010 Pedestrian Accident Lawyer

0:00                 ANNOUNCER: Welcome to “Lawyers in the House” with Montlick. Wish you had a lawyer in the family? Now you do. Here’s your host, Veronica Waters.

 

VERONICA: Welcome to “Lawyers in House” with Montlick.

0:21                 I’m your host Veronica Waters, coming to you from the studios of WSB Radio in Atlanta, Georgia. Georgia, the peach state. Although, did you know that we make a lot more money growing blueberries in this state than peaches? Little-known fact. Look it up. Georgia, the Peach State… but not everything is peachy here if you are a pedestrian.

0:45                 Georgia is the ninth most dangerous state for pedestrians. And, in fact, the CDC says in 2020 there were 104,000 emergency room visits of pedestrians. Nearly 250 died. CDC says, here in the United States, about one pedestrian died every 75 minutes. It is clear that there is a danger out there on the streets. And pedestrian accidents and safety are what we’re talking about today. Here to walk us through – Haha, see what I did there…

1:26                 Here to walk us through this information, two dynamic attorneys from Montlick Injury Attorneys. Two of my favorite people already in the entire world. Pedestrian accidents, the topic today, Ellen Forrester.

 

1:39                 ELLEN: Good morning.

 

VERONICA: Ellen Forrester, who knew from a very young age that she wanted to have a positive impact on people’s lives. And since then… you know, fast forward to today, she has spent thousands of hours fighting for her clients in a courtroom. And in fact, she is as comfortable in front of a judge and jury as she is out walking her Great Danes.

 

ELLEN: That’s right.

 

VERONICA: All right, Ellen’s been practicing law since… fill in the blank.

 

ELLEN: 2013.

 

VERONICA: And she’s been at Montlick since?

 

2:09                 ELLEN: 2019.

 

VERONICA: Okay, I didn’t know that was gonna be such a hard-

 

ELLEN: That’s… a lot to recall. Well, there were years in there that don’t count anymore, right? So it’s… you gotta roll back beyond that.

 

2:21                 VERONICA: Okay, so at Montlick since 2019, and has racked up some very meaningful and creative wins…

 

ELLEN: Absolutely.

 

2:27                 VERONICA: …for her clients in that time. Fans of the show already know our next guest. He is Jason Saltzman, who was one of our three stars on the very first episode of “Lawyers in the House”.  So glad to have you back, Jason.

 

JASON: Good to see you again.

 

VERONICA: Jason has been working at Montlick since 2007.

 

2:45                 JASON: Yes, before-

 

VERONICA: But?

 

JASON: Yeah, from before I went to law school and then as an attorney-

 

VERONICA: Became a lawyer in 2012.

 

JASON: 2012.

 

2:51                 VERONICA: Right, so he’s got a long, long history with Montlick. You may remember that there are a lot of family ties for Jason at Montlick; and he is known for his near complete recall of facts, his attention to detail. Those who know Jason call him a fierce lawyer and he has made a name for himself. He’s been named a super lawyer, rising star recently,

3:13                 and he’s landed some six- and seven-figure results for his clients for whom he fights so passionately. Jason and Ellen, thank you for being in the house.

 

ELLEN: Awesome, thank you.

 

3:24                 JASON: Thanks for having us.

 

VERONICA: I have got to get into letting folks know a little bit more about you. Because I, in getting to know you, have just fallen in love with both of you. Ellen, I wanna start with you to ask you what really drives you? You know, what got you on your path once you realized that you couldn’t become a professional hippie with her own…

 

ELLEN: That’s right, that’s right.

 

VERONICA: …ceramics conglomerate.

 

3:49                 ELLEN: That’s right. So I have always… I have always wanted to help people. I have always wanted to build community and to help people actualize their best selves and to just make the world a better place, as cheesy as that might sound; because I think there’s so much potential in all of us to positively impact not only ourselves, our families, our communities, but each other as a whole. And becoming an attorney was a natural fit for that because there are so many opportunities in the law to profoundly impact individuals in their lives

4:20                 in the moment where they are. I think that’s true for attorneys especially because we meet people oftentimes, on their very worst day. And you get to be the person with them on their very worst day saying, “I am here for you. I am on your team. I am gonna walk through this with you and see you through this dark time in your life.”

