Marcie Mangan
Welcome back to Beeding Goliath, a plaintiff’s Pursuit of Justice. Today, in our brand new podcast studio, we have Selvie Shaske and Pritchard attorneys, Brian Selvie, Rob Cohen, and Emily Arte. Brian, Rob, and Emily worked together on a case that resulted in the first ever plaintiff’s verdict in Fayette County, Illinois. And not only was it the first verdict on record, but it was also an impressive eight-figure recovery for the client. These interviews were recorded separately, but have been edited together to tell one cohesive story. We hope you enjoy. Brian, thank you so much for being here.
Brian L. Salvi
Thanks for having me.
Marcie Mangan
Before we start, can you just give me a very brief overview of what this case was and what caused Jeremy’s injuries?
Brian L. Salvi
Jeremy’s injuries are a little multifaceted in the sense that he was involved in this rear-end collision. Initially, suffered what he thought was a whiplash, strain in his neck. For several months, for a few months, it was unknown I don’t know exactly what was going on, but ultimately, they diagnosed a cervical syringe for Jeremy. The cervical syringe in and of itself started to compress and apply pressure to the spinal cord, which caused him a lot of pain, neuropathy, apathy in his hands and shoulders. But ultimately, the big aspect of his injury is what occurred in the surgery to drain the syringe. Because the procedure to drain the syringes requires the surgeon to go into the spinal canal and place this little drain. As soon as you go into the spinal canal, you’re causing damage to the spinal cord tissue. As a result of that, you end up with all of these problems that impact not just pain signals, but also your function and sensory signals as well. What started out and seemed like something small initially ended up evolving into something far more significant.
Rob L. Kohen
The truck that hit him was an F450 which is a big work truck with a flat bed on the back of it. You see them probably on a lot of farms. It’s a big, heavy-duty, super-duty truck. The fact that it hit the back of Jeremy’s truck, which was a big tractor trailer, you’d think it wouldn’t do a lot of damage. When you look at the photos, actually, you wouldn’t tell initially. But if you look at the back of the truck, the back bar, which is meant for protection, was completely dented in it. In order to do that, you have hit that bar with a tremendous amount of force. And so even though his truck didn’t look like it had tremendous damage, if you take a look at the photos of the truck that hit him, that entire truck looks like it’s an accordion, and it’s just completely smashed in. So you can tell the amount of force that was put on Jeremy’s truck based on not only the bar on his truck being smashed in, but also, more importantly, the photos showing the truck that hit him and how bad the damage was there.
Marcie Mangan
So you mentioned he was diagnosed a few months later. Did he not go to the hospital right away after the accident? Was there no ambulance called?
Brian L. Salvi
At this scene of the incident, the highway patrol shows up. They ask him if he needs to see any medical attention. He declines it at the time. In fact, Jeremy doesn’t just decline medical attention at the scene. He’s in the middle. He’s a long-haul truck driver, and he’s in the middle of a route on his way from Arkansas to Cincinnati, and the crash occurs in Illinois. And he finishes his route. So he travels another couple of thousand miles, finishing his route to Cincinnati and then back to Arkansas, which took him another couple of days. And so he doesn’t see anyone for 10 days following the incident because he thought it was a strain, he thought it would go away. He got home about four or five days after the crash, and then waited another five days to see how his pain evolved before actually seeing an urgent care clinic. Then from there, he got connected with an an orthopedic surgeon, and then everything just got diagnosed from there. There was this period of time where he thought he wasn’t injured, he didn’t seek medical attention, and ultimately, that became the primary defenses in the case.
Marcie Mangan
After Jeremy gets home from finishing his route, Did he then seek treatment? You said 10 days later. Did he stop working in that 10 days, or when did he pull back from trucking?
Brian L. Salvi
He gets back from his route. After the crash happens, he gets home about, again, four days, I think, afterwards. And then he sits around for five days, and he’s just monitoring himself, monitoring his symptoms. He contacts his employer and says, Hey, I’m still dealing with these issues from that crash last week. I’m still not feeling great. And so hold off on giving me any new routes. Because, again, as a long haul truck driver, if he gets a route, it’s not like, Hey, can you do this quick route for a couple of hours? He’s gone for, typically from anywhere from 8 to 11 days are his routes. So if he was going to accept a new job, it would be quite a challenge for him, given his condition. And so at that point, his work was just on hold?
Rob L. Kohen
Initially, they just said, You’re sore. Let’s monitor this. Let’s see what’s going on. They thought it was some strain or sprain, just something that was causing some muscle issues. And so for a little while, it wasn’t a great concern. It just seemed like, Hey, you were in a really bad crash, and you had some really He had whiplash injuries. Your body was flung forward, and that is to be expected when you’re hit as hard as he was hit. And so initially, he didn’t think much of it at the time.
Marcie Mangan
Was it his choice to take a step back from trucking, or are there certain regulations that didn’t allow him to drive while he’s on the medications and in pain? It’s twofold.
Emily Art
Not only did he not feel capable to operate a truck safely just based on his pain, but also the amount of medications he was on, the type of medications he was on, just wouldn’t allow him to to operate a vehicle of that size and of that nature.
Brian L. Salvi
Then after he had his initial appointment and got a referral into an orthopedic spine surgeon, and then ultimately a neurosurgeon through work comp, through that process, he had an MRI Once the MRI, which was in October, so a couple months later, once the MRI revealed the cervical serings, that’s when he was formally taken off of work. He was informally taken off of work saying, Hey, listen, I don’t think my symptoms are going to let me do a 8-11 day trip. It was just touch and go, let’s figure out what’s going on with your neck. Then once they diagnose the serings, formal restriction from work.
Marcie Mangan
Was there anything that you stressed at trial for why this is particularly a terrible injury for a truck driver.
Brian L. Salvi
Terrible injury for a truck driver, terrible injury for Jeremy in particular, because Jeremy discussed, described his affinity for truck driving during trial. He He looked at truck driving as a means of freedom for himself, and he really, really enjoyed working. He enjoyed being a provider to his family, and not only being a provider, but he enjoyed the job that he chose in truck driving. And I know his father and great grandfather and other uncles were also truck drivers. So he had a sense of pride about truck driving as well.
Rob L. Kohen
It was very clear, both to Brian and myself, in talking to him and meeting to him, and not only to us as his lawyers, but it also was very clear to this jury that truck driving was Jeremy’s life, right? There’s a lot of people who have jobs who they do the job and they go in and they clock in, they clock out, and it’s a job. But for Jeremy, I think he genuinely loved being on the road. He talked about even at trial, just the experiences of going different places, seeing different people. He had buddies from all over the country that he would meet along the way, some of which actually came in and testified. One of his truck driving friends came in and talked to the jury about seeing Jeremy on the road, and they would talk sometimes for hours while they were on the road over their system. And so it was very clear that Jeremy just loved doing his job, and the fact that he can’t do it or couldn’t do it was very upsetting.
