Speaker 1 ( 00:05 ):
From the Chicagoland law firm of Selvi, Shasti and Pritchard. This is beating Goliath, a plaintiff’s pursuit of justice. Case number three, part two, Tierney Darden versus the city of Chicago. In episode one, we met Tierney Darden who was a 24 year old dancer and student. In August of 2015 when she suffered a life-changing injury at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport
Speaker 2 ( 00:38 ):
Tyranny, her mom and one of her sisters were at O’Hare Airport waiting to be picked up by Tierney’s dad. They had just flown in from Minnesota. They went wedding dress shopping with her older sister and they’d had a nice trip and they came back and all of a sudden there was really bad weather, a ton of wind that came out of nowhere, and so as they were waiting near the vestibules, they were walking towards or running really towards the pedestrian shelters that you see when you’re waiting outside of O’Hare to get picked up. Turns out that the bus shelters were not secured in any way. They hadn’t been inspected or repaired in any way for many, many years, and so the bus shelters became dislodged from the fasteners that were holding it up, so the bad weather and the wind knocked it over and it ended up falling on tier knees back severing her spinal cord.
Speaker 3 ( 01:36 ):
It’s a very heavy bus shelter, and when it fell on tyranny, the effect of that was that the bus shelter completely severed her spinal cord in a shearing fashion, which very sadly for tyranny left her not only with paralysis, which would be bad enough in and of itself, but because of the shearing mechanism of the injury to her spinal cord. It left her with perhaps the worst pain syndrome certainly that I’ve ever seen, that a human being could really experience a horrible neuropathic pain syndrome that left her in considerable pain. Pretty much every waking moment,
Speaker 4 ( 02:20 ):
They described it like being pulled apart like taffy until it finally snaps.
Speaker 3 ( 02:26 ):
Think about the irony. It’s a bus shelter. It’s supposed to be a shelter. It’s supposed to be a place of safety, but because it had fallen into disrepair due to a complete lack of maintenance, it fell over and caused significant harm.
Speaker 5 ( 02:41 ):
I can’t be anywhere with one person. It was an entity. It was the way those shelters were maintained. I’m upset that they didn’t maintain them properly. I’m upset that they didn’t keep proper records so they were not able to maintain them properly. I’m upset that there were that many of them. There were such disrepair that went unnoticed until this incident occurred.
Speaker 2 ( 03:13 ):
It’s one of the busiest airports in the world, so to have something like this happened, it’s just unacceptable.
Speaker 6 ( 03:23 ):
As the settlement negotiations continued, it became clear to our legal team that the lawyers for the city of Chicago that we were not seeing eye to eye in terms of the value and how much tyranny should be compensated for her catastrophic injury, and while the city did admit their negligence caused tyra’s injury, we didn’t feel their offers would adequately provide tyranny with the financial funds and resources that she was going to need for the treatment that she was going to need for the rest of her life.
Speaker 7 ( 03:59 ):
It was bad enough that she was a paraplegic and all the things that go along with that. She was cursed with a very severe neuropathic pain, which was unrelenting and really only managed by opioid medication at that time. I just said to myself, unless they just overwhelm us with a offer, we’re going to take this to trial.
Speaker 2 ( 04:24 ):
This money would have to take care of her for the rest of her life and in order to get her the medical care and treatment of the therapies that she needed and that she deserved, it just didn’t seem like an amount that was close enough to what would take care of her because God forbid there are revolutionary treatments that are developed over the next few decades and then she’s left with nothing, so we needed to make sure that she had enough that would take care of her for the rest of her life. It just 30 million was not going to do it.
Speaker 4 ( 04:58 ):
I don’t think they fully understood what you need to put into live this kind of life. I’m like everything that gets taken out from you and your life likelihood, and I wanted to make sure that I was not just taking care of in the now, but for my future self and even for my generation going on.