4:38                 And so that’s something that I feel really, really passionately about.

 

VERONICA: I think passion is the word that comes to mind when I think of both you and Jason. And I’ve mentioned before, Jason, and we’ve talked about the fact that you have family ties… but I am curious to know what else may have driven you into the field of law? Because the family ties could mean something. A lot of folks wanna follow on our parents’ footsteps.

5:04                 Your dad’s been at Montlick for decades, but what drives you?

 

JASON: It’s always about helping individuals. ‘Cause most of the time the people that we’re helping are… we’re helping them in an adversarial situation against very large corporations. So I’ve always wanted to kind of be on the side of the little guy.

 

VERONICA: On the side of the little guy. I love it. And clearly, with your track records, the little guys are happy to have you there. We’re talking about pedestrian accidents. Imagine being out for a stroll, walking your dog, you’re running an errand, you’re taking a jog and you’re looking both ways. You step into a crosswalk but then boom, your life is changed in an instant. What comes next? Let’s start off by easing into this one.

5:57                 What is exactly a pedestrian? Can somebody define who’s a pedestrian?

 

6:02                 ELLEN: So I think the… I think the definition of pedestrian changes, right? So it changes from… and circumstantially, right? And so, Jason, I think give them a little bit of a rundown about that, ’cause you’re really articulate about that when we talked about this before.

 

6:15                 JASON: So, most of the time pedestrian is just someone walking either on a crosswalk or down the street, hopefully legally in a either some type of sidewalk or something. And they’re not just standing in the middle of the road. But we’ve also seen these ambiguities over what constitutes a pedestrian. What’s a skateboarder? What’s a person on a scooter, right? And we’re seeing a whole bunch of different ordinances in different cities concerning what are the rules based on what you’re using to walk down the street or go down the street. I’d say skateboarders probably a pedestrian, but we’ve also seen nuances with people using these scooters in midtown and-

 

VERONICA: Yeah, so does the pedestrian-

 

JASON: Shades of gray.

 

7:01                 VERONICA: What? What was that?

 

JASON: Shades of gray.

 

VERONICA: Shades of gray. How much more challenging is that for you guys? If there’s a changing definition like that? I mean-

 

ELLEN: Well, the definition for us is that our clients who are injured are always pedestrians. Right? So that’s… We, I think Jason would agree, right? That like when you’re making these arguments to an insurance company, I don’t care if they were riding a broom, you know, right? Flying a broom down the street like they’re… Sorry, they’re a pedestrian. They were not on a motorized vehicle and your person -your insured- hit them and so they’re a pedestrian.

 

7:32                 JASON: Exactly, yeah. I mean a person getting hit by a car when they’re not in a vehicle is usually when we’re gonna try to argue that they’re pedestrian. Although that doesn’t extend to bicyclists, you know?

 

7:43                 VERONICA: Even though it’s not motorized.

 

JASON: Correct. I mean, the bicyclists are generally going to be considered vehicles,

7:51                 not necessarily motorized vehicles ’cause that can change stuff with insurance coverage and everything. But bicyclists are generally going to have to observe the same rules of the road as motor vehicles.

 

VERONICA: Okay, yeah, they can go a lot faster, too, than me on my broom or my walking, right? Because-

 

ELLEN: I don’t know, brooms are quick.

 

VERONICA: You know they are quick, I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ve seen all the Harry Potter wizard movies. But what’s interesting about the pedestrian thing…

8:18                 You know, we’ve spent a lot of time talking about car accidents on this show and I don’t really have… Stop giggling, Jason. I don’t actually have…

 

ELLEN: A broom.

 

VERONICA: … a broom. Are you picturing me on a broom?

 

JASON: No, it’s Ellen.

