Law Partners Jason Guari and Scott Perry, had the privilege of representing a retired Spanish speaking couple who had the misfortune of being rear-ended by a tractor-trailer in rural Florida. From the beginning, the insurance carrier for the trucking company took the position of deny, delay, avoid, and hide-the-ball. Below are photographs of the vehicles at the scene.
This heavy crash resulted in numerous injuries, including inducing a stroke and lumbar (low back) injuries which required care from an orthopedic surgeon.
Instead of accepting responsibility or even acknowledging any sense of wrongdoing, the insurance company took the approach of dragging its feet and blaming our clients, despite all they did was slow down to turn off the road with their turn-signal on. The insurance company even went as far as failing to provide significant documentation during the discovery process. The defense team failed to realize two important things about the trial team at Murray Guari – 1) for us, our clients and cases are personal; and we treat them as such with a drive to achieve justice and 2) we regularly handle trucking cases; therefore, we know what documents and evidence do and should exist. When you add these two factors together, it meant that even when faced with obstructionist answers of “none,” we kept on digging until someone revealed important, relevant documents, including a download of the tractor’s engine speed that proved the trucker’s failure to slow down pre-crash. With the documents in hand and clear evidence of filing false information with the Court and having delayed turning the evidence over for a significant time, the insurance company finally wanted to resolve the claim. Otherwise, the judge would likely have sanctioned them for their conduct during discovery. Then the jury would have seen a trucking company picking on a retired couple who had suffered injuries while driving responsibly and following the rules of the road.
When injured through the fault of another, it is important to have a team, like Murray Guari, who understand how to gather all the facts and pieces surrounding an incident, and not let the insurance company, or defense team, play hide-the-ball.