Speaker 6 ( 05:23 ):
There’s just so much more when you actually go from the moment that someone gets up to the moment that they go to bed where you don’t even realize how much of it is not handicapped accessible until you are. None of this is cheap or even close to cheap. You can buy McLaren for what you have to pay for a handicapped accessible van.
Speaker 2 ( 05:42 ):
I think there would’ve been a lot of firms that would’ve taken 30 or even less because at the end of the day, I mean it is a lot of money, but it’s taking everything into consideration. We just didn’t feel like it was in the best interest of tier to settle. She deserves so much more.
Speaker 3 ( 05:59 ):
There really isn’t an amount of money that any human being would accept to have tierney’s existence, willful wanton, reckless conduct of the city of Chicago that allowed this to happen. The compensatory damages that a case like this ought to be extraordinary
Speaker 2 ( 06:20 ):
In an admitted negligence case, the jury is charged with deciding the amount that will fully and fairly compensate the plaintiff for her injuries. Even if there’s admitted liability, there is always so much work to be done, so even if you get past that one hurdle in order to make sure that the client gets full and fair value for their case and their injuries, it takes a tremendous amount of research and work and organization and just so much diligence and so much goes into it. The months leading up to trial, we were meeting all the time.
Speaker 7 ( 06:58 ):
We had done several focus groups and we had determined that we could ask for an amount that approach $200 million given the severity of the injury.
Speaker 3 ( 07:11 ):
Harm really ought to be expensive when somebody does something wrong and that leads to harm in another human being, it’s not about sympathy. It’s what is the amount of money that compensates for pain and suffering for loss of a normal life.
Speaker 6 ( 07:26 ):
She’ll always be paralyzed based on the type of injury that she has, her bowel and bladder. That is not function that ever will come back. The goal was to get her to feel as independent and functional as she could be on her own because as you can imagine, what young adult wants to think that they’re always going to be needed to be cared for by their parents or someone else,
Speaker 8 ( 07:54 ):
The trial would mean that my daughter would be taken care of. You have your children and you assume that they’re going to grow up and have their own families and they’ll go on with their lives and you will always worry about them, but you don’t have to take care for them or generally deal with them financially after a certain point. So when you have a child that’s injured and you’re still not quite sure about the extent of their injuries or the point to which they’re going to recover, you just need to know that no matter what, no matter what the outcome is, good or bad, that they’re going to be taken care of and it’s not going to fall on you and it’s not going to fall on her.
Speaker 7 ( 08:44 ):
Since there was an admission of liability, the trial was confined to damages and so that meant our witnesses would be lay people, tyranny or family, selected friends and people familiar with her condition and then treating doctors and healthcare providers, people that had treated her over the course of the two years from the time of the incident to the time of the trial.
Speaker 8 ( 09:17 ):
They went through hours and hours and hours of interviews. I know they went through hours of research, the sheer volume of work that they did, and to me what was a very short period of time, I cannot even begin to fathom, but I know that there was nothing left to uncover by the time they were finished.
Speaker 7 ( 09:47 ):
We were extremely well-prepared. No stone was unturned, and just because you have an admission of liability doesn’t mean it’s a cakewalk. In fact, oftentimes it’s more challenging. You don’t have the benefit of being able to present how this happened unfortunately, and so that’s a strategic advantage to the defense where they say, Hey, listen, we made a mistake. We owned up to it, but don’t let sympathy be your motivating factor for what the award should be. It should be very fair and reasonable and they try to sterilize it.
Speaker 2 ( 10:29 ):
Punitive damages are not available when there’s an admission of liability.
Speaker 6 ( 10:36 ):
Yeah, it would’ve been great to be at trial and be like, oh, by the way, this wasn’t the only one. There was 17 other shelters that also were in horrific condition and defective and could have killed someone or could have fallen on a small child or could a light someone else, but you can’t because admitted liability.
