Thinking Outside The Box Pays Off
This Success Story makes me appreciate how something that seemed specific to just one case actually provided a whole new way of looking at liability in intersection, driveway and other cases.
Boxes are interesting. They start as a two dimensional pieces of cardboard. The cardboard is cut and folded.
The process transforms the cardboard into something entirely new in terms of shape, utility and dimension.
That kind of transformation can also take place when assessing collisions at intersections. Just like the cardboard doesn't have to be cut and folded the same way every time, the evidence doesn't have to be packaged the same way every time either.
The case I have in mind started off like a lot of other cases. There was a bad wreck between a motorcycle and a minivan. It happened at an uncontrolled intersection.
We settled the case for a significant amount of money against the minivan driver.
The funny thing was, the minivan driver didn’t seem particularly at fault. In fact, she didn’t really seem at fault at all.
Sometimes the truth stares you right in the face. And if you don’t have an open mind you’re not going to see it.
In this case our client said she didn’t see the minivan. The minivan driver said she didn't see our client's motorcycle.
Neither one of them could see each other because one of the homeowners with a corner lot at the intersection where the accident happened let his hedge grow way too high. It blocked the view of oncoming motorists from two different directions.
After we settled the case against the other driver we went ahead and made a claim against the homeowner. We ended up collecting his homeowners insurance liability limits.
Taking a step back allowed us to see outside the "box" that constrained what could be recovered in these kinds of cases. It wasn't just about the minivan. There was more to it.
Two claps to thinking outside the box. Not just about obstructed sight triangles (which I've written about quite a bit) but generally relaxing our gaze a little bit so the forest of possibility emerges.