Brian L. Salvi
And so the development of the neuropathic pain, and most importantly, the development of the proprioception, where he can’t feel his hands and feet in space. The neurosurgeons described it perfectly at trial to the jury, where it’s like you’re just describing a circumstance where this is a dangerous person to be behind the wheel of a car. He should be restricted to only driving during the day personal vehicles on short trips, like if he has to run to the convenience store for something. That’s what he should be limited in doing because it would just straight up be dangerous for himself and for others on the road to be a truck driver. So the formal restriction for truck driving for Jeremy was quite devastating to him. And I think it was really communicated well by Jeremy himself at trial when he described, again, this sense of freedom that truck driving provided him because he would talk about how he’s seen every part of the country. He’s seen the West, he’s seen the Pacific North Coast, he’s seen the Midwest, he’s gone up East, he’s gone to the South, and he feels like he’s gotten a real appreciation for the country that he lives in.
Brian L. Salvi
And so all these things were wrapped up in the story of why he loved truck driving and what he felt like he lost in his life as a result of being restricted from doing it going forward.
Marcie Mangan
So you had mentioned earlier that his worst injury was caused by the surgery he had. Why was the doctor never brought in as a defendant, or was that ever brought up by the defense? Like the doctor should be the one that’s liable?
Brian L. Salvi
It’s a really good question, and it was one of the main things that we were concerned about when we were going into trial, which is that we had to make sure that the jury understood that the way Jeremy got to where he is today, where it’s permanent pain, permanent neuropathic pain into his extremities that limits his ability to function, sensory problems that send pain signals in an over-exaggerated way to his brain. Then a big thing was the development of proprioception, which is a concept where, based on damage to your spinal cord and your nervous system, you lose your place in space, which is to say that if you’re sitting in a chair, you close your eyes, I can feel where my hands are, I can feel where my feet are. If I move them around where the chair is, I have a sense of where I am relative to things around me. The surgery to drain the syrinx requires the surgeon to go into the spinal cord, cut into the spinal cord. As a result of Jeremy’s procedure, given its location in his cervical spine, proprioception is one of the things that he developed after the surgery.
Brian L. Salvi
It has nothing to do with whether or not the surgeon performed the surgery correctly. All of the opinions, all of our analysis and review of the case and discussion with fellow neurosurgeons, instructed us that this neurosurgeon performed the surgery correctly. It’s just the nature of the surgery that leaves patients in, unfortunately, a permanently disabled state. It’s a common side effect of the surgery? Absolutely. It’s almost like a necessary side effect of the surgery. If you look at the chronology of the development of the syringe, which was a originally identified for Jeremy in October, he doesn’t have the surgery to drain the syringe until April. And part of the reason why is his neurosurgeon is waiting and saying, If this thing will start to drain on its own or shrink on its own, that’s the better outcome Because if I have to go in and operate, you’re going to be left with problems. And so they held on as long as they could. And then what ultimately happened is, as time went on, Jeremy started to lose function in his legs and started to lose a little function in his bowel and bladder. And as soon as that happened, snapped into action, they did the surgery.
Brian L. Salvi
And so those issues were thankfully starved off. So he doesn’t really have long term issues there. But the permanent pain, the permanent neuropathy, and then the proprioception. Those are the major things that Jeremy was left with. Because of that, it led to a lot of problems, including his inability to work anymore. But it had nothing to do with the doctor’s conduct. The surgery was performed correctly. It’s just the nature of the surgery.
Marcie Mangan
Man, that’s like you choose the lesser of two evils.
Brian L. Salvi
That’s exactly right. You can imagine the circumstance if you’re a patient like Jeremy, if you’re getting told, Listen, you have this fluid-filled sac in your spinal cord. It’s going to impact you the way it currently is, because during that time before the surgery, he still neuropathic pain, pain in his neck, diminished function, over sensitivity to stimuli. All those things are just what he’s dealing with. And the surgeon’s like, okay, the only way we can prevent it from getting catastrophically worse, where you lose function in your legs, is if we cut it into your spinal cord and you’re left with all these problems permanently. And so it’s a really, really challenging thing for a plaintiff to navigate in terms of basically signing yourself up for a lifetime of problems just to starve off a potentially catastrophic result.
Marcie Mangan
Especially for someone who drives for a living. I mean, this sounds like it’s dangerous not only for himself, but other people on the road. Was there any chance that he made his own injuries worse by not going to the hospital right away?
Brian L. Salvi
Was that an issue at all? That’s a good question. It wasn’t articulated or repined on by the defense. They didn’t take the position that Jeremy made things worse by not seeking medical treatment right away. They took more of the position that the crash itself was is insufficient from a force perspective to cause this significant injury, and that a cervical syringes is not something you would get from a relatively minor crash like this one was. That was the primary defense in the case. They didn’t really take the tech that Jeremy made things worse for himself.
Marcie Mangan
Do you think they chose that defense because that’s what they would have done in any venue, or did that have anything to do with it being a smaller county?
Brian L. Salvi
It’s a good question because I think there are a couple of factors that lead into it. One of the things that What happened early on in Jeremy’s treatment was that he saw a neurosurgeon as part of his worker’s comp case. That neurosurgeon was hired by his work comp carrier. He initially said, Yeah, I think these injuries are related to the crash. But then once the syrinx was drained and the surgery was done and the long-term nature of Jeremy’s problems was realized, they then took the position with With the neurosurgeon to say, actually the cervical syrinx and the significant extent of damages that Jeremy has, it just can’t be correlated with this minor car crash. I think once they recognize the long-term implications of Jeremy’s injury, They decided to go on the full defense on causation, where, in my opinion, I think the better approach probably would have been recognizing the injuries as significant and just saying, We just don’t think it’s worth as much money as you say. In that context, I think the venue It did have something to do with how they approach the defense.
Marcie Mangan
So while we’re on the venue, can you describe Fayette County and why it’s a little different than trying a case in Cook?
Brian L. Salvi
Sure. Yeah. So the main thing there is just the size of the county, and then the nature of how the county operates. And what I mean by that is that this is a county of 22,000 people, 10,000 registered voters. So you’re talking about because your jury pool is based on who’s a registered voter. So our jury pool is only 10,000 people. It’s also a prison town. There’s a big prison in the town, in the county. And so what we learn through our due diligence in the lead up to trial and then at trial is that a lot of people are either directly or indirectly connected with the prison system. And so because of that, it’s a tight knit community. And we certainly learned that through the extent or through jury selection, when we got into a little bit about who the defendant is. And I know we’ll talk about that a little bit more. But this This venue was a little bit of a question mark, primarily because there were, quite literally, there had never been a plaintiff’s verdict in the county as far as we could tell by the historical record keeping. So as you can imagine, when you have a case in Cook County or a county with a lot of cases and a lot of results, settlements, verdicts, otherwise, you can use similar cases as a reference point for how verdicts might end up in a particular in a particular venue.
Brian L. Salvi
But for this case, for Jeremy’s case in Fayette County, we didn’t have that. We didn’t have any data to use as part of our risk analysis on the value of the case. It was just based on how we felt about Jeremy, how we felt about the facts, and how we felt we could execute a trial. The question of what would a Fayette County jury do in a case like this was a total question mark. At the end of the day, that ended up being more of a pro than a con, I think.