Speaker 7 ( 10:53 ):
We have to try to point out the fact that the circumstances of a case like this were so obvious they admitted fault, but don’t give the defendants a discount by virtue of the fact that they admitted the obvious
Speaker 6 ( 11:09 ):
During this time period. Her parents had moments where we had discussions where the whole focus was we just need to get this pain under control because of the fear of how can you imagine her going on like this from the beginning of the case through trial was you truly just want what’s best for her and her focus and the little energy that she did have needed to be focused on her recovery.
Speaker 2 ( 11:41 ):
There’s just so much that goes into trial preparation outside of preparing evidence and putting the whole thing together, so we were there just to support them in any way that they needed.
Speaker 6 ( 11:53 ):
I
Speaker 4 ( 11:53 ):
Felt like they had my back throughout the entire court case and scenario. They’re amazing people. They always would check up on me, always made sure I was okay, always made sure if I needed something, I got it.
Speaker 2 ( 12:11 ):
The weeks leading up to trial are very nerve wracking for families. There’s a lot of risk involved, especially when you turn down settlement offers that are tens of millions. Am I doing the right thing?
Speaker 6 ( 12:26 ):
I still remember sitting in a conference room right off the courtroom and hours before we start picking a jury and serious negotiations going on and serious, serious money being offered, but still knowing that it wasn’t enough. We said, thank you for being so patient. You guys have waited so long. We know that the settlement offer is, you may hesitate in turning it down, but hang in there. We’re going to get this. Let us try this case, take it to a jury and have faith that we’re going to see this through to the end.
Speaker 2 ( 13:03 ):
We had one day where we were assigned out to the judge and then we do our motion practice for the next day or two. We pick a jury.
Speaker 7 ( 13:11 ):
We were anxious to get going. We had completed motions in limine and so forth, but like any trial, although this one’s a particular special one, there’s a certain anxiety as to who are the 50 or 60 people that are going to walk into your courtroom that will represent your jury in a case like this. We didn’t want anyone that would just be totally turned off by extremely high numbers in the verdict that could approach $200 million.
Speaker 3 ( 13:52 ):
Pat Salve Sr took the first panel in jury selection. I took the next one, and so we worked closely together to come up with a game plan on how we wanted to communicate with the jurors to help them understand what this case was about at an early stage and really ultimately ensure that we had open-minded kind jurors who would look at the facts of this case and render full and fair justice for tyranny.
Speaker 2 ( 14:22 ):
There was obviously a lot of insurance involved in this case, but we can’t talk about insurance coverage at trial. That’s not something that we’re allowed to discuss, and so we just needed to make sure that the types of people who were getting on the jury were not going to hold the fact that the defendant is a city of Chicago against tyranny. If you looked on Twitter during that time, there were a lot of people who were like, oh, I can’t believe this is insane. Our taxes are so high already, and it’s like, well, that’s not really, but you can’t talk about it.
Speaker 3 ( 14:52 ):
What I do at the beginning of a case during jury selection, and this is an appropriate question under Illinois law, maybe not every jurisdiction is if the law and the evidence supported a verdict and in this case we said in excess of $150 million, could you sign that verdict and then you see the juror’s reaction, any individual potential jury, you see their reaction, you hear their words, you get an understanding for how they feel about money damages in civil cases as
Speaker 7 ( 15:22 ):
They’re walking in and I’m observing them, although it’s somewhat speculative when you’re just highballing prospective jurors, I was generally pleased with the first impression makeup
Speaker 6 ( 15:36 ):
Because of her age, a lot of jurors would be able to identify with her either they were young or they were parents and had a daughter that age.
Speaker 3 ( 15:47 ):
You only get one opportunity to make a first impression and the first impression during jury selection is not just on behalf of yourself but on behalf of the rest of the team and your client.
Speaker 7 ( 15:57 ):
I think the emphasis we wanted to make with the jury was that this was an unusual spinal cord injury. They’re all bad, but this one was particularly bad in that it represented a very traumatic ripping in half of the cord and that it was an injury of a nature that it didn’t lend itself to a likely good outcome. Even with a spinal cord stimulator, it just wasn’t likely to be beneficial. Remember, you’re making a decision for tyranny that will affect her for the rest of her life.
