“The night of the accident, I had gone out to pick up some carryout dinner. It was COVID. I’d been in the house forever, it seemed like, and I just wanted to get out for a few minutes. I was headed home. I went through the intersection. I saw one vehicle turn in front of me, which was fine. And then the defendant’s vehicle.
Basically she failed to yield and she turned right in front of me and we struck close to head on. It turned out I had severe damage to my neck. I would wind up having cervical surgery to try and correct some of that. My sternum was broken. My ribs were shifted. I had real bad bruises below my left collarbone. There were two breaks to the left hand. There was a broken thumb on the right hand. I had two fractures of what they call the tib fib plateau, which is right below my right knee.
After the accident, I had been hospitalized for four days and then moved to a rehab. My wife’s mother had been in a terrible car accident. in the Miami area. She contacted her Florida attorney. He said, “I don’t practice in Virginia, but I know a really good attorney up there that can help you. His name is Rick Shapiro and he’s with Shapiro Washburn and Sharp.”
The night of the accident, the defendant was screaming. I had run a red light that I had hit her. That was all my fault, and she actually had some witnesses from the bystanders that were swearing out reports that I was guilty and had caused all the damage.
He got that videotape, and it proved without a shadow of doubt that I had a green light, she made an illegal turn and failed to yield. If he hadn’t have done that, it would have been a whole different story. The insurance company didn’t want to settle, and that the accident didn’t do anything. Meanwhile, I’ve got six or seven broken bones. I’m in the hospital for 17 days and months and months of recovery.
One of the things that Rick did that really brought home the case was to have a medical illustrator actually go to the x-rays, go to the MRIs, and graphically depict exactly what kind of injuries I had, the surgery to my neck, the injuries to my spinal cord, and the injuries to my right leg.
I didn’t even know how exactly what was done or exactly how extensive it was until I saw what he did. And he had gone ahead and had the illustrations done and then went back to my surgeon and my orthopedics people and said, are these accurate? Are these correct? And they approved them. They were very impressed with them.
I had no idea that you could do something like that and just how effective it would be to see it. You show me an x-ray, it doesn’t mean anything. But when he did the medical illustrations, they really brought home what had happened. Defense had brought in their own expert witness, a doctor that I only saw for an hour. He’d never seen me, never treated me, and claimed that none of the injuries I had were due to the accident, the continuing injuries.
Rick spoke with my doctors prior to even going to deposition. He knew exactly the kind of injuries I had, what kind of treatments I’d had, the surgeries, the chaos, the splints, the physical therapy. We had gone through all that. He went through it with my doctors and when they went to deposition, he just kind of blew the defense team out of the water.
He just was just prepared, and it was just an outstanding job. I was very satisfied with the depositions that he did with the doctors. He could talk to them on their own level and knew exactly what questions to ask and to draw out just how much this accident had affected my life.
Rick had prepared me both for my own deposition as well as the upcoming jury trial. I’ve been involved as a witness over the years and in court a number of times, both professionally and personally. I’ve never had a lawyer prep me the way he did. I understood what to say and what not to say going into it and was very confident with both the deposition and the jury trial that was upcoming.
The insurance company was absolutely refusing to give any sort of realistic settlement. When we went into mediation, they wouldn’t even consider paying the full amount of the medical expenses I already showed.
We got closer to the trial date, continued to negotiate. Of course, Rick was negotiating on my behalf. And me and my wife had been researching the insurance company and found out they were consistently lowballing and trying not to settle for any realistic money. He actually got as much as I believe anyone could have gotten. It was much higher than historically what traffic accidents in this area get and what this insurance company is known to pay.
I was very happy with the way Rick Shapiro and his staff represented me. I worked with him, and I worked with his paralegal Paula quite a bit whenever I called or emailed, one of them got back to me very quickly, answered my questions, held my hand when it needed to be held. Because I’m not a lawyer, I’m not used to going through the legal process. And this was quite the experience. If somebody’s in a major accident, especially a major life-changing accident, had a major malpractice issue, I would just say, get a lawyer, get a lawyer like Rick Shapiro and Shapiro Washburn and Sharp.
The insurance companies are there to protect themselves. They’re not out there to help you. The results would be much, much better than if you tried to do it on your own. If someone I knew, especially in this area, suffered a major accident, major traffic accident, or had a medical problem, , I would definitely recommend Rick Shapiro and Shapiro Washburn and Sharp. I think they did an excellent job.”