The personal injury game :-) Wanna Play?

[Guest]

As I said, your client may not be like my patient. However, most of the time I hear people victimizing themselves, and I hear it to some extent on an almost daily basis, the "victim" really has a central role to play. I hope you realize that your story has a bit of a bizarre feel to it. What I'm suggesting is that you need to convince the plaintiff, or the jury if it comes down to that, that your client really is an upstanding citizen who really got caught in an awful string of negligence on the Big Q's part (front driver untrained and not paying attention, inadequate design of the cart mover in that it had no lights or beeping sounds, unusual topography of the store, etc.). The plaintiff made a terrible mistake in judgment in disposing of (or hiding) the security tapes, and I'm sure you and their lawyer realizes it will almost certainly cost them dearly. As a matter of common sense and as a matter of California law, any jury will have to assume that their contents show evidence harmful to the plaintiff.

Of course, we haven't heard the other side of the story, if there is one. Your client may truly be a victim in this case. I believe the spoliated evidence just about guarantees you at least a 7-figure settlement or verdict. I'm not sure if you can make a case for fraud or conspiracy given that two tapes at two different locations went "missing." Even if you can't, I assume most juries would want to send a message to the Big Q to discourage such future hanky-panky. Keep us up-to-date on the settlement talks! Can you tell us which county holds this jurisdiction?

[Flower]

[font color="green"

] doc, your thoughts (and others) have given me a lot of food for thought and valuable feed back--thank you. Maybe I can let you know after the trial what county it is in, but probably shouldn't at this time, since it's such a small county that it would make the identities of the parties obtainable, not that I have any illussion that anyone here would be remotely interested . .:+

Thanks again

[Guest]

A secret trial! How mysterious!