Speaker 2 ( 16:47 ):
Most of the time we have her plaintiff sit through the trial from jury selection through close, but she just because of the level of pain that she had and her lack of mobility, she just could not be sitting at trial.
Speaker 6 ( 16:59 ):
We talked a lot about if tyranny should be there or not, and I think we made the right decision for her not to be present for most of it.
Speaker 5 ( 17:06 ):
By the time of the trial she was in a lot of pain. The face you saw on the TV interview with her where she was smiling, those of us that know her knew that was a mask because she was in a lot of pain. If she wasn’t on camera and wasn’t with people she knew and trusted, you could see the pain in her face.
Speaker 7 ( 17:31 ):
There was daily coverage of the trial and there was a significant coverage of key moments opening statements.
Speaker 5 ( 17:44 ):
It was interesting to see how far reaching this. There were things out in Europe, there were things in different languages.
Speaker 3 ( 17:57 ):
We knew that the case had a significant amount of media attention.
Speaker 3 ( 18:09 ):
We would arrive at the courthouse and we would go up the elevators, we would turn the corner and there would be a press pool. That added a level of importance to what we were doing because we knew that people were watching. As a trial lawyer that’s going to do one of two things that’s either going to scare you, it’s going to give you nerves and maybe throw you off your game if you’re unable to focus or it’s going to get you excited and it’s going to get you even more focused. You realize how important your preparation is because you’re on the big stage and I think that’s how our team responded.
Speaker 7 ( 18:48 ):
It ultimately nus to the benefit of the plaintiff in that it just signifies this is a big case. You wouldn’t typically have a civil trial that is covered by the media on a daily basis, and so when the jurors are going in and out of court and there’s all sorts of cameras and reporters and et cetera, they can’t help but clearly be impressed by the fact that this is a very, very major case.
Speaker 2 ( 19:16 ):
It was really exciting and just knowing that we had this shared goal, we were working really well as a team.
Speaker 3 ( 19:25 ):
I was sitting down in my living room and it was the night before Tierney’s mom was going to testify and I had my computer out and I was making some last minute edits. It was about the time of the evening news and I was typing on my computer and on the news and the reporter covering the case was describing the case what had already taken place and then said, and tomorrow Tierney’s mother is going to testify, and that was certainly the first time that while I was working on an examination, it was mentioned in the news, and so that was a unique experience.
Speaker 2 ( 20:08 ):
A lot of thought goes into how to keep the jury’s attention. We had a number of expert witnesses whose testimony might be a little more dense than the others, so we would break them up and have short testimony from our parents or family members or friends. A lot of planning goes into preparing direct examinations of every witness, so you want to make sure that you’re keeping things concise and clear and you’re not droning on and on because that’s a good way to lose a jury that’s been sitting there since 9:00 AM for a week and a half.
Speaker 6 ( 20:47 ):
Of course, tyranny is sympathetic and a perfect plaintiff, but does that mean that you put her on the stand for an hour and have her talk about everything she’s gone through? No. It is so much better to hear it from those around her than to have the victim themselves have to go through all of it and describe all of it. I think it’s more powerful coming from others.
Speaker 2 ( 21:09 ):
People get really nervous about testifying. It’s a very uncomfortable situation to be in when you’re not in the courtroom all the time, which most people aren’t, so there’s a lot of anxiety. It’s very stressful for them.
