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Blackman Legal Group - Going The Extra Step
[GRAPHIC: Going the extra step]
DOUG LLEWELLYN: You know, let me ask you, you mentioned a little--a case a little while ago that was really kind of interesting about somebody that was involved in an automobile--it was a head-on collision, and the, the steps you went through to try and, and help this person out. Tell me about that case 'cause that's pretty fascinating.
CLIFFORD BLACKMAN: Okay, you're talking about a case; this was a young mother in her 20s who was rendered a quadriplegic in a head-on car accident on the freeway. The defendant was driving on the wrong side of the freeway, literally causing a high speed head-on crash and she was killed in the crash.
Like many cases where there are catastrophic injuries, there may not be enough insurance to compensate the victims and then this is one of those cases where the defendant had $30,000 of insurance and my client had huge medical bills and was looking at a whole lifetime of needing medical care and, you know, attendant care at home as well.
DOUG LLEWELLYN: Right.
CLIFFORD BLACKMAN: So we investigated further than the insurance to find out why the other driver was on the wrong side of the road. And through great effort learned that she had been very ill for a long time with blackout spells of a sort and that the, the doctors and hospitals that were taking her--taking care of her and where they were bringing her by ambulance after these sessions were failing to report to the authorities that this driver was having problems with consciousness.
All doctors are required, for the safety of the public, to report if a patient comes in and has problems with consciousness that way the DMV knows to pull the driver's license and protect the public against death or mayhem. And this particular person had been brought 14 times over several years to the hospital having seizures and unconscious and they failed to make the report. She was on the road when she shouldn't have been.
And in the end we were able to make a valid claim against the doctors and the hospital for failing to obey their required law to report, which was designed to prevent these kinds of things.
DOUG LLEWELLYN: So they, they just simply didn't do what they had to do. And the, the end result was the, the, the injured party did collect substantial sums from them.
CLIFFORD BLACKMAN: Yeah, we were able to get a very sizable settlement so that she could buy an equipped home and would have attendant care for the rest of her life.
DOUG LLEWELLYN: That's pretty interesting. I mean that's a tragic case, but it's interesting. It's the kind of case that had you not gone the extra steps to really investigate the background of the person who was killed in the accident, she would never have collected this.
CLIFFORD BLACKMAN: That's right. That's right. We're going to work very hard to find all potential sources for recovery when there's a bad accident like that.