Marcie Mangan
Yeah, and I’m sure we’ll get to that, how you guys set the But I have two questions from what you just said. One, why do you think there were no plaintiffs’ verdicts prior to this? Then two, when you describe it as a prison town, does that mean people work at the prison or know people that work at the prison, or I’m picturing inmates.
Brian L. Salvi
Is it- Yeah. I’ll take your second question first, which is that, yes. For example, our jury was nine women and three men. If I’m remembering correctly, two of the men worked at the prison in some security fashion, and then at least two or three of the women on our jury, I think one of them worked as an administrator at it, and then two of the other women, if I’m remembering correctly, their husbands worked at the prison. I think four or five of our jurors had some connection to that. When you’re talking about a town of 22,000 people and you’ve got one business that employs a couple of thousand, you’re going get those percentages, especially as you’re talking about people who are probably more likely to become registered voters, participate in the voting process, because, again, that’s the pool from which we pull our jurors. Again, it was something we knew going in, and we wanted to use it to our benefit from the perspective of, Hey, listen, if this is a town of law and order, all we’re looking for is reasonable people who can follow the law in this case. And so we’re going to give you the law, we’re going to walk you through it, and you couldn’t follow the law.
Brian L. Salvi
I think we leaned into it a little bit in that respect.
Marcie Mangan
Why do you think there have been no plaintiffs’ verdicts prior to this?
Brian L. Salvi
One, you need volume of cases, right? Unfortunately, things need to happen where lawsuits get filed, where insurance companies and defendants don’t want to settle a case, and so it goes into litigation. That requires occurrences. Things got to happen.
Rob L. Kohen
I think that’s probably just due to the nature of the size of the county and probably the location of the county. The more people that you have living in an area, the the more likely it is that there’s going to be some incident, the more vehicles on the road. You imagine Cook County and look at any highway, look at any road. There’s thousands of cars on the roadway at one time. Just the sheer odds of an incident happening are obviously more likely when you’re in a bigger area. So I think just the odds of something happening are smaller there. And then I would imagine that there are probably incidents that do happen in the area. And my guess would be that there are some folks who may decide, for whatever reason, this is something that I don’t want to pursue, or maybe a lawsuit isn’t for me. Maybe they just don’t know, maybe they don’t see what options they have. It may just not be as prevalent in that area. I think there’s a lot of factors that go into the fact that there’s just less lawsuits in general. When you have less lawsuits, there’s much less likelihood of less verdicts.
Brian L. Salvi
From the perspective of any claimant in Fayette County, Because of the unknowns of going all the way to verdict and the unknowns of what a jury will do based on the lack of historical data, I can imagine how that would act as a deterrent for lawyers who have cases in that county. They’re asking themselves the question, How hard am I going to push? How risky is it to go to trial? What value can I get out of this case at trial? I think those questions start to weigh on lawyers as trial approaches, and then it ultimately pushes into settlement. Trust me when I say it was absolutely a variable for us. It was definitely something that we had in the back of our minds, and it was a major contributing factor into how we valued the case for settlement negotiation purposes. But ultimately, it was just the defense couldn’t get to where we were, and we were willing to take our shot.
Marcie Mangan
Did you know that Jeremy would be a likable plaintiff just based on how much he loves trucking? And especially in this venue, it sounds like maybe it’s a smaller town. Maybe people appreciate that mindset a little bit more.
Brian L. Salvi
A hundred %. One of the things that we were most confident about in terms of going to trial, and really, I think that this is something to be considered on every single trial, if you’re going to go to trial, you have to have a plaintiff who’s going to be received well. They don’t need to be the most likable person in the world. They don’t need to be warm and fuzzy. People can be prickly. But you have to have somebody who the jury is going to be able to understand, right? You have to be able to take the plaintiff’s story and communicate it to the jury in a way that makes them understand what their life was before and then how their injury has really impacted them. One of the things that made us as confident as we were in going to trial is because of who Jeremy was as a person. He’s this lovable character, lives in the south. He’s got this little Southern draw, but he’s got a smile on his face all the time. And the way he would describe things, including and especially his family hunting and truck driving, he He would do it in a poetic way, but he would do it in the right way.
Brian L. Salvi
He would do it in a way that would really invite people in to his version of things and his perspective on things. Because he was cut from the same cloth as what we understood our venue to be and the jurors that we were going to have, that made us just that much more comfortable in going to trial versus if we had an investment banker from Chicago, it may have It’s changed a little bit of our perspective on how we were going to approach presenting him at trial. But for Jeremy, it was just be yourself because it’s just undeniably likable.
Rob L. Kohen
Jeremy, definitely one of my favorite human beings. He is probably the most outdoorsy person that I’ve ever met. He loves to hunt. He used to really enjoy going to bull riding competitions. His kids were really big into bull riding. So was he when he was younger. You got a little bit older and It was a little harder for him to do that, but he loved going to the rodeo. He loved riding ATVs. But hunting and being outdoors was his big passion, in which he spent probably every weekend or every other weekend doing something outdoors with friends or family. And that was very apparent But that was what was very important to Jeremy.
Marcie Mangan
In addition to this impacting his work life, how did this also take a toll on his personal life with hobbies, parenting, just living day to day?
Emily Art
It sounds extreme, but in every Every aspect of his life, it was impacted in any way possible. Even the simple task of getting out of bed. You think, I’m late for work, got to go. You just shoot out of bed, go take your shower, get ready. It wasn’t like that for him anymore. Just mobility-wise, he couldn’t move as well. And if he did, he was in pain. I remember one story he told us was, he’s like, I thought I could just at least tag along. I knew I wasn’t going to go and physically hunt, but I thought, I want to watch my kids. And unfortunately, he got to the hunting grounds, and just from that car ride alone, he said, I don’t know if I can even walk another 100 feet, to be honest. And so it impacted every aspect. And I think the saddest part and the most heavy part for him was he felt like his younger son was impacted the most. Based on when his injury occurred and the age of his son, his son, he thought these were his son’s prime years and getting into rodeoing and hunting. He had shown his kids, quite literally, the ropes of all this and just couldn’t be involved as much.
Marcie Mangan
I want to back up just slightly. Did the defense ever admit negligence? I know you mentioned that you guys couldn’t meet on a settlement that you felt was appropriate, but did they admit that they were at fault?
Brian L. Salvi
Yes. They admitted negligence in this case right before trial. I mean, this is a rear-end collision where the defendant driver didn’t really have an explanation as to why he wasn’t paying attention at the time he crashed into Jeremy’s 18-wheeler. And so there wasn’t really a defense on the conduct that led to the collision. So eventually, they did admit negligence, but they were maintaining the full defense on causation, which is to say that what they thought was a minor collision could not have been the cause for what ultimately was a devastating injury.
Marcie Mangan
Do you feel like you have to be a little more creative in your storytelling, I guess, in those situations?
