Now, at this time,
the attorneys are going to give their
opening statement. Let me advise you,
opening statement is not evidence; it's
what the attorneys feel the evidence will
show in the case, and we'll start
with the plaintiff. Thank you, Your Honor. May it please the Court?
You may begin.
Counsel. Good morning ladies and
gentlemen of the jury. The first safety rule for
backing your car is that a driver is required to look
behind him when backing his car to prevent colliding into
another car or person who may be behind them to protect
them from being hit. And if they do not and as
a result hurt someone, the driver is responsible
for the harm.
Now, let me tell you what
happened in this case. On June 6th, 2007, Dr.
Baptiste was driving his car
in a parking lot. He exited the parking lot that's
designed for a right turn only. Dr.
Baptiste turned
his car towards the left instead
of the right. His left driver's tire went up
onto a raised concrete median. It's sort of shaped
like a triangle. Then his right tire went up onto
the raised concrete median.
Then both tires went over the
median and crossed the concrete median, and his vehicle was
straddling the concrete median. Mr. Baptiste applies his
brakes, and he stops his car. Mr.
Baptiste moves
his hand from the steering wheel to
the gear shifter. Mr. Baptiste's car is a
front wheel drive vehicle. Mr.
Baptiste shifts the car
into reverse; he moves his foot from the brake
to the accelerator. Mr. Baptiste gives his car
gas, and it rocks backwards. Mr.
Baptiste lets off the gas. He gives his car more gas
and revs his engine. This time the car does
not come off the median. He lets his foot off the gas,
and then he puts his foot back on the gas one more time,
and he begins to back up, and he accelerates really hard,
and the front wheels come off the top of the median,
and he begins accelerating backwards.
And then Dr. Baptiste's
car comes off the median. Dr. Baptiste's
car is traveling backwards, and it
hits the car that was stopped behind him
trying to make a right turn to exit
the parking lot.
We're suing Mr. Baptiste
for two reasons. The first is he
violated the safety rule about backing
up his car, and when he backed up
his car, he did so so fast with
enough speed that it caused an aggravation of a surgery and caused
new injuries to Dannette Griffith
for which the defendant has denied
any consequences. The witnesses I expect you to
hear from are her treating doctors: Dr.
Ramond Priewe, Dr.
Brian James, and Dr. Shugart. Before we came to trial, a few
things had to be determined. So I asked Dr.
James and Dr.
Shugart if Dannette Griffith's preexisting
injuries make her more easily injured in a
collision even without much property damage, and Dr.
Priewe will tell us that because she had a prior
neck fusion, the prior injuries make her a very
delicate person and that the fusion is strong,
but it causes more stress above and below
the part that's frozen. And this puts her at risk
for some type of trauma. I asked Dr. James about
a prior surgery being a risk factor to make
Mrs.Griffith more susceptible to injury, and he'll
tell you that, yes, that is one of the reasons
that she has a problem.
Another issue
regarding this case is the treatment
she received and whether they have
helped her or have kept her stable,
from getting worse. Now, your verdict form
at the end will ask how much money you will allow
in your verdict, and to figure that out, you can
take nothing into account except the harms and
losses, nothing else. So Mr. Fisher, the
defense attorney, agrees; and at the end, Judge Williams will tell you that it's
the law, the harms and losses.
Everything else is
outside the box. So all we're looking at is the
harms and losses in the box. So I need to show you these
harms and losses and how severe they are, and I'm
not showing you the harms and losses for sympathy
because sympathy is outside the box; only the harms and
losses are in the box. Sympathy is not something
you're supposed to use or should
not use to factor.
Now, you can feel sympathy,
you can experience it, but that's not part of what goes
in the box or in the verdict. All right. So during the trial, here's
what you're going to hear a little bit about
the harms and the losses. You're going to hear
that before this collision, Dannette
Griffith was a very hardworking,
active person.
