We Specialize In Handling Personal Injury Cases
Just because a police report says that you're at fault doesn't make it so.
My name is Griff Tonkin.
I'm one of the partners here at Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices.
We're litigation attorneys, and we specialize in the handling of personal injury cases.
In Our Recent Case
I want to talk to you about a recent case we resolved for our client.
In this matter, the investigating law enforcement agency found our client to be completely at fault.
Much like the cliche line from novels, the law enforcement agency concluded that it was a dark and stormy night.
On this particular night, our client was crossing a large roadway.
He was near an intersection, but he was not at the intersection.
He was not in a crosswalk.
He was struck by a first vehicle, and his body came to rest in the roadway.
He was then run over by a second vehicle.
The police report concluded that because it was dark outside, our client was outside of a crosswalk, and it had been raining, the accident was completely our client's fault.
But there was more to the story, as there usually is.
We started to investigate the case.
I went out and walked the roadway myself.
When considering a personal injury attorney, you need to be confident that your attorney will take the time to leave the office and look at what happened to you.
And that's precisely what I did in this case.
What struck me as I walked this area in the daytime was that there were very large street lights all over the area of this accident.
I started pacing and measuring using various tools, Google Maps and even the tape measure, to determine where were these street lights relative to where my client was struck in the roadway.
I noted that one large street light was 170 feet south of the intersection, and I remembered from the police report that my client's body had come to rest 172 feet south of the intersection.
Put another way, my client was directly under an enormous street light when he was struck for the first time.
It wasn't enough to just look at this intersection and this area during the daytime.
I had to go back and see it at night.
So I got a vehicle that was identical to the one that had ultimately run over my client, and I drove through the intersection on a full moon night because that was another fact that was left out of the police report.
It was a full moon.
And while the police report had concluded that it was raining, we actually looked at the National Oceanographic Administration data.
We found out that, yes, it had been raining, but in the 24 hours prior to the incident, it had rained less than one-tenth of an inch.
That means to say that there was rain in the rain gauge for NOAA, but that it was so slight it didn't make it to the first graduation.
So it was a full moon, it wasn't really raining, and our client was in the direct beam of a streetlight.
When we looked at the area at night from a vehicle like the one that ultimately ran over my client, we determined that this is actually one of the most well-lit intersections in the entire city where this incident occurred.
There are adjacent businesses, particularly an adjacent gas station with a very brightly lit fuel bonnet so that our client would have been very, very visible.
Then we started investigating the witnesses, and it turns out that only a few of the witnesses were actually listed in the police report.
And as we talked to one witness, it led to another, and another, and still another, until ultimately we talked to five eyewitnesses.
Importantly, one eyewitness had seen our client in the roadway after he'd been struck by the first vehicle but before he'd been run over.
That eyewitness revealed that they'd gone down the road after seeing our client lying in the road, made a U-turn, went back up the road, made another U-turn, and ultimately came back to where our client was still lying in the road.
As this witness ran down the road on the phone with 911 toward our client, we could hear the background sound, and ultimately, we heard the second vehicle run our client over.
But we were able to calculate, because of the time on the phone, the 911 recordings, and the places where this person had made a U-turn, that the client had been lying in the road for a significant period of time.
Or said another way, the client had been lying in the road, brightly lit, for a long enough period of time for someone to make all these driving maneuvers and phone calls, all before they were run over.
We were able to show that the second driver simply wasn't keeping a lookout or was driving too fast.
We also found three more eyewitnesses.
They happened to be 500 feet away from our client, and they saw him clearly in the road after he'd been struck by the first vehicle and were actually on their way to render aid when he was run over by the second vehicle.
This did away with the insurance company's arguments that he wasn't visible because these folks, who'd been at a different business, 499 feet away to be precise, had seen him lying in the roadway.
We compiled all of this evidence, documentary evidence, eyewitness testimony, feasibility studies, and lighting analysis, and we were able to show that, in fact, our client was not at fault in this incident, which is completely contrary to the conclusions of the police report.
Now, our client was severely injured, but we made a significant recovery for our client that not only compensated him for all of his expenses associated with his injuries but provided him with significant compensation for the rest of his life going forward.
Contact Us
If you've been injured in a personal injury matter, whether it's a car accident or any other injury that's the result of a third party, give us a call at the Arthofer & Tonkin Law Offices.
We'll take the time to not only listen to your story but investigate it. And if necessary, we'll get out and walk on the ground with you and learn exactly what happened to you.