Emily Art
Yeah, certainly. You definitely have to readjust where your peaks are, because I think a lot of times the negligence portion of a case is where you get the jury to get riled up and get angry. And you’re like, How did that guy do that? That’s so not okay. That’s against the rules that we put in place as a society of how you operate a vehicle or operate a company. So that portion usually gets the blood boiling of the jury, and that’s one peak. And And then you fall back down to the damages and you think, Oh, my God, I feel horrible for this person, and the injury that they went through. We don’t have that blood boiling moment. How do you bring a dynamic emotional array to the jury when now you’re only talking about causation as did this collision cause the injuries, and then the injuries and then the injuries themselves? It feels a little heavier because the focus is so much on the damages. So you have to play with what can you get from this treater, what can you get from this expert to create a new dynamic to tell still a full story.
Brian L. Salvi
But it also, in my opinion, it allows us to say to the jurors, Hey, listen, use your common sense and experiences in everyday life. You understand how litigation goes. You understand how these cases go. If there was any way that the defense could defend the conduct of their driver in this case, they would have done it. They couldn’t do it, and so they admitted negligence. Okay. I try to use it as like, Hey, listen, I’m not allowed to tell you about the conduct, but you all know if they admit, it was probably pretty bad. So that’s the way you can weave it into opening statement and closing argument. When they want to get up and say, Hey, listen, we acknowledge. We’re taking responsibility here. We’re at fault. You got us. They try to use it as a way of saying, We’re being responsible. Don’t hold it against us. We’re holding our hands up and saying we’re at fault. And so I think it is incumbent on the lawyer when you are given that and it requires you to narrow some of the issues in the case. You have to weave it into the case in other ways.
Marcie Mangan
When that happens as a lawyer, do you breathe a sigh of relief that they admit negligence, or do you think Well, shoot, no, I can’t bring this up directly?
Brian L. Salvi
I think you always wanted admission of negligence, right? You can get up and say the defendant admitted they were wrong. That’s a pretty powerful thing at trial when you can stare at the jurors and say, Listen, if there was a chance defend this, they would have. They’re not. What does that tell you? I think that’s a pretty powerful thing. So I think ultimately, you do want to get an admission when you have the opportunity. The only caveat to that, I would say, is if the conduct is so egregious or the conduct is to such an extent where there are just some aggravating facts that you want to make sure get to the jury, you have to figure out a way to weave those facts into either the causation or the damages case. One of the ways to do it in this case and in other cases, which is to say that one of the things we like to do is to talk about the preventability of the incident. And so you can imagine with a plaintiff, if they have this realization, like anybody, if you’re sitting around, it’s not like you’re walking down the street and you got struck by lightning, and you can just say, Oh, what are the chances?
Brian L. Salvi
How did this happen? Oh, my goodness. When they admit negligence, it’s saying, Yeah, I was wrong. I did this to you. And as a plaintiff, that carries weight as well. When you wake up and you’re like, Great, I’m going to live for the next 40 years with this pain in my And it is everything… Because on this one day, this one person just decided not to pay attention. The easiest thing in the world they could do is just pay attention. And they didn’t pay attention. And because they didn’t pay attention, now I’m dealing with this for the next 40 years. And so you can weave in little aspects of the liability case to the damages case to make sure you’re able to talk about certain things at trial. I think in that sense, it’s always good to be able to say, Hey, listen, they’re admitting they’re negligent. Hey, here are some aspects of the conduct that really are still weighing on the plaintiff from a damages perspective so that you keep those things incorporated in the case, even though you might be having some of the issues from a conduct perspective, sliced up a little bit and narrowed by virtue of the admission.
Marcie Mangan
Was jury selection any different between the two counties?
Emily Art
A little bit, mainly, I think, because a lot of judges have their own procedure of how many people they’ll bring in a panel and how you can… There’s something called backstriking that some judges allow, some judges don’t. It wasn’t really too different due to the county, but just judges’ preference. All judges do it their own way and have their preferences.
Brian L. Salvi
I think the number one thing you have to be thinking about when you’re going front of a jury for jury selection is that this is the first impression. When you stand up and say, Hi, everybody. I’m attorney Brian Salvi. I’m going to ask you some questions right now. You’re getting first impression with a jury, and when you’re dealing with a conservative venue. For example, we had jury questionnaires, a handwritten form that they filled out. Then they fill that out during the first 45 minutes of the day, and then we get the stack of papers and we take a look at it, and that just That helps instruct what we ask when we get up. It streamlines our questions a bit, and so that’s why we do it. Quite literally, the first page, the first juror in the first seating this veneer, it was a man in his late ’60s, and the form said, I cannot read or write. I’ve lived on a farm literally my entire life. This has been filled out by his wife, Shirley, and then Shirley signed the document and says, I’m not sure I’m for this case because I’m not sure I’m going to be able to read things.
Brian L. Salvi
I’m not sure. I’m just a farmer, and this is all I’ve ever done. So that’s my first person who I’m asking questions to.
Marcie Mangan
Do you believe that, or do you think you just didn’t want to?
Brian L. Salvi
It’s probably a little bit of both. I get that part of it, too. It also instructs me that this is a guy he clearly doesn’t want to be on this journey. He’d rather wake up and work the farm every day, and he doesn’t want to come in to court to listen to some truck driver’s story. Okay, so that’s helpful for me to know, too. And so Thinking through, again, I mentioned earlier, it’s a prison town, it’s a farming town. Thinking through those aspects of it, it instructs the way you use analogies, for example. Maybe I don’t use a cup of coffee, maybe I use the price of eggs when trying to talk about the value of the dollar or something like that. But generally speaking, when you’re approaching a venue like this, you want to primarily maintain your own credibility, because I assumed that when I stood up and started talking, it didn’t take long for the jury to know that I wasn’t a Fayette County lawyer. And so I’m not a local. And so I have to, during this first impression, I have to just maintain my own credibility. I want to try to just be nice, ask questions about their lives, and learn what I can from them.
Brian L. Salvi
But there are a lot of wrinkles in small venues like this, which in part we ran into in a significant way, which is that because it’s a small town and a lot of people know each other, when you start talking about the witnesses in the case, you learn about who the county already knows about, who the jurors already know about. And so in this particular case, we had a circumstance that I’m not sure I’ll experience again in my career, which is it was quite legitimately like a courtroom scene that you would see on a TV show or a movie, where something happens in court, and then the gallery just breaks out and whispers. Everybody’s talking. And this happened to us during jury selection, which is that the defendant truck driver, the guy who hit Jeremy’s truck, he is the brother of the chief of police in Fayette County. And his name is Benjamin Ray, but he goes by Benji, and just has gone by Benji his whole life, and apparently has grown up in the town his whole life. One of the things that we were concerned about is that when you have a venue with a tight-knicked community, and the defendant is part of that community, you’re going to have that thought process of, is this community just going to protect their own?