She lived a very
healthy normal life. You're going to hear that
back in 1990-something she was involved in a
motor vehicle collision where she was a
pedestrian at an air show in Fort Wayne, Indiana,
and a car hit her. She had injured her
Achilles tendon when a car was
leaving the air show and hit her
or was coming in and hit her, and
she got injured. And ultimately she got
surgery by Dr.
Shugart in Fort Wayne, Indiana,
and he fused her neck. After that surgery in the
1990s, she lived a very healthy, active lifestyle
riding motorcycles. She got a job with Terminix. You're going to hear from
some of her coworkers and employer at Terminix of
what a hard worker she was.
You're going to hear
that she would crawl through basements; she
would crawl in attics. She was looking for termite
damage in homes and buildings. She would measure the building,
and she would calculate how much it would cost and
how long it would take to do this type of job. You're going to hear that
she made a good living.
However, at the day of the
collision, the evidence is going to show that she
was working for Terminix. And right after the collision
she called her boss, and she took all the steps that her
employer told her to take, one of which was to see
the workers' compensation doctors that treated
her for this case. And you're going
to see some of those records come
into evidence. You're going to find
out that eventually the neck injury
and the low back injury that she sustained
from this crash caused her to work
less and less and required more physical
therapy, more medication until
ultimately her condition has continued to
decline to the point that she's totally
unable to work.
That's going to be one
part of the thing. Another part of the
case is you're going to see and you're
going to have the evidence from the
Clerk of the Court about the medical
bills, and I expect these to go into
evidence, and these are just the bills;
these aren't the records, and you're
going to see that she's been to the
hospital many times. She's been to surgery centers. She's had MRIs.
She's had treatments. She's had Botox injections. You're going to find out
that the total medical bills in this case are right over
$200,000, and that's not including any invasive
surgery, just the surgery from the injections that she's
given to by her surgeon. You're going to also
hear that she's going to need future medical
care for the rest of her life, that she
needs to get the Botox injections to help
her with the neck.
She has this condition that is
caused by trauma, and there are other possible causes for it,
but trauma is the main one. Something that's
important is because this is a case that involves injuries before and injuries
after, I'm going to help you establish the
difference, and the evidence is going
to show that before the collision of 2007, Mrs.Griffith had
temporary back pain. You're going to find
that now it's permanent. Before, it would
kind of come and go.
She was able to climb ladders,
do her job, that sort of thing. Now, she's not able to work, and
she has to wear sort of a brace. They call it like a
turtle brace around your spine and low back
to keep it stable. You're going to hear that before
the motor vehicle collision that we're here for, she
had temporary neck pain.
It would irritate
her a little bit. She would take Advil. She would do certain things
to stretch and exercise it, but she could manage
and do pretty well. You're going to hear now that
it's a permanent neck injury and that as a result, she
has this condition where it causes her muscles to go into
an extreme spasm and rotate her head and cause all kinds
of difficult probleMs.
Before this collision,
she took no heavy medications: Advil, Tylenol,
aspirin, maybe Flexerils, really low, low tough --
low-powered medications. You're going to hear that
after the crash, that they put her on extremely powerful
narcotic medications. She takes morphine now, and
before she took Dilaudid. And you're going to hear
that Dilaudid is a synthetic morphine and it is five times
more powerful than morphine.
And you're going
to hear from Dr. James that when he saw her -- you're going to hear from Dr.
James who's a pain
management doctor. He's going to explain
to you that he did not like her
taking Dilaudid, and he very carefully
weaned her off Dilaudid, stopped her
taking Dilaudid. And over his care
and treatment over the past couple of
years, he's been able to reduce the
amount of morphine she takes to a
very low level.
You're also going to find
out that these narcotics are the best form of
treatment for her. You're also going
to hear that Dr. James, who's a
pain management doctor, fellowship-trained anesthesiologist,
and only does pain management, that
he's taken Mrs. Griffith to surgery
about four or five times, and they
do what's called an epidural steroid
injection.