 

8:30                 VERONICA:  All right, we’ll talk about this off air. Down to the nitty-gritty though, we’ve talked about car accidents a lot and how horrific those can be. I cannot imagine how much worse it is… I can only imagine how much worse it is when it’s not vehicle versus vehicle, but vehicle versus pedestrian. And then on top of that there’s… the pedestrian is, you know, at a loss in more ways than one.

 

ELLEN: Absolutely.

 

JASON: Yeah, ’cause pedestrians are often very much at a disadvantage in any type of, you know, auto versus pedestrian accident. Mainly because the injuries tend to be more serious, obviously ’cause they don’t have the protections of being in, you know, in the interior of a vehicle when they’re hit. But then by the time the police get there,

9:16                 often that injured person is carted away from the scene in an ambulance to some hospital; and they don’t get to speak to the officer. The officer will talk to the other person who hit them; and the other person who hit them is obviously going to have a different story as to what happened than the pedestrian. So we find a lot of times that – and I think Ellen would agree with me on this – that the majority of our cases if we have a person who is hit by a car who’s not in a crosswalk, we find that the officer always, or not always but often, initially finds the pedestrian at fault.

 

9:51                 VERONICA: Wow. No matter what.

 

JASON: I mean, I would say most of the time I’ve seen… I’ve seen exceptions, but it’s not as simple as that. You know, like there’s issues in the law that make that… it’s not just about being in a crosswalk. You know, like, there’s questions as to whether or not the vehicle that hit them could have avoided hitting the person.

 

VERONICA: Does it matter where the, you know… do they look at what side of the vehicle hit the pedestrian? Whether it was the driver’s side, the passenger side?

 

ELLEN: Sure. So I think that police officers, when they arrive on scene, they’re trying to do… they’re trying to do their due diligence, right? I mean, I think that we would… Jason and I would agree that police officers arrive on the scene, and they want do a good job. They want to take a full accounting of what happened. They typically get one side of the story. They might be able to speak to witnesses and oftentimes the accident reports will have a diagram that will indicate where on the vehicle it struck the person. They might even have a little diagram of where the person was lying on the ground or this sort of thing. And because they get one side of the story and because we’re all sort of taught from a young age, “You’ve gotta be in a crosswalk, you’ve gotta be in a crosswalk,” there is almost this sort of just like societal understanding that if you’re not in a crosswalk and you’re hit, it’s your fault.

 

VERONICA: You must have been at fault.

 

ELLEN: Yeah, right.

 

11:07                VERONICA: You’re the one who did something wrong.

 

ELLEN: Because we teach our kids right? Be in a cross- look, you gotta be in a crosswalk. You’ve gotta be in a crosswalk. And what working on these cases has taught me is that that’s not true. And an officer may well inten- be well intentioned and check the box that says the pedestrian is at fault. That does not… that is not the end-all be-all.

 

VERONICA:  Well, if I… so I’m, if I am at fault or considered at least on the police report to be at fault, do I not have a case?

 

ELLEN: No, you should absolutely call it. You should absolutely call us at Montlick.

 

11:35                JASON: The police report isn’t admissible evidence. And the police officer who wrote the report was, pretty much, 99% of the time not an eyewitness to what happened. They’re just there in the aftermath and they’re talking to witnesses.

 

VERONICA: We’ve… you’ve talked about so many… I know you’ve had so many cases over the years of these pedestrian accidents. And as you said, trying to do the right thing. These officers are… but sometimes the decisions made on the scene can seem especially harsh.

 

12:06                JASON: Yes. Like I had a case a few years ago where a woman was on an Atlanta street crossing the street. She wasn’t in a crosswalk. There was a crosswalk near where she was crossing, but the crosswalk was in an area that was kind of at the crest of a hill. And a lot of people didn’t use it. There weren’t any traffic lights near it. So people felt unsafe using that crosswalk.