Speaker 6 ( 21:23 ):
I put myself in their shoes and I try to think, can you imagine having to sit there and hear about how this didn’t need to happen or how this could have been prevented or how horrible your future potentially looks from a medical perspective, right? They have to relive all of that. How traumatizing
Speaker 8 ( 21:40 ):
Everyone was, wonderful, everyone, always calm, always reassuring, always warm and welcoming
Speaker 3 ( 21:50 ):
Because the Darden family is a really wonderful family and I thought they were very credible witnesses, authentic people that were able to bring some color to Tierney’s injury. They’ve lived with it. They’ve talked to her on the phone, they’ve cried with her. They’ve been at the hospital with her for countless hours, but then they get up in front of a jury and they talk for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and so to condense that down, to compress that to a short period of time but still make such a connection with the jury requires the lawyer to spend the time with those witnesses, connect with those witnesses so that those witnesses can be their true selves when they’re testifying. The only way to cut to the heart of that is the lawyer who hasn’t been involved in those experiences is to spend time with those witnesses and ask a lot of questions to distill all the information down to what’s most important.
Speaker 2 ( 22:54 ):
In any case, when there is a catastrophic injury, like in this one, a focus is going to be before and after. What was tyranny like before this bus shelter fell on her back? What brought her joy? What did she love to do?
Speaker 4 ( 23:11 ):
I used to do art and I stopped because my hand was shaking so much. Dance was like my life. I used to be in dance companies.
Speaker 2 ( 23:21 ):
She loved to be with her family. They were very, very close knit. She always found ways to express herself. She was great aunt, friend, sister, and overall just a wonderful person to be around and everybody agreed that that was the case.
Speaker 6 ( 23:44 ):
When people say beautiful inside and out, you can’t say that about everyone. They truly can say Tierney is a beautiful young woman inside and out.
Speaker 3 ( 23:56 ):
One of the more powerful pieces of evidence in a case such as this is called a Day in the Life video where we try to show the jury what the injured plaintiff goes through on a day-to-day basis.
Speaker 6 ( 24:12 ):
Our day in the life video for tyranny showed her mom having to use her hands to physically remove fecal matter from tyranny after she had had a bowel movement because if you don’t do, that can become infected, it can become obstructed and it’s going to be a bigger problem. Now thing is saying fecal imp impaction or fecal removal, well, you can say that to a jury, you can put it in a report, but that really did not do it justice. What her mom would have to do,
Speaker 3 ( 24:47 ):
One of the very important elements of damages is future medical expenses. The future medical expenses included at-home help 24 hours a day, and so to show the jury the need for that assistance and why those future medical expenses were warranted, they saw the challenges that Tierney faced with every movement, with every task everywhere she goes from her bed to the wheelchair, from the wheelchair to a car, from the car back onto a wheelchair and anywhere else there’s an intricate process of safe transfer. You can imagine how risky it is. That’s pretty evident from the video because it’s not easy to transfer an adult from a bed to wheelchair, wheelchair to car, et cetera.
Speaker 2 ( 25:39 ):
It showed the jury beyond just people talking about how it was, it showed the jury what exactly it looked like, how much pain she’s in, what mom had to do to help, and I think it was really powerful because I think anybody who’s a parent or who has a good relationship with their parent would see how hard it was not just for Tierney, but also for her parents to see her screaming and crying and sleeping next to her on the same bed in a tiny hotel room and she’s just crying because she’s in so much pain.
Speaker 6 ( 26:17 ):
We were concerned that they were potentially going to move to say we couldn’t show it, that it was going to be too graphic.
Speaker 2 ( 26:24 ):
In most cases, including this one, the defense will try to bar those parts and they’ll claim it’s for privacy of plaintiff, but it’s complete. They just don’t want the jury to acknowledge or be able to see how bad things really are for them, so it’s important to show reality. It’s just showing what her life is like. It’s not embellishing.
Speaker 6 ( 26:48 ):
Our argument was No, that’s her real life graphic or not gruesome or not, that’s it. These aren’t autopsy photographs. These are showing what this living individual, our living victim has to go through every day and when we are asking for medical supplies and gloves, this is why
Speaker 3 ( 27:06 ):
The jury reacted considerably to the day in the life video taking the jury into Tierney’s home compared to verbally describing it was something that certainly the jury had a visceral reaction to.