They take a very long
needle, and they look at the needle
under X-ray live on the TV screen,
and they put the needle in the spine
very carefully, and they get into the thecal
sac or around it, and they inject kind
of a Novocain type of medication and then
a steroid to help reduce the inflammation
of the nerves. Because when the nerves
swell up or they inflame, they swell up,
and when they swell up, they bump into the
tight spaces in her spine, and that causes
a cycle of pain. And it just keeps going around
and around, and only by these injections can it break the
cycle of pain, and you're going to hear that she has
to undergo these shots, you know, a couple times a year
when it really gets bad. You're going to hear that
before this collision, obviously Ms.
Griffith
was driving her car. She was driving from
work, doing things. You're going to hear that
slowly as her health has declined, her spine
has declined, her neck problems, her stiffness
has increased, that she's been less and less
able to drive a car. And you're going
to see one of the records that's
going to go into evidence is that
they gave her a driving test to see
how she was doing.
And about a year ago,
they passed her and said, you know,
You're okay to drive. It's kind of interesting that
they gave her that test. Unfortunately, as time has
gone by, they've taken her driver's license away,
and you're going to hear that. That's one of the differences
before and after.
So when we talked about
aggravation of a preexisting condition, we're not
saying, Hey, she's -- we're not asking for
things about the temporary neck pain, temporary back
pain, that sort of thing. You're going to find
out that before this collision she was
able to go outside and work in her
garden and take care of her yard and a
pool and her dog. You're going to hear that now
she's lost so much mobility. She can't drive.
It's very difficult
for her to walk. She's somewhat become cut off
from her family and her friends. It's very difficult for her
to get out and interact with people which is an
important part of her life. You're going to find that before
this she had lots of friends and a very active social life,
and now she's homebound.
Before this, the
evidence is going to show that she
went to the store. She cooked her own meals. She did whatever. And now she gets her
meals delivered to her by Meals on Wheels.
So these are the
differences before and after that are important. And we're not asking
for compensation for the problems
that she had before. There's going to be some
grey areas in this trial and evidence and certain things
where you're not going to be sure whether
it's an aggravation of a preexisting condition
or it was old, and I submit that
when you get to the grey areas, go on the
side of caution. Don't worry about it.
You can write that off. It's sort of outside the box. If it's an aggravation
and it really is worse, it's
in the box, and that's what we're
here to show you the harms and losses are for. Can we turn the projector on? There's going to be -- you're
going to hear a lot of evidence about physics and
cars and how they move, and I'm going to just give you
a little diagram to help you understand the evidence
that you're going to see.
And this is g-forces. Objection, Your Honor. Argumentative. Well, phrase it in
terms of what you anticipate your witnesses
are going to show.
I anticipate that you're going
to hear from two experts, ours, William Sokol, and from their expert, Dr. Ipser,
that there are g-forces, and that
this -- this is time moving this
way, and we're going to call that
zero, and we're going to call
this maybe 5 Gs. And we're going to call this . 025 Seconds.
Very, very, very short
period of time. Okay. This isn't ten seconds,
five seconds, four seconds. You're going to hear that
at the point of impact when one vehicle hits
another vehicle, the target vehicle begins
to move and what happens is over time,
it accelerates, and then it begins to
slowly decelerate.
And that's -- that's because
steel on steel, bumper on bumper, metal on metal,
the car starts to move. The evidence is also going to
show that when a car is hit from the front -- and I use this --
it's kind of difficult to see. This is the car, and
this is the occupant. What happens is the car
begins to move, but through the laws of inertia, the
occupants stand still.
She's sitting in her seat,
and the seat's moving under her, but the laws of inertia
prevent her from moving. But what happens is
the car starts to move far enough that
the seat belt, the shoulder harness,
grasp her torso, and they begin to
accelerate her torso. So what happens is there's
a little bit of delay in time, and then the torso
begins to accelerate. Now, what's interesting
is the torso, because it's delayed
in the acceleration, it has to catch up
to the car, and that's why it
accelerates faster.