12:31                So she would often… she would often just kind of wait till everything cleared and stand in the double yellow turning line and kind of wait. She’d safely cross into that and then wait for the other lane to be safe, and then she’d cross again. And she did this just like she’d done a hundred times. And one day she was just standing there waiting for traffic to pass and she got hit. And she was killed, unfortunately. And we… In that case, the police officer… While she was on the stretcher choking on her own vomit and dying, the police officer wrote her a citation and put it on the stretcher.

 

13:09                ELLEN: For jaywalking.

 

JASON: For jaywalk- yeah. It was insane. And there was a lot of evidence in that case that the person could have seen her. It’s not like she darted out in front of him. You know, she had been standing there. And it was… it seemed like a real miscarriage of justice at the time for the officer to just immediately jump to conclusions and find her at fault.

 

VERONICA: There is so much that goes into unraveling what happened at these scenes. We’re gonna talk a little bit about that when we come back on “Lawyers in the House” with Jason Saltzman and Ellen Forrester.

13:43                I’m Veronica Waters and this is “Lawyers in the House”.

 

 

 

 

VERONICA: You’re now in the house with “Lawyers in the House”

13:50                and with me, your host Veronica Waters, Ellen Forrester, and Jason Saltzman. The stars of the day, fine attorneys from Montlick Injury Attorneys with us. We are available at any time of the day or night on social @Montlicklaw on every platform. You can check us out on the podcast, see our smiling faces on YouTube and drop us a line.

14:10                Give us your questions anytime of the day or night at lawyersinthehouse.com. We are going to have… Don’t forget the Montlick closing argument too, coming up later in the show to leave you with a nugget of wisdom. Ellen and Jason, we left off talking about the kind of detective work that goes into unraveling the evidence at the scenes long after something has happened, long after the police report has been filed. Talk to me a little bit about that, Jason.

 

14:38                JASON: So sometimes in certain cases when appropriate, you may want to bring in accident reconstructionist experts. And in that particular case I referenced earlier, what it came down to was blocking off a road at like 11 o’clock at night and having a person standing in the road that looked like my client’s decedent, wearing the same types of clothes and doing basically a frame by frame approach from a vehicle.

 

VERONICA: And this is… this is the woman who had the- the segmented crossing of the street and was struck and killed.

 

JASON: Correct. Yes, yes. So the question was how far back did this defendant see her, right? So we ended up doing this investigation and we actually found that he could see her from a really… like far away, like really far away.

 

VERONICA: Paint a picture for me of that scene.

 

JASON: I mean it was like we had police officers. They just blocked off the entire road. We had several people who were part of the crew that we had hired to do this. And it’s important to have the types of resources to do this in certain cases, ’cause you can really make a huge difference in proving your claim by being able to show an eventual jury that person could have seen them.

 

16:03                ELLEN: Well it’s a necessity. It’s a necessity to have the resources, and Montlick has the resources. That’s one of the reasons that I love working at Montlick and Associates, is because we have the resources to do the work that is absolutely necessary, especially in these kinds of cases.

 

VERONICA: Right. So when you wanna reconstruct an accident at one in the morning on one of Metro Atlanta’s most-

 

ELLEN: Busiest streets.

 

VERONICA: Yeah, thoroughfares. You’ve got the folks there, the resources to pull it all together and to really prove your case. And were you successful, Jason?

 

16:30                JASON: We were in that case, yeah. Because we were able to show that this defendant had been able to see her and could have taken some type of evasive action to avoid her.

 

VERONICA: What role do you think that accident reconstruction played in that?

 

JASON: Oh, it was everything. It was… it was the whole case.

 

16:44                VERONICA: All right. Pedestrian accidents. What goes into investigating them? We got a behind the scenes look. Thank you so much, Jason and Ellen, for sharing that. Still to come: why pedestrian accidents are the perfect storm?

16:58                This is “Lawyers in the House” on WSB.

 

 

 

VERONICA: Come on in, the door is open. This is “Lawyers in the House” with Montlick on WSB. I’m your host Veronica Waters.