Brian L. Salvi
Right. And so that was a concern of ours, and that concern was probably- Especially a sheriff’s. Yeah, somebody in law enforcement, in a law enforcement town. And so we were concerned about it going into jury selection, but then my concern spiked through the roof during jury selection, because we get to the point in jury selection where I’m going through the list of witnesses in the case, and I say, Benjamin Ray. Does anybody know Benjamin Ray? Everybody just says, No. Then one person realizes who I’m talking about and says, Do you mean Benji? And I go, Yes, Benji. He sometimes goes by Benji Ray, and the courtroom like, explodes in commentary. It’s like, I’d say 60% of the veneer knew. And the judge got the vault. The judge is like, All right, all right, quiet down, quiet down. By a show of hands, how many people have heard of the name or know of or know someone who knows Benjie Ray? And 60 % of the veneer throws their hands up. And during that moment, I just smile, and I’m just like, All right, well, Judge, we need to go talk about this. And so we go in the back and we talk through the best way to navigate, and the judge comes up with some good ideas on how to do it.
Brian L. Salvi
And he starts to just filter people through how many people actually know him versus how many people have just heard his name, and how many people have only heard his name because of his brother, who’s the chief of police. And so we were able to navigate it in a way that was helpful. And then I think ultimately, maybe two or three people acknowledged, Hey, I’m a little too close to Benjie, or I have a relationship with him, or my brother-in-law has a relationship with him, and so I’ve seen him at cookouts and stuff like that. And so we were able to get a few people off the jury based on that. But it’s Certainly something I’ll remember for the rest of my career is just the realization from the entire veneer on who the defendant is and then having to navigate that.
Rob L. Kohen
I have never been in that situation where… I’m trying to think if I’ve had a case where I had a juror actually know anybody or had any connection, and I’m sure I have, but definitely not to this extent. It wasn’t just that they knew the chief of police, but there were also a tremendous amount of people that actually knew or knew of the defendant himself. Again, a lot of that is due to the nature of the size of the community we were in. That was definitely a new experience, I know, for Brian, for myself. We had to figure out how to deal with that on the fly. We had a sidebar. Right after that happened, the judge was like, All right, let’s take a break. And he pulled all the attorneys back in the back room to try to figure out how we were going to navigate this situation where all these jurors knew the defendant. So it was definitely an interesting jury selection that I had never seen before.
Marcie Mangan
So earlier, you said that you’ve never had a case that you can recall, where you had a plaintiff or a defendant that was widely known. Is this how you handle when you have a case against the city of Chicago? Are you able to be unbiased because everyone knows the city? So when they’re the defendant, is that a question you ask the jurors?
Rob L. Kohen
Yeah. Especially whether it’s a city or a big corporation, I won’t name any corporations, but we know that there’s massive corporations who everybody in the country would know who they were. And so if you were to ask, does anyone know who Company X is? Sure. Who Google is, every single person in the courtroom would raise their hand. Just because you know of the company doesn’t that you can’t be a fair and impartial juror to serve on it.
Marcie Mangan
Were there any other moments in trial that really stuck out to you as either something funny like that or emotional where you thought, Okay, we have the jury?
Brian L. Salvi
Yes. It was about halfway through the case, Jeremy’s wife, Linda, took the stand. Again, at this point in the case, the jury had gotten a little bit of an understanding as to his injury and the impact, but it really hadn’t been. Jeremy had not yet taken the stand, and so the full realization of the impact on Jeremy and his family hadn’t been brought to the jury yet. And so then Linda testifies. And during Linda’s testimony, I show her a picture of… It’s like a Christmas card picture that she took with Jeremy and their kids from, I think, a year or two before the crash. And it was a really, really cute photo on their property. The three boys, including Jeremy, they’re wearing jeans, a buttoned-down blue shirt and a cowboy hat. And so they’re all matching them. And then Linda and their daughter are wearing matching dresses. They’re all holding hands across. It’s this really cute picture. I showed that to Linda during her direct exam and said, just talk me through this picture, why it was taken, what it means to you. It was before the crash. Then Linda puts the picture down and we move on with the direct examination.
Brian L. Salvi
I get maybe a handful of questions down the road, and there’s an objection to the testimony that she’s about to bring. I think she was about to talk about his medical condition. And so we have a sidebar. And so this is what is so fun and fascinating about trial is that a lot of times the nuggets that really make or break the case are things that you have really nothing to do with. And that’s certainly the case here in the story I’m describing, because what I came to learn after the fact by Emily, our associate, and Caesar, our IT manager, on all our trials. So they were still in the courtroom while we went back for sidebar. And what they described to me was that while me and Rob and defense council and the judge were in the back arguing about this upcoming testimony, we’re back there for, I don’t know, three, four minutes. And during that three to four minute time frame, the courtroom is just silent. Everyone’s just have to awkwardly sit there in silence. They can’t interact with each other. And so they just sit there. And apparently, I wasn’t there for it, so I’m just taking from what Caesar and Emily told me.
Brian L. Salvi
But apparently, what happened was that as we’re sitting there, Linda’s on the stand. She’s just waiting for us to come back out, and she grabs the photo that I had just shown her.
Emily Art
You could tell it just… There’s a look on her face when she was looking at those photos during that break, that you could tell she was going back in time, mentally. She was just dazed, almost, and lost in that picture. And she, a few tears dropped from her eyes. And it was just this silence, too, that was heavy in the room. And after that, I I think we captured the jury and were able to explain to them and show them, not only is this impact on Jeremy’s life, but his wife, who’s had to endure a man that she once knew as being this very lively, outgoing person, completely transformed into someone she didn’t recognize. I think that was really powerful for them, for the jury to see. And you really get to see the long arm impact of this type of situation where you don’t expect to be incapacitated due to a collision, just on your random day at work. And it was a really big turning point, I think, for us, because I think that was the first moment that we thought, okay, I think they’re with us. I think they’re picking up what we’re putting down, and I think they’re really now listening with a viewpoint from our perspective.
Brian L. Salvi
And so it’s no testimony. The lawyers and the judge aren’t even in the room. The court reporter is not taking anything down. But what Caesar and Emily described to me was that as Linda was sitting there, wiping her eyes as she stayed at the photos, All 12 members of the jury were just locked in on her. They were just looking right at her, and she was looking at the photo. And so then I used that. I used that. Emily and Caesar told me about it. And so then during closing argument, I remind them of that. I remind them I wasn’t even in the courtroom for this, but apparently, Linda was transported in time to a life where her husband wasn’t injured, and she didn’t have to work 50 hours a week. She could work part-time and still be there for her kids. And now she’s working more than full-time. She’s working overtime and not spending time with her kids. It allowed me to really get into the ripple effect of having a partner undergo an injury like this and be disabled like this. It really teed up Jeremy’s testimony, too, because then Jeremy testified the following day.
Brian L. Salvi
One of the best parts of his testimony was when he got to a point talking about how his injuries had impacted his relationship with Linda. And one of the things he said was she didn’t sign up for this. She didn’t sign up for a husband who couldn’t do things, who couldn’t provide, who couldn’t take the kids out, who couldn’t help around the house. She signed up for a partner who was going to be there with her. And so it helped just drive home the fact that Jeremy is severely impacted, but so is everybody else in Jeremy’s orbit. I think that was particularly powerful for this jury because as I mentioned earlier, this was a jury of nine women and three men. I think that Linda providing that testimony on how devastating it was for her and the family really helped with the nine women on our jury. And it helped them get a deeper appreciation and understanding for how bad this really was for the family.
