Last year at this time I wrote about the various modes of transportation that fill our roadways and sidewalks especially during these long-awaited sun-soaked days of summer. As a personal injury lawyer my mind quickly turns from delight to disaster as I see the sidewalks riddled with scooters and bicyclists narrowly missing pedestrians because I know the worst-case scenario.

The Centers for Disease Control reported 45,000 bike accidents in 2015 and that fatalities related to bike accidents are on the rise. Consumer reports found at least 1,545 accidents in the U.S. involving electric scooters over the past year. So, no matter how careful you are, you may be the victim in an accident involving one of the many recreational modes of transportation available for the taking on urban street corners.

This raises the question, what do you do if you’re in a bike or scooter accident? We all know the protocol when we get into an automobile accident, call the police, get a report, exchange insurance information, call your insurer and get medical attention, but is your checklist the same when you collide with a bike or scooter? The answer is pretty much, “Yes, all of the above.” These accidents can be just as serious as motor vehicle collisions.

You need to:

• Immediately call for medical help if anyone is injured.
• Immediately call the police and make sure they prepare a report.
• Tell the officer taking the statement your version of events to make sure it is included in the final report.
• Law enforcement should get the other party’s insurance and contact information, and the names and phone numbers of any witnesses who saw the accident occur and could testify as to its cause at a later date. You should also get the insurance information. In cases like these the automobile insurance may be applicable (if a car was involved) or another policy such as a homeowner’s policy or a personal liability umbrella might be implicated.
• Make sure someone takes photographs to document the accident, the scene, the placement of the bike or scooter and the other vehicle, and road, traffic, and weather conditions.
• Seek medical treatment if you are hurt (this will ensure any injuries are documented in your medical records).
• Take photos of any visible injuries and document symptoms in a journal.
• Follow medical advice and keep all follow-up appointments.
• Preserve the evidence by leaving the bike, scooter and any other damaged property in its post-accident condition, or take photos of the damage.
• Contact a personal injury attorney who can negotiate with insurers, conduct a thorough investigation, gather evidence, contact experts and witnesses, and ensure all of your interests are protected.

That’s where I come in.

Attorney Laird M. Ozmon

Neuroscientists can attest—our brains are changing. The human attention span is short; it has been clocked at as low as 8 seconds. Some neuroscientists say stop blaming you’re smart phones, it’s your brain’s fault. Technology just makes it worse.

Our brains are designed to constantly seek new information. But the brain is terrible at follow-through because the information-seeking part is way stronger than the cognitive control part that allows a person to complete tasks and retain information. From an evolutionary standpoint, scientists remind us that realizing there was a lion behind you was far more important than sticking to whatever task you were busy with before it showed up.

So where does that leave us when our client’s well-being and future require days and maybe weeks of rapt human attention at trial? Putting on a personal injury case can be complicated and tedious to the lay observer. Attorneys rise to the challenge. Considering this limited attention span, it is important the jury is kept interested and does not get bogged down in all of the complicated legal maneuvering.

We have had to evolve with the times while adhering to decades-old evidentiary rules that demand painstaking detail. In keeping with the science and cultural trends, I have found certain strategies to improve the chances the jury will grasp the important details of the case and relate to the plaintiff at trial.

For instance, when we present our case in opening statements and closing arguments we embrace storytelling. There is nothing as engaging as a good narrative, and to the extent we can spike it with emotion at its most important points, we have a better chance of holding the attention of the jury. Then we have to retain it.

To do that we use great visuals. People relate to what they see. Many are visual learners. Technology works to our advantage here as we can create more engaging demonstrative evidence than the tired old blow-up. One of the reasons for our decreasing attention is that we are assaulted by imagery. Therefore carefully choosing what and how jurors see important evidence impacts their involvement with the presentation of the case.

Another way to keep jurors on their toes is by linking new concepts with familiar ones – the brain works by making connections between what we already know and what is new to us. So keep returning to the narrative from your opening. We have to revisit the themes of the case to bring the plaintiff’s story home and have it resonate in closing argument.

Finally, and this is a hard one for us lawyers, keep it simple. The more complicated we make it, the higher the likelihood jurors will lose interest out of sheer frustration or boredom. The fact is we were all raised to appreciate the simplicity of a good narrative and can relate to the enrapture we felt listening to our favorite bedtime story.

Attorney Laird M. Ozmon

The gravity of the opioid crisis in this country is coming into full relief with more shocking headlines bombarding us every day. It is clear the ever cozier relationship between the medical community and the pharmaceutical industry was the genesis for this cultural addiction: www.theatlantic.com. Doctors admit it is “the biggest medical-initiated problem that ever has appeared in the United States.” Now everyone is paying the price.