17:09                We are here with Jason Saltzman and Ellen Forrester from Montlick and the topic of the day, pedestrian accidents. Imagine if you are out for a stroll or running an errand out with a dog, and you think you’re doing everything right. But suddenly, you find yourself the victim of a pedestrian accident. And the pedestrian is you. Of course drivers have, you know, interest in this, too. And it’s a moment in time that changes everyone’s life, Ellen.

 

17:41                ELLEN: That’s right.

 

VERONICA:  It’s the perfect storm.

 

ELLEN: It is the perfect storm. You know, we… from our client’s perspective… they are usually horribly injured in these incidents. And in working these cases,

17:54                I, you know, I’ve come to realize that these incidents not only impact the pedestrians themselves but there is this trickledown effect. Sort of a ripple-in-the-pond effect that these accidents. Because they’re usually catastrophic in nature with serious, very serious injuries, they impact the injured party, obviously, but the driver. Drivers don’t mean to run people over, right? And the witnesses that see it, and the family members of both of these. You know, I… Many people that have known me for years and years and years know that my sister was hit and killed by a driver years ago in Cobb County. And before that happened, that was the sort of thing that happens to other people. That was not the sort of thing that happened in my… would happen in my family.

18:38                And we were really fortunate in my family not to have had instances like this that impacted us. And the ripple effect from that one incident that one night on Roswell Road changed the course of my life forever. Forever. And that’s why it is the perfect storm, because the lasting effects of someone being struck by a car are profound. Profound. And that’s why it’s so important when this sort of thing happens that you take steps to do what needs to be done for your family, for your loved ones. So that you protect yourself and you protect, you know… Not only as a driver to protect people that are walking, but if you are the victim of something like this. Like, take the right steps, make sure that you’re, you know, you’re getting the lawyer with the resources to take care of your case; because these are serious cases that have lifelong impacts on people.

 

VERONICA: I am so sorry for your loss, Ellen. Was your sister as delightful as you?

 

19:36                ELLEN: Yeah. Well, I mean, I thought she was so… Different, certainly but-

 

19:42                VERONICA: Different?

 

ELLEN: Absolutely, she was.

 

VERONICA: She wasn’t into ceramics.

 

ELLEN: Not into ceramics.

 

VERONICA: Okay.

 

ELLEN: No. But yeah, you know, it’s horrible. It’s horrible when these things happen.

 

VERONICA: Yeah. On a serious note, I cannot imagine the trauma of something like that. And you mentioned the folks who witness it. That’s gotta be-

 

ELLEN: And the driver, you know, the gentleman that struck my sister- he was 23 years old, coming home from work in the middle of the night. It wasn’t his fault that this happened, and you know, my family never held any ill will against him.

20:07                But his life- I can’t imagine having what that would’ve done to him and his life and the trajectory of his life.

 

VERONICA: Yeah.

 

ELLEN: It was probably changed in an instant.

 

VERONICA: In a split second.

 

ELLEN: In the instant.

 

20:19                VERONICA: In an instant. I remember the guy who hit Steven King, the author, who was out taking a walk. And his life… Now this guy had a terrible record of DUIs, but that was a brutal accident when Steven King got hit, they almost amputated one of his legs. And the driver ended up dead of a fentanyl overdose at some point after that. It is something that has ripple effects, as you said, for years.

20:45                Let’s talk about the immediate aftermath, Jason, and the first ripples that go out. What’s the business of starting to recover from one of these?

 

JASON: I mean, I guess it completely depends on the injury, for sure. But you’ve got… I mean, I’ve seen a lot of brain injuries from pedestrian accidents.

21:05                I’ve seen amputations, I’ve seen paralysis. And you get very used to having clients that will, that… You’ll get a call from someone that has a pedestrian case and they’ll say, “I’ve been in the hospital for three weeks.” You know, so you’ve got like a million dollars’ worth of medical bills. It turns out to be very serious injury cases with disputed liability.

 

VERONICA: Disputed liability?

 

JASON: Correct.

 

VERONICA: What’s disputed?