Marcie Mangan
And the defense is the one that raised the issue that caused the break, right? So it’s not like they could have argued that you guys had staged that whole thing.
Brian L. Salvi
Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, the moment in time, I mean, that’s one of the things that I always talk about when we’re talking about trials. You plan every single thing that you can think of for trial. But at the end of the day, trial is this living, breathing, evolving thing, right? You cannot predict exactly what’s going to happen. You can do your to put in guardrails and plans, but ultimately, little things that impact the result of the case, oftentimes, are stuff that’s not planned. And in this particular case, I think that was a turning point in the case because it was, I think our second day of testimony, and we needed something to really bring them into the home to really understand the nature of the devastation. Linda provided that for us.
Marcie Mangan
Yeah, it’s so powerful, especially for a jury of so many women. What was the defense’s argument at trial? Did you feel like they had anything that you were a little worried would stick with the jury?
Brian L. Salvi
I think the… Any time you have gaps in treatment where a person is indicated It’s not that bad, so I don’t need to get any treatment. It’s always a concern when you have a minor… Because, again, Jeremy was in an 18-wheeler, right? So he’s the big imposing vehicle on the roadway, and he got hit by a pickup truck. Now, the pickup truck had some welding equipment in the back, and so it wasn’t just your standard pickup truck, like a passenger vehicle, but the size and the weight difference between the two vehicles is significant. We were concerned that jurors would just, I just don’t see it. I just don’t see how… How did this guy end up with neuropathic pain, with a walker, with trouble with his feet, proprioception? How did that all come from a crash at 25 miles per hour when Jeremy’s in an 18-wheeler? It just doesn’t compute.
Rob L. Kohen
There wasn’t much the defense could say here. That really, their defense, for lack of a better term, at the end of the day was they tried to… It was an all or nothing defense where they tried to convince this jury that this collision was not the cause of Jeremy’s injury. Essentially, their Their point was, yes, we caused this collision. Yes, Jeremy is hurt, but we aren’t the reason that he’s hurt. Jeremy’s hurt for some other reason. We can’t tell you what it is, but it’s not our fault, and it’s not related to this crash. Their defense was basically an all or nothing, 100 %, This is not our fault. We didn’t cause these injuries that the plaintiffs are claiming here in court today. And that was all they had. They went in all or nothing, and I think that that was a grave mistake on their part.
Brian L. Salvi
Our concern was that that simple defense would resonate with jurors who were looking for a reason not to give Jeremy what he deserved.
Marcie Mangan
I almost think, and this is just my personal opinion, that’s such a simple explanation and that I’d be worried people would just go with the simple explanation versus listening to these experts who have a scientific diagram. I would worry people would zone out. Absolutely. Is that ever a concern?
Brian L. Salvi
Absolutely. Because you got to remember, Our case here with Jeremy, specifically, is, okay, stay with me, jurors. Stay with me. Okay, so the crash caused a whiplash injury, which causes just a slight tissue disruption in the spinal cord. And then that slight tissue disruption in the spinal cord allows fluid to start filling in there. And then slowly but surely, that sac gets bigger, bigger, bigger. It starts pressing on the spinal cord. And then the surgery for the spinal to drain this sac in the spinal cord requires you to cut into the spinal cord. And once you cut in the spinal cord, you’re left with all these problems. That’s a to b to b to c to c to d. And then isn’t that terrible? And isn’t it worth millions and millions of dollars? Versus the defense, which is that you don’t get devastating spinal cord injuries from 25-mile-an-hour rear-end crashes. You just don’t. It’s digestible. It’s digestible. It’s simple. It doesn’t require a lot of explanation. And ask any trial lawyer about what they try to do in complex cases, it’s to simplify it. You try to simplify issues so that it’s digestible, it’s easy to understand.
Brian L. Salvi
So the expert, when they’re talking about their opinions, it sounds like a teacher talking about something that students want to learn about Versus, here’s this concept that is so pie in the sky. You guys don’t understand it, but just trust me. It can’t be that way. It has to be something like, Hey, let me explain it. It makes sense, right? And the fact that we had to go through four or five steps to get there, and the defense just really had to take one or two steps. I think that’s always a consideration when you’re going to trial on how simple can we make our case versus how simple is the defense. And so that was certainly something that we were concerned about as being the defense is very simple, straightforward. It’s easy to understand.
Marcie Mangan
Throughout trial, did you adjust the number that you wanted to ask the jury for at all?
Brian L. Salvi
No, we were pretty steadfast on that. During negotiation, consultations, we had always threatened the fact that we were going to ask for 15 to 20 million. During jury selection, I asked specifically if the law and the evidence supports it, could you sign a verdict, approaching $20 million. Then my ultimate ask was, because of a range for certain medical treatments, there was a range that we provided. It was 17 to 19, is what I ultimately asked for. We stayed pretty consistent on what we were going to ask for the entire time. As you can imagine, during jury selection in a farm, prison town or county, I was, I don’t want to say nervous, but I was Looking forward to the reactions that I was going to get when I say, Hey, I’m going to be asking for $20 million at the end of this week. Anybody have any feelings about that? I did. We got responses. Plenty of people raise their hands and say, Oh, yeah, no, that’s ridiculous. That’s way too much. You’re trying to tell me that this is worth $20 million, and I haven’t even heard anything yet. That’s absurd. But I will say the thing that happened with Linda and the picture, the way Jeremy described his life, his relationships, and how they have changed, how he described hunting and the things that he’s lost from his own life, how he loved working and has lost that.
Brian L. Salvi
We got the momentum and we never let it go. And so by the time I asked for 17 to 19, I felt like it was a very reasonable ask. I really did. I had no second thoughts by that time that this was the appropriate amount to ask for in this case because it was justified based on the harm.
Marcie Mangan
Could you tell based on your reactions to any of those moments that you had them, or did you just feel good about your case?
Brian L. Salvi
So Because I wasn’t in the courtroom for the moment with Linda, I was relying on Emily and Caesar, and I have implicit trust in them based on what they witnessed in the courtroom. That’s no doubt about that. Then I knew because I did Jeremy’s direct, too, and I knew after Jeremy’s direct that it went in well. I knew that he had done a good job. I knew he had represented himself well. I knew that he had articulated things in the right way. I thought he had done a really nice job on cross-examination, defending himself against certain things. Again, it was a momentum thing. It was a momentum thing where I just felt like the only person to be limiting what we could potentially achieve would be our own self doubts and putting ceilings on ourselves in terms of whether or not it feels right to ask for this much in this venue. Instead of doing that, trust me, that was absolutely a variable we kept in our mind constantly throughout the entire consideration of negotiation negotiation for settlement and then a trial. But the main thing we always fell back on is we trust our own valuation of the case.
Brian L. Salvi
If they’re not going to pay us that in settlement, well, then we’ll ask the jury. We had a hard time concluding that the jury was going to give us less than what the defense was offering us in settlement.
Marcie Mangan
That says a lot about how strong you felt, given that there were no plaintiffs’ verdicts to go off of.
Brian L. Salvi
Yeah.
Marcie Mangan
I imagine that would get in your head a little bit?