Speaker 2 ( 27:22 ):
I think they were shocked from what I could tell, it really different. It’s a completely different beast to hear someone talk about how things are versus actually seeing them for yourself and things such as the bowel program. Most people have never had to, thankfully never had to experience something like that and have to do that every day, and I think it had a profound effect on that.
Speaker 7 ( 27:53 ):
Another key moment of the trial was the testimony of the plaintiff tyranny. What was a key moment in the trial since this whole case was about tyranny? Of course people were anxious to observe her and we had planned for just a very succinct short examination
Speaker 6 ( 28:17 ):
Was such a short examination and so powerful. At the same time,
Speaker 2 ( 28:24 ):
She was wheeled into the courtroom and she just had a smile on her face. There was kind of a levity about her. She was nervous just like anyone would be in her position, but all of that just melted away. As soon as she took the stand,
Speaker 7 ( 28:46 ):
I said, okay, you’re ready. Turn, and she again kind of waxed and waned because it was pretty high anxiety, but I politely but firmly told her, no, we got to do it now and let’s get it done, and she rose to the occasion like a champ.
Speaker 4 ( 29:07 ):
I like the spotlight when I dance, but I don’t like the spotlight any other time. I just get really nervous. I didn’t really like my pictures being shown or I think I kind of just, I don’t know. My mind switched and I just got used to saying the story over and over and reliving it over and over.
Speaker 2 ( 29:27 ):
I think that she knew that even though she’s in so much pain, she just had to get it together for this very limited amount of time so that she could say her piece to the jury.
Speaker 7 ( 29:41 ):
It probably lasted no more than 10 minutes. I’ve never encountered silence in a courtroom like when she testified. She came across very humble and not whiny and just she came across and sincerely not feeling bad that she was a burden on her family. When I did ask her, I just asked one question about how would you describe your pain to the jury in your own words, and she just said Torture. I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house, including the lawyers.
Speaker 2 ( 30:28 ):
That moment was when I thought, wow, she’s incredible and I think that this is going to be really big.
Speaker 7 ( 30:40 ):
I really felt the stars were aligning for us
Speaker 3 ( 30:44 ):
Witness after witness. We believed we were winning each witness each day and that carried from the beginning of the trial all the way to the end.
Speaker 7 ( 30:59 ):
They were represented by very good lawyers. They had a local law firm from the city of Chicago. They were also represented by an international firm, I think one of the largest firms in the world, and they were very capable. They were very well financed, they had unlimited resources technologically. Their presentation was very good, their lawyers were very experienced, very talented, but they were up against what we’d like to think were very good lawyers too
Speaker 3 ( 31:34 ):
In defending the case. The defense here was really along the lines of providing some medical treatment and then painting a very, very rosy picture as to what the future may hold. There’s a device called a spinal cord stimulator, and while the spinal cord stimulator can be very effective in treating neuropathic pain and dulling that pain, reducing the pain, for folks that have that experience by a significant margin, that’s typically when there’s a localized injury. Doctors told us that had someone taken a knife to Tierney spinal cord and just cut it cleanly, that would’ve been a much better outcome. You don’t have the extraordinary pain signals when you have a shearing force where it’s literally ripped apart as it was here, but in those circumstances, the spinal cord stimulator has not been proven to work, so the defense tried to act like, Hey, we can fix this right up.
Speaker 8 ( 32:34 ):
They’re coming from a different viewpoint and sometimes that
Speaker 2 ( 32:38 ):
Piece, it wasn’t very pleasant. They would come in and say people in wheelchairs can live full lives, not taking into consideration all of the other things that were going on with Tierney and her body. When they crossed her family members, they put up photographs. She went to I think Navy Pier. She’s smiling in the photograph and they kind of put it up there to show, look, she is, she’s out here. She’s going places, and she’s smiling and what is so to me unrealistic about that argument is that a photo is just a snapshot in time. Anybody can put on a smile for a photograph doesn’t mean that you’re not in pain. A couple of other photos where of her, I think she was attending her sister’s wedding and it’s a nice photo and the defense would say, well, she was able to go to her sister’s wedding and then on redirect it comes out that yeah, she was able to take this photo, but she wasn’t able to actually attend the rest of the festivities and she was in such excruciating pain that David had to leave the wedding early with her and to stay with her, but getting on a plane to go to the wedding was a nightmare.