 

JASON: Well, because the person who hit them is going to… Often, unless it’s really clear cut, like they’re crossing a crosswalk, the person who hit them is going to try to argue

21:42                that for whatever reason they didn’t see them; because of the pedestrian’s fault.

 

VERONICA: Oh.

 

JASON: You know?

 

VERONICA: They just ran out in front of me. They just jumped in front of the car.

 

ELLEN: They were Jaywalking.

 

JASON: Yeah. But that’s the thing- someone jumping out in front of a car is a lot different than someone standing in the road before they get hit or someone walking on the side of the road. Sometimes there’s shades of gray,

22:00                like you’ll have a person walking on the side of the road. Then there’s this issue of are they on the side of the road, or were they in the road? Are they off the road? The shoes fly off. Very often you’ll… I’ve had many times where I send the investigator out to go look at the scene and the police have already been there. And it’s been like two weeks, and we find the client’s shoes out there.

 

VERONICA: Amazing.

 

ELLEN: Shoes actually brings me- If I may, one of the really interesting things about these cases is the way that we can turn, like, shoes and pants and shirts and glasses and cell phones into more recovery for our clients.

 

VERONICA: Yeah, that was one of the… Tell this story, Ellen, ’cause you are one of the most creative attorneys.

 

22:39                ELLEN: Yeah, so one of the things that’s great about being a lawyer is being really creative. And we have been able to, and Jason has done this, too… We have been able to make claims for what we call property damage, which is separate than the bodily injury claim on a theory that, you know, my client’s pants had to be cut off of her at the- in the ambulance. And because her family called us so quickly, we were able to tell them, “save the pants, save the pants.”

23:07                Well, why do we want these pants? They’re gross. They have, you know, they have blood and things on them. Save the pants, save the pants. And they sent me the pants. And I was able to go to the insurance company and get her $25,000 for the pants, because they had a $25,000 property damage (which normally in a car accident would pay to fix your car). But because we were creative and aggressive with the insurance company, we turned her cut-up blood-soaked pants into another $25,000 recovery for her. Which was huge for her because she did have these crazy hospital bills.

23:38                She had been in the hospital for days and days and days; and Jason’s done essentially the same thing on several cases. It’s… that’s the fun part about being a lawyer.

 

VERONICA: That is one expensive pair of pants.

 

ELLEN: Yeah.

 

23:48                JASON: Well, you… I’ve done it… I’ve done it a lot when I have a catastrophic injury and I’ve got limited insurance and it… you can do it a lot more when there’s very serious reckless conduct by the defendant. If you’ve got a DUI or maybe even a hit and run, where you can argue that you’ve got this underlying claim for these damaged clothes. And then you can also claim punitive damages which are damages to punish in order to get that extra money. So, like, I think what happens is a lot of times if you’ve got really severe facts where you can argue recklessness or gross negligence, it’s important to be creative sometimes to maximize the value of your client’s case. Because if that person has state minimum coverage, you may be able to get them more just by being able to allege punitives or on some other underlying claim that you can also pursue.

24:42                I did it once with a plastic ring that someone got from, like, one of those quarter machines at a, you know, like one of those vending…

 

24:48                ELLEN: Like a gumball machine.

 

JASON: Yeah, like a gumball machine, exactly. I was able to get it that way.

 

24:54                VERONICA: A-maze-balls. What happens if there’s… if the driver doesn’t have any insurance?

 

ELLEN: That’s a great question, ’cause he was just talking about hit-and-run cases. We get calls sometimes from people months out. Months out. And they say, well I didn’t call because the person that struck me drove off and there was no… you know, no… The police report doesn’t have any information about the person that struck me. And the creative aspect of what we do and the legal aspect of what we do is there. We will look and we will find every single avenue of recovery. So oftentimes you can use your own auto insurance policy if you have uninsured motorist coverage. You… Even though you’re not driving, you’re not in your car, you could say, “Hey, State Farm, GEICO, whoever, whoever insures the injured person,” you can go to their policy oftentimes and get them a recovery under a theory of uninsured motorist coverage.

