Partner Allan M. Siegel represented two clients who were passengers in a vehicle that was struck by a vehicle being driven by a drunk driver. The drunk driver crossed over to the wrong side of the road, and struck our clients’ vehicle head-on, causing serious injuries to both of our clients.
The drunk driver was charged and convicted for her role in the crash and was serving jail time when Mr. Siegel filed the lawsuit. Unfortunately, the drunk driver had a minimum limits insurance policy, which only provided insurance limits of $30,000 per person and $60,000 per incident.
Many law firms would have counseled their clients to accept the available insurance limits from the clearly at fault party. However, Chaikin, Sherman, Cammarata & Siegel’s investigation revealed that the driver of our clients’ vehicle had an opportunity to avoid the drunk driver’s vehicle. In fact, there was a witness traveling in the same direction as our clients’ vehicle which saw the oncoming vehicle and pulled over. However, the driver of our clients’ vehicle was looking at her cell phone and therefore did not see the car coming in the wrong direction until it was too late to react. Mr. Siegel retained an accident reconstruction expert who provided an opinion that our clients’ driver could have avoided the crash had she been paying attention.
There can be more than one cause of an accident, so even though our clients’ driver was on the correct side of the roadway and was confronted with a clearly reckless and intoxicated driver, Mr. Siegel was able to demonstrate by relying on the eyewitness statement and the expert’s opinion that our clients’ driver contributed to the collision. The case settled for $780,000.