Speaker 6 ( 33:58 ):
If you just looked at this picture, you would be like, she’s in a wheelchair and tyranny looks gorgeous. Then when you actually talk to The’s mom, they would tell you everything that you didn’t see in the pictures. You would see that tyranny left right after that because her pain was too bad. They’ll tell you that she couldn’t spend the night and wanted to go back home because she wasn’t comfortable in the environment that she was. That was always the last one to get there and the first one to leave because her pain was so bad and because she really couldn’t, when the pain was so bad, it mentally would take over that she could not enjoy the moments.
Speaker 7 ( 34:40 ):
I think their approach was it’s this very serious injury, no getting around that, but there are tens of thousands of paraplegics that are functional and productive and happy, and in fact, one of the medical experts for the defense was a paraplegic, and so sort of the implication was he’s testament to the fact that not only can you be functional and productive, you can even be a medical doctor.
Speaker 6 ( 35:16 ):
I think they thought, okay, well this defense expert, he’s in a wheelchair himself, therefore he’s in a better position and the jury’s going to think he’s so credible and so amazing because he’s also in a wheelchair.
Speaker 2 ( 35:28 ):
From my recollection, the expert was not in a wheelchair because of a spinal cord injury, so he wasn’t functioning with a high level of pain. Obviously, he was able to practice medicine, but just to me it was kind of a strange decision to use a doctor in a wheelchair to show that people are fine, tierney’s going to be fine. Well, we need to take care of her pain first.
Speaker 6 ( 35:56 ):
I don’t think it went well for defense. I almost feel like it backfired a little bit because this defense expert primarily almost always testified for defendants, and so we were able to kind of point out kind of like, let us get the straight you. You’re in a wheelchair and you go around the country testifying against and trying to limit images of others in wheelchairs, and when you say it like that, you’re like, oh,
Speaker 7 ( 36:28 ):
We were concerned about one juror based on body language and based on questions that he would ask of the witnesses.
Speaker 3 ( 36:38 ):
Judges allow jury questions and the judge in this case did allow jury questions, and so even though you’re not supposed to know where the questions come from, it’s not like they were write their names on it and it’s announced. You can kind of tell when the judge says, does anybody have any questions for this witness? You can see who’s passing the notes down and you can get a little bit of a hunch as to who’s asking what. We could tell his questions indicated either a lack of understanding or really a lack of care as it related to the injury. It became obvious that he was a problem juror the experts for the defense who was a paraplegic individual himself. He was a physiatrist and he was testifying. He was in the middle of his testimony. This very experienced expert who darn well knows the rules was in the middle of testimony when the judge took a break and the reason the judge took a break, it was a late lunch break because in Chicago we were going to see this eclipse and it was making big news.
Speaker 2 ( 37:48 ):
There are strict rules against contact or communication between the jurors and obviously a defense hired experts or any witnesses, they’re not supposed to speak, and
Speaker 3 ( 37:59 ):
Really any sort of jury witness interaction is inappropriate, just like a juror lawyer interaction would be inappropriate. We are not to talk to each other and the judge admonishes everybody about that, so the judge lets us out so that everybody can go see the eclipse. We do a late lunch and what happens is everybody clears out of the courtroom except for the expert is still there and he’s got his lunch there. This juror about whom we had reservations is walking and he could see that the expert was having a little bit of trouble opening up his lunch. It was like in these little plastic Tupperware containers, and so he stopped and he helped him open it, and a seemingly kind gesture, honest as that may seem, it gets worse. That juror comes back a little early apparently, and the expert’s still sitting there after having had his lunch and they engage in a conversation.