25:43                Because the hit and run driver is uninsured, they don’t have any insurance, or we don’t know who they are. One of the other really, really critical reasons that people should A) call a lawyer out of the gate… Call 1-800-LAW-NEED. Call us at Montlick. But also another really important reason that people should carry uninsured or underinsured motorist coverage, especially for these hit-and-run kind of cases.

 

VERONICA: We have talked about uninsured motorist coverage so much on this show. It is incredible how integral this is to our lives. I mean, frankly, let’s… Look, we hope it never has to be; but if it has to be, my god, imagine if you don’t have it.

 

26:21                ELLEN: That’s right. You’d rather… you would rather have it and not need it…

 

VERONICA: Exactly.

 

ELLEN: …than need it and not have it.

 

VERONICA: Yeah.

 

JASON: Exactly.

 

26:26                VERONICA: Now you are barred in two states, Ellen.

 

ELLEN: Meaning, yes, like I’m allowed to go there. So they didn’t like bar me.

 

VERONICA: You could buy a house but you’re…

 

ELLEN: But I am-

 

VERONICA: Yeah, you’re a member of the bar, let’s say.

 

26:38                ELLEN:  I do. I do. I have a law license in both Tennessee and in Georgia.

 

VERONICA: Are the… are the laws pretty much the same state to state?

 

26:45                ELLEN: Laws vary state to state. So one of the, one of the great things about working at Montlick and Associates is that we have lawyers at our firm that are barred in multiple jurisdictions, that are licensed in multiple jurisdictions because we are a national firm.

26:57                And so we can give you a consultation very quickly about, you know… I have had pedestrian cases in Alabama, I’ve had pedestrian cases in Tennessee, Georgia, Florida. And we know. We have the resources in place to assess every case as the calls come in. So we would certainly encourage anyone, no matter where this happened… Call us.

27:17                You lose nothing by calling us at 1-800-LAW-NEED or any of our other ways of contacting us because our consultations are pinpointed to what you’ve got going on. That’s what we do.

 

VERONICA:  There’s a lot of intricacy, too, right, Ellen and Jason? Sometimes the arguments could go on for a while before a court or somebody can decide what’s what.

 

27:40                JASON: Yeah, yeah. I mean a lot of times you end up… I mean, you can end up in litigation where you’re just pursuing that case and then it settles. Or you can end up, ultimately, going in front of a jury on these things. You never really know how it’s gonna pan out. A lot of times if you have something where you’ve got a really catastrophic injury and you’ve got minimum policy limits… A lot of times insurance companies are gonna want to pay those even though they dispute liability, ’cause they don’t wanna run the risk that they’re gonna get an excess verdict, which would be a bad faith claim against them by their own insured. So, when you have really high limits insurance and you’ve got one of these disputed liability pedestrian cases, a lot of times you have to kind of go through some fact-finding, through discovery in the litigation process to kind of get that evidence out. And if stuff comes out that looks favorable to the plaintiff, then often the case can get settled.

 

28:37                VERONICA: How? Tell me. Can you give me an example of how this might have played out in court? You know, where there was this back and forth and, you know, how maybe previous case law, actually, sort of, drilled down into a case and made a difference?

 

JASON: So there was this one case that kind of really made a… It basically clarified Georgia law in the… I think it was the mid-80’s, 1984. It was called Fountain v. Thompson. And it involved a jury verdict that awarded, in a wrongful death claim, to the wife of the decedent who had… who was killed. He had been lying in the middle of the road, like a rural road. He was drunk and he was passed out in the middle of the road, and he got run over by a car and killed. And the jury found that that defendant could have seen him.

29:28                And they even found… The evidence showed that there was no rise in the hill. It was just a straight shot. And it went all the way up to the Georgia Supreme Court. And they found that a jury could find in favor of a person who… or of a family member who… in which the defendant probably could have avoided that accident, you know. And, you know, and the defendant in that case was like, “How can you find against me?”