My career in medical malpractice litigation tells me cases against health care professionals alleging negligence in prescribing and monitoring opioids will be on the rise at a rate in step with the exponential increase of opioid consumption and deaths since 2000.
For example, in 2016 a St. Louis jury awarded a 45-year-old man $1.4 million and his estranged wife got $1.2 million in addition to a $15 million punitive damage award against the physician who prescribed him addictive pain medication. With our justice system (both civil and criminal) unleashing its formidable power on the perpetrators and the populace firmly in the patient’s corner, opioid-related medical malpractice cases like this one will play their part. They will curb these nefarious practices by holding doctors and pharmaceutical companies accountable.

These won’t be your typical medical malpractice cases involving a blistering battle of medical intellectuals butting heads over the intricacies of the standard of care and whether the defendant breached it. Neither will the doctor start the case in their usual position of the vaunted, kindly healer. In opioid cases the tables may turn. Because of the high profile epidemic and the cascading legal consequences at all levels of government against doctors and the pharmaceutical companies that peddled their wares to them, plaintiffs are likely to have a greater advantage in opioid cases.

Of course, the physician’s negligence must still be proven by a medical expert, but the doctor’s defense will be more difficult to establish in the face of these devastating U.S. Government statistics.

1. In 2016, health care providers across the U.S. wrote more than 214 million prescriptions for opioid pain medication—66.5 prescriptions per 100 people.
2. As many as 1 in 5 people receive prescription opioids long-term for noncancer pain in primary care settings.
3. More than 11 million people abused prescription opioids in 2016.
4. Every day, more than 1,000 people are treated in emergency departments for misusing prescription opioids.
5. More than 40% of all U.S. opioid overdose deaths in 2016 involved a prescription opioid.
6. Drug overdoses claimed the lives of nearly 64,000 Americans in 2016. Nearly two-thirds of these deaths (66%) involved a prescription or illicit opioid.

With all of this in the public record and top of mind for American citizens across the economic spectrum who have been affected by the epidemic, health care professionals will be forced to account for the avarice that drove them to denigrate their oath to “Do No Harm.” Only then may their victims begin the healing process.

Laird M. Ozmon, Attorney at Law

The prospective jurors who are wading into the jury pool today are not like jurors from the early days of my career as a plaintiff’s attorney. The speed of the cultural changes and shifting attitudes has accelerated precipitously with the advent of technology in general and social media in particular.

For instance, the young people who step into the jury box today are sensitive to identity issues, are less likely to defer to an authority figure, and may have an entirely different relationship to money. Today’s Millennials, Gen Y and Z -ers, are used to accessing massive amounts of information and making a judgment with a click or a swipe—think dating apps like Tinder. Also troubling, their brains are not wired to pay attention for days, maybe even weeks, of trial testimony necessary to adduce the evidence the plaintiff needs to make a case (but that’s fodder for another blog). Their technological environment has created a social psychological unknown: neither a book, nor a cover.

So how does this play out in the courtroom? Anecdotally, there was a recent case involving dental malpractice. These cases traditionally garner a low recovery because the injuries are usually not catastrophic. The plaintiff alleged the dentist’s negligence caused a 25-year-old patient to lose some of her ability to taste. The jury, made up mostly of people under 30 years old, awarded $3 million. By any measure this is a substantial award for dental malpractice. Based on my experience, a 1990 jury would have awarded much less. What the defense attorneys in that case failed to appreciate was that young people, most of whom identify in some way by what they eat, post photos of food on social media, and have lived in a time when chef shows rule reality television and “foodies” are blogging about the latest restaurant hot spot. To them $3 million might not seem like a substantial amount of money for the partial loss of their taste buds.

While the plaintiff was the beneficiary of the defense attorney’s cultural tone deafness, this example raises myriad issues for trial attorneys. In my view it is our professional obligation to educate ourselves to understand and appreciate the views, experiences and attitudes of prospective jurors. Just as the rules of professional responsibility for lawyers added keeping “abreast of changes in the law and its practice, including the benefits and risks associated with relevant technology” as an element of maintaining competence, we must keep abreast of cultural and technological shifts that impact a juror’s willingness to award substantial sums to the plaintiff when it is warranted. It’s a modern application of the classic adage: know your audience. After all, the youthful juror could just as easily fail to appreciate fair compensation in another type of case.

Attorney Laird M. Ozmon