Speaker 3 ( 39:03 ):
The very experienced expert asks him about the eclipse and then the juror takes out his phone, starts showing him pictures of the eclipse, and these two fellas are just having a conversation, totally inappropriate. One of the defense lawyers was sitting right there and didn’t put an end to it. Thankfully the court reporter was there, so we come to court the next day and the judge calls us into her chambers and she says, I’ve been informed by the court reporter that this witness and one of the jurors had this conversation, and the judge asked the juror if he had done that and he denied it, and then the judge dug into it a little bit more, asked this other juror who hadn’t done that if it was him. He of course said, well, no, that wasn’t me, and went back to the court reporter and we ultimately figured out that the first guy was not being truthful, and so lo and behold, this fella who had spoken with the witness despite the judge’s admonishment and then lied about it to the judge, gets kicked off the jury as he should have been.
Speaker 7 ( 40:15 ):
He was replaced by an alternate that we had very good vibes for, and as it turned out, it was a very, very strong plaintiff’s juror for us. I continued to feel when something like that happens that the stars are aligning for you and it makes for probably a very good result.
Speaker 3 ( 40:40 ):
I think that’s very important to have a threat from the beginning to the end and a lot of things in the theming of your case, but with a plaintiff’s personal injury case, the amount of money you’re requesting at the heart of the matter
Speaker 2 ( 40:55 ):
During closing arguments, it was packed, packed and it was hell of a closing argument by Pat Sr. Wow.
Speaker 7 ( 41:02 ):
Part of the plaintiff’s lawyer’s job in getting the highest possible award is to use the evidence and the law in such a fashion that it maximizes the likelihood of a large award. In this case, Tierney had an additional 56 years of life expectancy, so she was going to suffer these losses for 56 more years plus the two years that she had already gone through this.
Speaker 6 ( 41:36 ):
Her biggest element of damage is now she no longer can walk, and how many of us take that for granted.
Speaker 2 ( 41:43 ):
Taking into consideration how young Tierney was at the time of the trial, pat emphasized that she had a life expected sea of 58 years, so their verdict, the jury’s verdict would have to reflect an amount that would compensate her for her lifelong loss of a normal life, pain and suffering, emotional distress, disfigurement, increased risk of harm.
Speaker 7 ( 42:08 ):
Pain is probably the thing we fear the most. Being in pain is the most concerning thing for any of us as a human being. What is the value of having to go experience pain unrelenting neuropathic pain 24 7 for the next 56 years? What’s the value of that? By today’s standards and what we can reasonably anticipate, the value of money’s going to be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 56 years from now. You go back 56 years, 1970s, I think the highest paid baseball player was like Willie Mays made like a hundred thousand dollars and now they make 30, 40 million just to swat a baseball around for a summer, and so can you imagine what it’s going to be 10, 20, 30, 40, 56 years from now as tyranny continues to suffer these losses.
Speaker 3 ( 43:16 ):
At the end of the trial, pat Salvy Sr. Suggested an amount of $175 million. Yeah, that’s a lot of money, but we also believe it’s a lot of harm.
Speaker 2 ( 43:28 ):
During closing, they suggested something like 30 million keep the number down,
Speaker 7 ( 43:34 ):
And there was quite a bit of disparity between what the defense thought they should award and what we thought.
Speaker 1 ( 43:41 ):
In our next episode, both sides presented their case and Tierney’s fate is now in the hands of the jury.
Speaker 2 ( 43:47 ):
Basically, the whole office was holding their breath. They heard and the people who didn’t touch the file, they were, this is all they heard about for while.
Speaker 1 ( 44:02 ):
Special thanks to Tierney Darden for allowing us to share her story. You can find more episodes of beating Goliath on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about this case in our firm, head to www.salbylaw.com/podcast.