 

VERONICA:  Well, this guy was lying drunk in the middle of the road.

 

JASON: Yeah, exactly. I mean he was… how could you do this?

 

30:00                VERONICA: And there was a dissenting justice-

 

JASON: There was. Justice Hill… Justice Hill dissented. And he said, “No way. I think the guy was drunk. There’s no reason why this guy’s initial negligence in going out into that middle of the road that was… that was more at fault than the person who was driving.” But the majority opinion disagreed.

 

30:19                VERONICA: We owe a duty to each other to keep each other safe. We’re talking about pedestrian accidents and safety here on “Lawyers in the House” with Montlick. Coming up, the closing argument. Stay with us.

 

 

 

 

30:32                VERONICA: Welcome back to “Lawyers in the House” with Montlick on WSB. I’m your host Veronica Waters with Ellen Forrester and Jason Saltzman here with what you’ve been waiting for all hour long. The Montlick closing argument. My friends, take it away.

 

30:47                ELLEN: So we want to remind pedestrians nationwide to walk, W-A-L-K.

W, walk facing traffic. Don’t walk with your back to cars. If you can’t see them, you cannot anticipate what is about to happen. So W, walk facing traffic.

A, ask yourself, can they see me? Can the cars coming see me? Do they know where I am? So that you know that you’re not in harm’s way. A, ask can they see me?

L, look for the best place to cross the street. Most pedestrian accidents occur where there is not a crosswalk when people are crossing the street at places not marked for crossing the street. So always L, look for the best place to cross the street.

And K, keep all of your senses open while you are walking.

31:35                Headphones, they block your ears. You can’t hear what’s happening. Sunglasses, looking at your phone. These are the sorts of things that impact your ability to be situationally aware and keep yourself safe.

 

31:47                JASON: And don’t assume that the other driver is paying attention either. ‘Cause you’ve got people on their phones as well. And I would say, “Ask” is so important in… The A in WALK is so important. Make… try to make eye contact with the other driver before you cross the street.

 

ELLEN: That’s right. And we owe each other a duty to keep each other safe. That’s for drivers, too. Pedestrians owe themselves a duty and other. But we, all of us, and every community owe a duty to each other to be looking out for each other, give each other the benefit of the doubt. The world is an inherently good place, but we owe it to each other to keep that going and to look out for each other and keep each other safe.

 

VERONICA: I think that it is worth noting that pedestrian accidents did go up once the pandemic hit. Interestingly enough, fewer cars on the roads, more pedestrians dying. And for whatever reason that is, it doesn’t make it… it doesn’t feel encouraging. So I think taking this note forward to WALK.

32:49                And you know what, I wish we had an acronym for the drivers too.

 

ELLEN: We’ll be back.

 

32:54                VERONICA: But I think the A works either way. Ask, you know. And keep your eyes on the road.

 

33:00                ELLEN: That’s right.

 

VERONICA: You know.

 

ELLEN: Slow down.

VERONICA: Slow down. It could… it’s literally the difference between life and death. The Montlick closing argument. W-A-L-K. WALK. Walk, ask, look and keep your senses. And we’ve said it a couple of times, we’ll say it again. We do owe each other a duty to keep each other safe on the roads. Whether you are in a car or on a motorcycle, on a bike. Whether it’s two wheels or four wheels, whether you’re in a chair, on a scooter, a skateboard, or if you’re on your own two feet.

 

33:31                ELLEN: That’s right.

 

VERONICA: This is a crucial thing. And crossing the roads should not be a death-defying stunt. Thank you so much for walking us through everything we need to know to keep us safe. Jason Saltzman and Ellen Forrester from Montlick Injury Attorneys. Remember you can find us on all platforms social @Montlicklaw.

33:51                Check us out on lawyersinthehouse.com and catch the replay any place the hottest podcasts go to live. Make sure you like and share and review us. Give us those five stars and we will see you next time on “Lawyers in the House”. I’m Veronica Waters.