Brian L. Salvi
A little bit. I mean, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that there were no verdicts in. And it was absolutely part of the negotiation tactics from the defense. And that was basically communicated to us by our second mediator. Our second mediator, Judge Spears, shout out Judge Spears. But he did a great job pumping us up in the lead up to trial because we had a second mediation three weeks before trial started, because the defense had indicated, Hey, listen, we think we can get to where you need to be. And so we said, Okay, fine, we’ll do another mediation. And during that mediation, Judge Spears reiterated a lot of those things that we already knew. Oh, they’re banking on venue, they’re banking on the 10-day delay in treatment. They just don’t think a jury in this county is going to give you a big number. In part, it’s because no one else has ever gotten a number in the county. There are literally no verdicts, so you don’t have anything to base your position that you can achieve to achieve a lot more, you have nothing to base that off of. And Judge Spears, what he said to us is he reminded us of the history of the four-minute mile and reminded us that about 75 years ago, no one had ever run a four-minute mile.
Brian L. Salvi
And that whenever it was that the first guy ran a four-minute mile, a mile under four minutes, within a year or two of that, four or five more people were able to do it. And And Judge Spears, the messaging of that story is, Listen, everyone’s saying you can’t get a verdict here because there are no verdicts, so go get a verdict. And then you will be the benchmark. You will set the standard of what this county is capable of. And so when the defense was just not moving and not doing anything to negotiate in good faith, when Judge Spears gave us that analogy, it was a nice little punch in the arm that I really appreciated as, and I know Jeremy appreciated it, too, which is to say, Listen, you guys are… He said it, too. Judge Spears is like, he can’t disagree with how we’re viewing it. We valued the case as this. And Judge Spears basically was like, I can’t disagree with you. It’s just the other side doesn’t want to pay you that because they don’t think that you can accomplish that. So maybe what you need to do is just go accomplish it.
Brian L. Salvi
And that was the last little kick that we needed. And so I have a big appreciation for George Spears and how he handled that.
Marcie Mangan
Yeah, I love that the judge gave the pep talk to go. And it also shows he probably believed in the case as well.
Brian L. Salvi
Right. He believed in the case. Judge Spears is somebody… The reason he was utilized for this mediation is because he has a lot of experience with these downstate cases. I think the defense was like, Oh, good. Judge Spears will give the plaintiffs a check in reality. Yeah. Hey, here’s your dosage of reality that you need because you’re living in the sky. Judge Spears, I think, did a little bit of the opposite. He did a little bit of the emboldening us to say, Hey, listen, maybe you’re right. Just go get a number, and then you can deal with the insurance company. I have a lot of appreciation for Judge Spears on how he handled that.
Marcie Mangan
So it sounds like you guys were on a high towards the end of trial, feeling really strongly. What was it like waiting for the verdict? Did you maintain that, or do you always- Yeah.
Brian L. Salvi
A little? Yeah, it’s a really good question because, yes, because the momentum was taking us all the way through. I felt so good. When I remember sitting down, I finished my closing argument, and I said, I’ll have the opportunity to talk to you one more time after defense council goes. And I remember sitting down and I remember thinking to myself, I got them. Because when you’re doing closing argument, you’re looking around, you’re trying to make connections, you’re locking in, you’re using demonstrators. And when you use the demonstrators, you look back at the jury and you’re seeing who’s really engaged, who’s with you. And so I knew we had them in terms of like, they’re on our side, they’re with our arguments. It’s just going to be a matter of do the numbers make… Do they view the money and the numbers the same way we do? Are they going to follow the law on taking every single line item separately and with its own consideration and not just throwing in a number that makes sense and backfilling the verdict form. Those were the things towards the end that I was concerned about. I was very confident that the number they were going to give us was going to be greater than the settlement offer.
Marcie Mangan
And what was the settlement offer?
Brian L. Salvi
The last settlement offer was $3 million.
Marcie Mangan
Okay, so as long as you correct- As long as I was about…
Brian L. Salvi
I knew we were going to break that. I just was I just had such a hard time concluding that the jury was going to give them less. Because the thought process and the conversation we had, the only reason a jury would give less with these facts, based on how the testimony went in because the testimony went in very well. Based on how the testimony went in, the only way you would give less is if you really hated Jeremy. You just thought Jeremy, you just didn’t like him, and you just didn’t connect with him, and you thought he was just hustling the system. Yeah, He’s injured, but I’m not going to give you big dollars because of that. If that was the only reason that was going to hold it down, and all the evidence that I witnessed was that they loved Jeremy and that Linda brought it home, and Jeremy did a great job representing himself, I just couldn’t conclude that they were going to stiff him. The jury was not going to be cheap with Jeremy because he was just too likable, his story was too compelling, and his damages, his injury was too significant.
Brian L. Salvi
It just This was a significant injury. It was just impossible for me to wrap my head around a sub-3 million dollar verdict. And that is really what guided the decision making. Every time Jeremy would say, Well, are we going to get less? I’d be like, Man, it’s hard for me to picture you getting less, Jeremy. I feel like we did a great job. I just don’t see how it’s going to be less than that. Thankfully, we were right about that.
Marcie Mangan
So what was the final verdict?
Brian L. Salvi
It was a $12. 2 million dollar verdict. I heard the 12 and stopped listening after that. I had mentally prepared myself for five or six. I had told myself seven would be amazing. When I heard twelve, I just blacked out for five seconds or so. I immediately turned because jury comes out, the bailiff takes the verdict form up to the judge. Judge starts reading it, and judge says, verdict form A. Obviously, tells us right away, they didn’t buy the defense argument on causation. They connected the car crash to the ultimate injury. That was obviously very relieving to hear verdict form A. Then I grabbed Jeremy’s arm, and then I heard the 12, and I just turned and embraced him. We just embraced while the judge read the rest of the verdict form, and tears were flown out of our eyes. It was a great moment because you got to remember, Jeremy, at that point, he’s just trusting us. He’s just I trust you that we can do better than this. And he was all in for it. It was great to have his attitude there. But at the end of the day, he’s trusting our professional opinion that we can do better than that.
Brian L. Salvi
And so the concept that we did worse than what was being offered is a really scary thing. And so the relief of it being much more, and then the extent to which it was greater than the settlement offer, knowing that it’s now going to be an amount of money that is going to take care of all his needs, is going to compensate him for what he’s lost from a work perspective, and then is an appropriate amount of money, in my view, for what has been taken from his life in terms of relationships and ability to live his life. It’s a great feeling when the jury sees things similarly to the way. I mean, they didn’t give me the 17 to 19 that I asked, and that’s not what I was expecting. But there’s not a doubt that they saw things closer to the way we saw things than the way the defense did. And so that was obviously very gratifying.
Marcie Mangan
Have there been any other plaintiffs’ verdicts since this It’s only been 15 months, but I have not seen one yet.
Brian L. Salvi
I certainly will call up a lawyer and congratulate them when they get it. I haven’t gotten a phone call from anyone yet saying, Hey, I’m going to trial in Fayette County next week. Can you tell me what your experience was like? I haven’t gotten that call yet, but I’ll be paying attention to it, no doubt.
