Industrial Accident Case Story: $20 Million for an Injured Worker

There was a man that we represented just a few years ago, and he took to heart the things we were telling him about how best to make his case the best it could be and the advice we always give our clients is that at a very fundamental level, you’ve got to be transparently honest when they ask you questions about what happened and about how you’re doing. He was an amazing guy. We presented him for deposition, and he had been burned relatively badly on his back, but in his deposition, he was so incredibly honest about it, and it was obvious that he was honest about it. And we ended up getting him nearly $20 million for that, and yet he admitted in his deposition that these burns were not burns that were causing him any pain, they were not burns that were causing him any discomfort. He was not even embarrassed of the burns. He would wear no shirt when he would go out to the beach, and he admitted all of that in his deposition, but he was incredibly honest about it, and I heard later from one of the defense attorneys that he had told his client that was the scariest plaintiff he had ever seen. We made a difference in his life. It’s kind of an interesting thing he aspired to be a police officer. That’s what his aspiration was, and as far as I know that aspiration continued even after this lawsuit, but now he had the means to be able to accomplish that and not have to be doing other work building up to it. He could literally stop what he was doing, go straight into the pathway of what he wanted to be, which was a police officer. He, I think, is a good example of somebody who I think we were able to make a difference for.