So one car's accelerating
over a longer period of time. The torso is accelerating over
a shorter period of time, so it has more g-forces, and
then what happens is -- Objection, Your Honor. -- The evidence will show -. Well, you're going
to have to -- look.
He's not the witness. Right. He's going to tell you --
he's telling you now what he thinks his witnesses or his
evidence is going to show. So when you look
at that and you listen to him, put
it in that context.
Thank you, Your Honor. All right. Go ahead. What happens is the
seat belt begins to pull the person back,
and the torso is here, and the head,
which is connected by the neck, is free
floating as well.
And the laws of inertia say
the torso moves first. The head remains still in
space for a little bit until the neck grabs it
and then catches it up. So what happens is there's
another slight delay, but then the head has to catch
up quickly to the torso, and that's why it accelerates much
faster, and the connecting force between the torso and
the head is the spine. And the evidence will show that
this is the mechanism of injury.
The evidence will show
that she was stopped. The car moves first, the
torso gets jerked and then the head, and then it goes
backwards and forwards. So this whole diagram goes the
other way just as well, and that's what causes the
trauma and injuries to her. Now, the harms and
losses are going to be explained by a
couple of people.
Mr. James Eubanks is a
friend and coworker of hers. He'll be here to
tell you how her life was before and
how it changed. You're also going to
hear from Dr.
Fred Lee who was her boss
at Terminix, and you're also going
to hear from a lady named Iris Eastman
who is her neighbor. Mrs. Griffith will come in here;
she's going to tell you about her prior neck surgery and the
other accidents she's had. She's had a couple
other accidents; the one, obviously, that
caused the surgery.
She's had a couple accidents. One was a car accident;
it was her fault. One was one where it
wasn't her fault. She's had some
treatment, and you're going to hear, the
evidence will show, that after
every one of these accidents, she did very well.
You're going to
hear after this car accident she declined
regularly and that she was given a
lot of medication including the Dilaudid
and that Dr. James is going to explain
that the medication caused her to get
dizzy, and she fell out of a chair and
then will suggest that that's a
possible aggravation. And the -- Judge Williams
is going to tell you that if there's something else
that's added to it that's caused by it,
that's fine, you're allowed -- that's
inside the box. All right.
So from the beginning
to the end, everything I show
you in this trial is to see -- well,
let me go back to a couple of
things before I end. It's important to
understand -- I shouldn't put my notes there;
I apologize. That's a photograph
of the median, and the evidence is going
to show that Mr. Baptiste's front tires
were stuck over that yellow line you're
looking at up there.
Here's another picture
from a little different angle, and here's a
photograph of the actual zoomed in curb,
and you'll have these photographs for you
back in evidence. This is probably the best one. The other thing that's
important for you to see, and you're going
to probably see this a lot, are the photographs
of the property damage, and they don't
really do justice here. That's the front
of her vehicle, and when you get
to see the actual photograph closely, you can see
that there's not much damage.
However, the radiator got pushed
in and was damaged to the point that it was leaking, and
it overheated the next day. It wasn't apparent on
the date of the crash. There's maybe a little better
picture of the damage to that. It's also important
to note that this is the back of Dr.
Baptiste's vehicle, and it shows no damage
to his Chrysler; there's nothing
wrong with it.
This is evidence that
we're putting into evidence so that you
can see this and you can measure it,
and you can make the ultimate decisions
on that stuff. So -- you can turn that off. Everything that I
show you from the beginning to the
end is to help you understand the
harms and losses that are caused by
this collision. By the end of the trial
you'll see why this evidence makes this the
kind of case in which I.
Have to come back later
and ask for an amount of money that right now
might seem kind of high. But after the evidence,
you will see why the harms and
losses are so bad. Thank you very much
for your time. Thank you, Your Honor.
Okay. All right. Defense?
