they offered $1,000,000. We rejected it outright.
After some back and forth, the case resolved for $2,950,000 for our client and her husband.
This case had a problem most plaintiff firms would have struggled with: the trucking company's defense was on tape. Their driver blamed our client at the scene. The body cam footage and 911 calls captured those statements. To defense counsel, that was a gift.
Most cases like this would have settled at a discount, because the plaintiff would have had no way to prove what really happened.
What we had that most firms don't is a Bosch Crash Data Retrieval tool that we own. Every modern car has a black box. The trick is recovering it before the vehicle disappears.
Our client's car had been released to the insurance company before she hired us. By the time we got involved, the vehicle had been auctioned and was somewhere in the Missouri bootheel. Alex tracked it by VIN, found the new owner, and arranged the data pull. The recovered data settled the question definitively.
Once the defense saw the data, the case shifted from "your client caused this" to "what's a fair settlement." The first offer was $1M. The settlement was $2.95M, nearly three times the first offer.
The trucking company's $1M offer wasn't insulting. For most firms, $1M for a rear-end trucking case would be a great outcome. But it didn't reflect what the case was actually worth once liability was nailed down. Rejecting an inadequate offer is not a gamble when the case has been built properly.
Owning a Bosch CDR, and knowing how to track a released vehicle by VIN to recover it, is the kind of capability most plaintiff firms don't invest in. It's expensive, requires training, and only matters in cases where it matters. But when it matters, it transforms what the case is worth.
The case wasn't won purely on data. The employment records, showing what kind of worker she was, how determined she was, what she had built, established who the plaintiff was as a person. Juries (and adjusters) value cases involving people they understand.
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