Marcie Mangan
And what would your message be to attorneys who may be apprehensive to take a case to trial in a small county?
Rob L. Kohen
Don’t be. Go for it. If you have the right case, if you’ve got a case where you’ve got a good plaintiff, a good human being, an innocent victim who it is clear that they didn’t want this to happen to them, they didn’t ask for this, I think if you present that trial appropriately, I think it is very likely that there will be much more of these verdicts in the future. I hope and I encourage other attorneys not to shy away from the fact that this is the first. There’s going to be somebody else that’s going to, at some point, I don’t know when it’ll be, but at some point, This verdict is going to get broken. Someone’s going to get a bigger verdict. And that’s great. I think that that’s fantastic. And I think that this, hopefully, will give confidence to other attorneys that it doesn’t matter. Do your best job, present your best case, and the outcome will speak for itself.
Marcie Mangan
Can you explain maybe to the listeners why that amount of money is so important for Jeremy?
Brian L. Salvi
The main thing is security, right? Is whenever something comes up, he can handle it. Whereas when you’re living paycheck to paycheck, and then all of a sudden you a job anymore. Everything is incredibly distressing. How am I going to make my next doctor’s appointment? If I make my next doctor’s appointment, how am I going to pay for it? If I need more intensive or more expensive treatment, what’s that going to look like? How am I going to pay for it? How long am I going to need to do it? I have this condition that all the doctors are telling me is going to last me for the rest of my life. So I got a condition that’s going to be with me for the next 30, I think it was 38 or 39 years for Jeremy. How am I going to deal with all this?
Emily Art
I know that he bought, I think, a new house, something that obviously a little more accessible for him, not having to go walk around too much to be able to get to different parts of his house. And just the relief that not only does he still have to deal with the pain, but there’s relief that he has the means to make his life easier for him.
Brian L. Salvi
When you have the financial security to deal with all that, a couple of things you can do. You can make accommodations to your home, which he did. You can make sure you’ve got accommodations to your vehicles, which he did. You can make sure that the family members around you are taken care of. For example, his wife doesn’t need to go travel 45 minutes to an hour for work to work 50 hours a week. Now she can spend more time with the family. She can live the life that she had prior to Jeremy’s injury. It’s all about getting back to that place. Then the money, obviously, in part, going forward is the fact that Jeremy is going to wake up in 10 years. He’s going to wake up in 20 years. He’s going to wake up in 30 years. And each time he wakes up those mornings, in those intervals, 10, 20, 30 years from now, he’s going to be in terrible pain, and he’s going to need a walker to get around, and he’s going to be limited in his overall mobility. He’s not going to He’s not going to be able to travel. He’s not going to be able to hunt.
Brian L. Salvi
He’s not going to be able to participate in his activities of daily living. He’s not going to be able to participate in his relationships the way he used to. He’s not going to be, for example, able to walk his daughter down the aisle without a cane or assistive device. He’s not going to be able to do the first dance for more than 30 seconds to a minute, something like that. So all those things are disheartening and depressing to think about, that it’s been taken away from you by someone’s carelessness.
Marcie Mangan
There’s no price on those types of memories.
Brian L. Salvi
That’s right. And so, $12 million is a lot of money, but there is not a doubt in my mind that if you put a piece of paper that said, Here’s $12 million as a result for Jeremy, versus you get your life back where you were restrictionless and you can drive a truck and you can do all the things you want to do with your family. Here are the two lives you can lead. Which one do you want? A hundred out of a hundred time, Jeremy is signing the one where he has his function back, and he doesn’t have the money. And that’s part of my closing argument, right? I think that resonates because everybody’s sitting there. The point is that part of what you’re trying to communicate is that even if you were given $12 million, you still wouldn’t trade places with them. I think when you put it in that, when you frame it in that way, it’s very understandable why jurors do what they do. They compensate people for terrible, terrible damages based on the law, and that’s what they did in this case.
Marcie Mangan
Is there anything else that you want to share either about Jeremy, the case that you think viewers should know?
Brian L. Salvi
I would just say trust yourself as a lawyer and your colleagues and your client. Because this one was one where, and I’ve said it a couple of times now, where each time we were considering whether or not to resolve the case, each time we were like, What are we going to do next? Are we really going I’m not going to go all the way to verdict on this case. The thing we kept coming back and falling back on is this is how we view these injuries. It’s devastating. These devastating injuries need this amount of compensation, anything less than this amount of compensation for these injuries, would just be short value. And then ask yourself whether or not you want to be the lawyer who settles a case for short value. And if you don’t want to be the lawyer who settles cases for short value, then it requires you to go to verdict. And then what happens is you go to verdict, and then you start getting settlement offers after you prove that you can go to verdict and get results. Settlement offers thereafter start to reflect closer to what you think value is.
Marcie Mangan
And you’re talking about in subsequent cases. Correct.
Brian L. Salvi
Both because you can say you’ve got the track record for it, but also then the carriers can look it up and understand that, A, you’re willing to go all the way to verdict, and that when you do go all the way to verdict, you can substantially outkick what the insurance company thought was possible. And I think that’s really powerful. And it ultimately sets up you, your firm, and your future clients for better results down the road. Yeah.
Marcie Mangan
So the ripple effect doesn’t just affect Jeremy and his family.
Brian L. Salvi
Exactly right. And that’s one One of the best things about going to verdict is that it is a statement on not just the case, but on your willingness as a lawyer on the firm, on the venue, on the jury, how these injuries are viewed by jurors. What do these people think about these cases? And so you provide information. And in this case, there wasn’t information. We had to go create the information, the data. And I’m really proud of how our team, and Jeremy, especially, was able to do it.
Marcie Mangan
Well, thank you so much for being here. It’s so nice to hear about Jeremy just as a person, but also I think it’s a good hype up for other attorneys.
Brian L. Salvi
Yeah, no, and I appreciate the time to talk about it.
Marcie Mangan
Where can people find you if they have a case to refer to you or a case for you to look at?
Brian L. Salvi
Yeah, you can find me at salvilaw. Com. Also LinkedIn, Brian Salvi. By all means, reach out to me as well via email, bsalvi@salvilaw. Com. Happy to talk through any of these things as it relates to cases from a legal or lawyer perspective, and then obviously, for any individuals who, unfortunately, find themselves in similar circumstances.
Rob L. Kohen
Is The easiest way to get a hold of me is just shoot me an email. My email is rkohen, K-O-H-E-N, @salvilaw, S-A-L-V-I-L-A-W. Com. You can also reach us by phone at the office at 312-372-1227
Emily Art
My bio can be found on Salvi Schostek & Prichard’s website. My email is eart@salvilaw.com if anyone needs to contact me.
Marcie Mangan
Thank you so much for listening to Beating Goliath, A Plaintiff’s Pursuit of Justice. A special thank you to Jeremy Duton for allowing us to share his story. Beating Goliath was written and produced in-house here at Salvi, Schostok & Pritchard and edited by the talented team at Salvi Media. To learn more about this case or to listen to more episodes of our podcast, head over to salvilaw.com/podcast. Until next time.