Thank you, Your Honor. May it please the Court, Mr.
Powell? Thank you.
Good morning. Thank you for being here; Dr.
Baptiste thanks you. And I would like to start first
with talking about this accident which happened back in 2007, and
we're going to show you some photos so that you get
an idea of what we're working with here, where
the accident happened. This is -- can you see this? Okay.
Very good. This is the scene
of the accident. This is where the accident
occurred back in June 6th, 2007. The evidence does
show you that Mr.
Baptiste backed
into the vehicle that Ms. Griffith was
driving; there's never been a dispute
about that. The evidence is going to show
you that Mr. Baptiste did not get his vehicle stuck on
this -- on this median here.
He -- he intended to cross
the street to get some tailoring work done, and
he -- when he noticed that when he started to turn
left that he was going the wrong way, he stopped his
car, and he backed up. Now, how far did he go up onto
this -- onto this median? His tires rolled up
onto the median. His left tire rolled up onto
this median section a little bit, and that's when he -- he
realized, Hey, I can't do this. That's what the evidence
is going to show you; that's what Dr.
Baptiste will tell you.
Now, the only
people that were there that witnessed
this accident that were parts
of this accident were Dr. Baptiste and Ms.
Griffith. You're going to hear
testimony from both of them. I think the evidence
will show you that the more compelling
evidence for you to consider is Dr.
Baptiste's
testimony that, indeed, what he did
was he rolled up onto, slightly, the
curb, and then he realized he had to back
up, and he backed up. And he's going to testify
to you that he backed up a short distance, and he admits
that he didn't see her. She -- she was
coming out of the -- trying to get out
of the parking lot. By the time he put the car
in reverse and he backed up his car, she was there,
and he backed up into her.
It was a short
distance that he had to back up to bump
into her car. This is a photograph of Dr.
Baptiste's vehicle that he was driving at the time that
shows absolutely no damage, no
property damage. There -- there's some blowups that show there
might be a scrape on the bumper, but that's it;
there's no property damage. The evidence is going to show
you through our expert and Dr.
Baptiste's testimony
that this was, indeed, a low
impact accident of -- on the order of five miles
per hour or less, and that's -- that's what the
evidence shows through these photographs. Here's a photo of Ms. Griffith's
Cadillac taken right after the scene -- right
after the accident at the scene or
near the scene. Now, you're going
to hear different testimony from the
experts in this case.
The accident reconstructionist, Dr.
Ipser, has a Ph.D. In accident reconstruction,
and he will show you what the actual forces of the
impact were that my client's vehicle when he backed up
into Ms. Griffith's car actually was, what the actual
force was on the body. Now, you're going to hear some
testimony about there being crush damage and -- to the grill
and to the radiator, but the evidence is showing you that
there has been no damage from this accident that we're here
for to Ms.
Griffith's vehicle. So the defense in
this case will center on the low
impact nature of this accident,
and through our expert testimony of Dr.
Ipser will show you that,
indeed, the injuries that would have
been sustained from this accident
are what the medical evidence is going
to show you. The medical evidence is going
to show you that this, indeed, was a minor exacerbation of
a preexisting condition, myofascial pains to the
neck and the low back area, which would have resolved
within a certain time frame. And how do we know that? Well, the evidence is going
to show you that -- that she treated with her workers'
compensation doctor, Dr.
Herman. And we -- we deposed Dr.
Herman, and you're going
to see his video. Dr. Herman examined her
several times, and he came up with the opinion that
it was a temporary exacerbation of a preexisting
medical condition.
By November 20th of
2007 which would be, what, five -- five months later, he -- he stated that she
had made a tremendous recovery. He found no acute disk
herniations or major trauma associated
with the accident. He found no permanent
injury from this accident. Now, we also have a medical
expert that you'll -- that you'll hear
testimony from, Dr.
Harper. Dr. Harper is an
orthopedic surgeon. On our request he did a
medical examination of Ms.
