Trying a Case Right Before the World Shut Down

I’m going on my 23rd year of practicing law. And over those years, I’ve had a lot of cases. We’ve had a lot of trials, a lot of interesting trials, but one case that sort of sticks out in my mind and not because it was the biggest verdict that we ever got, but it was just a very interesting case that had a lot to it. This case coincidentally tried the week before COVID hit. So it was March of 2020. the world was about to shut down, we were up in Whitfield County trying to case. And what happened in this case is we represented a young girl. She was about 22 years old and she was driving. And as she was driving in Smyrna, somebody made a u-turn in front of her. And when they made that u-turn in front of her, our client crashed into the back of the person who made that U-turn. So initially it looked like maybe this is rear-end collision and it was our fault the fault of our client. But as we learned, as we got into the case, person who made the u-turn she was a very sweet lady older lady and she had done a couple of things over the years that made it somewhat unsafe for her to be driving for example she didn’t change the prescription in her glasses she couldn’t see very well the other thing is she was down visiting family in Smyrna and she wasn’t familiar with the area and she got somewhat lost and made her that’s why she made that u-turn so here we are. We have an injured young lady, our client she had ended up having a bad cut on her left a scar, and we were not able to get the case resolved in a settlement, so we were forced to try the case in Whitfield County. And the lady who caused the wreck, the sweet old lady, just so happened that made it even more even made her even more of an endearing person, is that she had just recently lost her longtime husband. So she was a recent widow and just so happened that her husband was the local family doctor up in Whitfield So he was beloved by the community. And we find ourselves, we are from here in Woodstock in Cobb County, find ourselves up in Whitfield County trying a case against a sweet old grandma who had just lost her husband, who just happened to be the family doctor of the community. And we were faced with those challenges. And what we did is we tried the case. We were honest. We told them exactly what happened. We told them how this affected our client. We told them what this lady did wrong. she did do something wrong. And the jury, despite all being from that county, because that’s where you have to be when you’re on a jury in a case like that, is they heard what we presented and they respected what we did and they ruled for us. And they gave us a very reasonable verdict that helped out our client. And we were very proud of it. So it wasn’t the biggest case that we’ve ever had in our careers, but it was one that was very meaningful.