Griffith, and what's
important here is that Dr. Harper looked at her medical
records, which include the medical records and
the medical history of what was going on with Ms.
Griffith before this -- this accident that
we're here for, and he -- he comes up with the
conclusions and impressions after looking at her
-- you'll see them. They're going into evidence,
the medical records, so you'll have a chance
to see this for yourself, the -- what really was
an extensive medical treatment history before
this accident occurred. And he -- he comes up with
-- with his impressions of what did this accident cause
and the time line that he's working with in seeing
the life of Dannette Griffith and what sort of
injuries and accidents that she had before the accident
we're here for today.
And he -- he put
that together with how did she
come out with -- from her physical examinations
and treatment that he gave her. And Dr. Harper finds no
objective evidence of any new permanent injury as a
result of this accident. He as well finds that
it's a -- he calls it an exacerbation of a
preexisting condition.
And, now, he does -- he does
find -- and I think this -- this goes to Dr. Harper's
testimony in an important way. He does find that she
does need remedial care. He's not saying that she --
she doesn't need something.
The woman needs some
help, but the future care and the treatment,
the remedial care and treatment
he does not find is a result of this low
impact accident. Now, we also retained
for this -- for this case a neurosurgeon, Dr.
James Schumacher, and he's going to also give
his testimony to you, and you're going to
hear him on the stand. And he as well
looked at all of her medical records, at
all of the history that went on before
our accident and after our accident,
and he's going to base his opinions on
that full medical history, and he's
going to base his opinion on the actual
physical examination that he gave her
as a neurosurgeon. And he's -- the evidence
is going to show you that Dr.
Schumacher's
opinion was that she sustained an aggravation of a preexisting condition,
but she did not sustain any objective neurologic deficit,
and he will testify that further treatments are not
necessary due to this accident. Well, after -- after
our accident, Ms. Griffith, the evidence
will show, was also involved in other
incidents for which she received treatment
and medications. She followed up with
her pain doctors after our accident, Dr.
Priewe, Dr.
James. And at one point, Dr.
Priewe, the evidence will show, actually
dismissed her as a patient because of
noncompliance with his treatment as a pain
treatment doctor. You'll see in the evidence
that Ms. Griffith, when she goes to
her doctors after our accident, she doesn't
talk about these other accidents she's
been involved in.
She focuses on this accident as
a cause of all her problems, not -- not these other accidents
that she's been involved in. So the evidence is going to
show she was involved in a significant accident of
December 24th, 2002, in which she was involved in a rear-end
accident, and she -- she received treatment and
medications for that accident. She had -- before that, she
had her cervical fusion. She had her cervical
fusion in 1990 -- in 2000, after the incident
in which she was a pedestrian and was --
was struck by a car, and she ultimately had
that cervical fusion with instrumentation
in the year 2000.
And she also had a condition
before this accident, an injury in which she
injured her ankle. It wasn't from the
pedestrian incident when she hurt her neck, but she had
an incident where she hurt her ankle when she's
a bartender in Indiana, and she had ankle surgery
before our accident. So she's living up in Indiana. She comes -- she
has this accident in 1999 and the ankle injury.
She had surgeries for those, and
then she moves into Florida and comes into Sarasota, and
she's involved in these other accidents, the significant
December 24th, 2002 accident when she was hit from behind,
injured her neck and back. The records will show
you -- there's a lot of medical records in there
that show all the MRIs and all the doctor treatment
and all of the opinions about what that accident
-- accident caused. And she was also
in a September 27th, 2004 motor
vehicle accident in which she rear-ended another
vehicle and, again, was injured and, again, had
this neck, back problem, ongoing
pains and had the treatment, had the MRIs, had the
full workup for that accident. And she's taken some significant
medications, the evidence will show, after that accident.
The medical records
show that she also was involved in a November
28th, 2005 slip and fall for which she went to the
doctors for treatment, and then -- and then
we have our accident. So Ms. -- Ms. Griffith,
indeed, had a long history of previous injuries,
accidents for which she sustained permanent injuries
from which she received heavy medications and full
treatment and workup.
Now, I think it's
telling, the evidence -- well,
take that back. The evidence will show that
when she goes to her pain management doctors after
our accident, she doesn't relate any of these other
accidents that I just was telling you about, which
were significant accidents. And you'll hear that
doctors believe that it's important to take a full
history from a patient when they come in and
sit down with them and tell them, Hey, what's
the matter with you? Why do you feel like this? She told the doctors only
about this accident. Now, the doctors have
to -- they'll say, the evidence will show,
I think she has her ongoing needs for
treatment and has the injuries that I find due
to what she tells me.
They didn't look
at the full -- the full big picture,
all the medical records and -- and
they did not, the evidence will show,
get a full picture of Ms. Griffith. Now, the evidence is also
going to show after our accident she's had several
fall down accidents. And what happens is,
as the evidence shows, is that Ms.
Griffith
reports to Sarasota Medical -- Memorial
Hospital in September 14th, 2011, reporting that
she tripped and fell. What did they give
her there at the ER? Dilaudid. Dilaudid's a
heavy-duty narcotic. Before that, August
the 30th, 2011, Sarasota Memorial
Hospital, she -- she went to the ER claiming
that she fell in the bathroom and, again,
was given Dilaudid.
November 18th, 2011, she
reported to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, and from that accident
-- or from that incident she told them that dogs pulled
the chair from under her; and, again, she was given a
prescription of Dilaudid. Now, Ms. Griffith we're
not claiming here -- Mr. Baptiste doesn't
want you to believe -- Argumentative, Your Honor.
I'll overrule that objection,
but note the objection and sort of phrase your opening
statement to avoid that. Thank you, Your Honor. The evidence is
going to show y'all that this is a
woman that does have some problems, but the
problems that she has today are not a result of this minor
impact accident that didn't even cause any property damage,
and the -- the instructions are to give a fair and just
award to Ms. Griffith -- Excuse me.
Argumentative, Your Honor. I'll overrule that objection. Go ahead. -- According to the evidence.
All of the evidence that is
going to be presented to you, which is going to be a lot
-- there's a lot of evidence that's on the front end, on
the back end, and then where we're put in -- that's going
to show you Ms. Griffith sustained an aggravation, an
exacerbation of her neck and back area which could be
expected from being in a -- in a jolting, perhaps, kind of an
incident like this, but she didn't sustain a permanent
injury from this accident. And her current
treatments, which include the use of
morphine and heavy narcotics, are not
a result of this accident, the
evidence will show. Now, Ms.
Griffith is
going to claim that this accident caused her from
being able to work anymore. The evidence will
show you that she was able to go back to work
at a point in time, but things kept
happening with her in her life that weren't
a result of this accident, and her
-- her loss of any claimed income
going on into the future isn't a result of this accident, the evidence
will show you. Up until this point in time now,
the evidence shows you that she's treating with a -- with
a licensed social worker. She goes to this social
worker trying to get her life together, trying to
work and better herself.
And the evidence is going to
show you that while she's going to this licensed social
worker, that she, again, complains of in May 25th,
2013, she reported she was involved in another accident
and her pain increased again. I think the evidence
is going to show you the -- what's going
on here as far as Ms. Griffith, her current
need for treatment and medications are not a
result of this accident. The -- the evidence
will show you that she's had the temporary
sprain/strain myofascial injuries,
as the evidence will show you, she's sustained;
and at a point in time, the injuries
from this accident should reasonably be
shown and the evidence does show, that she
wouldn't have had any more need for treatment
from this accident.
And Dr. Herman stated
back in November 20th of 2007 that this
accident that we're here for didn't cause
her to have any more need for -- for
future -- future treatment.
Okay. So we thank you, again, for
being here, and we -- we trust that you'll come up with a fair
and just verdict in this case. Thank you..
