So... it has come to this! What you ask? This, I say (type) slyly. Obviously this, do you not listen? And who is rounding second base, as we quibble. No, the final hangover of my first year of law school was wrapped up with a pretty ticker-tape bow yesterday. Well, almost, at any rate.
For those who haven't tuned in in the last year or so, I was involved in a four car pile up in April of 2009. I don't recall many of the details of the crash, but needless to say, there were four cars, it was scary, and I was the one in back. I had thought our insurance companies had handled every thing closer to the accident. My premiums definitely went astronomical, which appeared to be a decent indicator. But last August, just frolicking in the free time of post-bar-pre-admission summer pleasantness, I got served with papers from the person second to the front who also sued the guy in front of me. She will hereinafter be referred to as "the plaintif" because "annoying person who forced me to muddle with memories of a part of my life I find amusingly akin to a bad country western song" is a bit prolix.
After some brief panicking and inability to locate my insurance company from that time, I managed to hand it off just under the response deadline and forget again all about the accident. Until the deposition! While that was a fun medley of "I do not recall" crunched into a half hour of actual deposition and two and a half hours or tormented traffic to get there, it was only the opening act for the ARBITRATION!
It was in Bellevue and it was yesterday. And it was kind of like the deposition on steroids. Yes, arbitration is like your deposition went out and got really drunk and became loud before needing to be escorted home and put to bed with a convenient trash can nearby. For one, I got to hear the other versions of what happened. It's kind of like an amazingly dull detective novel. Nobody has the same story. I don't even have the same story as I had when it happened, which a transcript of a phone call with my co-defendant's insurance company made very clear (did he skid? Was he halfway out of the lane or all the way or not at all? Apparently I have believed many different details about the incident before deciding I had no idea).
At some point the plaintiff's lawyer was asking me to explain how I would have finished a rather flailing recorded sentence about my codefendant and I actually just said "look, I don't remember saying any of this, but it's obvious from the transcript that I was struggling with remembering and articulating what exactly had happened. I don't know if I knew at the time what I was going to say, but I definitely don't have any clue now."
Nor did the police make any kind of report based on the memories reported by us seconds after the accident. The officer showed up after we'd all moved to the side, didn't appear to take real statements from any of us and concluded that I had caused the accident in a way that reflected damage that wasn't there and was completely at odds with every other version of what happened. The arbitrator said that the report only served to convolute an already convoluted mess. Also, kind of explains why my damned insurance is so horribly high. Grrr.
The plaintiff's story was that the car in front stopped suddenly. She stopped, narrowly missing a rear-ender by a few feet. But then(!!) was pushed forward when my codefendant slammed into her, and then again when I hit him, which hit him into her, which ... something. She swears up and down that my codefendant was directly and squarely behind her and that the damage happened right to the middle of her car and that she got out after the accident and we were all bumper to bumper.
My co-defendant remembers seeing the plaintiff slam into the back of the car in front, having jammed on his breaks and veering to the right, missing her car entirely. He knows I hit him (we've dealt with all of that) mostly dragging across the side of his car, and doesn't recall me hitting her.
Now, I remember seeing brake lights, my co-defendant veering right, my trying to veer left, and scraping across the back left of his car. At some point I "remembered" hitting the plaintiff's car (so I said in the interview with an insurance adjuster a month after the accident), but I also think that I thought this because the way the damage was recorded on the police report, it seemed like I would have had to have been the one to hit her.
The first driver remembers... well nobody knows because he was not a party to this lawsuit! He was also not a witness. He is, in fact, "missing" according to plaintiff's lawyer. And nobody knows exactly why he stopped so damned short on the freeway, except that both plaintiff and codefendant saw that there weren't cars directly in front of him. The arbitrator thought it a mite odd that he wasn't somehow involved. As did the rest of us.
Anyways, my best guess about what actually happened is that the driver in front was an idiot who - like many Seattle drivers - has issues with appropriate breaking while driving fast and a car that was well-equipped to facilitate this idiocy. I'd further posit that the plaintiff didn't have as good of breaks as his and did in fact slam into the back of his car. And that probably my codefendant did not hit the back of her car. And that possibly I did hit the back of her car after being significantly slowed by the impact with his. but that this was not what caused the damage to her car or whatever neck problems she had. So, that's my theory of the case. And that she took her damned sweet time, paying out of pocket because she didn't have any insurance, then couldn't find the dude in front and needed some cash from somebody.
Lord knows what the arbitrator will decide. He has about five fathoms of paper pictures for various cars and various damage to these cars that may or may not have been pre-existing. There's a dispute about the color of paint on the rear bumper of the plaintiff's car and some tiny cracks on my codefendant's car. There are all kinds of minor disagreements in recorded statements. And of course the fact that nobody really remembers the same thing.
Neither defense attorney disputed her damages because they were asking for a defense verdict, but I did find it interesting that she was asking for $7,000 in chiropractor's bills. about $1,000 of work done on the front of her car (virtually no damage to the back), and an extra $10,000 for something like lost wages because her stiff neck made it hard to find work. I'd imagine that her having recently been fired for shoplifting to have made it harder for her to find work... that and the recession. Of course, while I was objectively fascinated at that strategic decision, the fact that the damages fall far underneath the cap for insurance covering my liability means that even were I the kind of attorney prone to kibbitzing about fields of law I know nothing about aside from how I'd answer a Bar Exam question on the matter, I still probably wouldn't be too invested in that dispute.
The lessons of my experience are plentiful. I'm sure I understand something more about my client's experiences. And of course, It's a nicely stunning reminder that our memories are largely simulacra - with tiny bits of true sense memory cemented together by rather convincing neural conjecture and highly edited story telling. Even more important: driving in and around Seattle sucks! The true moral.
It was also a nicely circular event, as the arbitration took place just a block away from where I did my first year summer internship with PeaceHealth a few months after the accident. Same exit and everything. It was also where I went last year to buy my bridesmaid's dress for Molly's wedding. Funny how little geographic themes emerge and reemerge when you least expect them. Bellevue appears to be mostly, though, the place I go to put an end to the horrors - the bar exam, the uncertainty of an empty summer for a fetid 1L, and now this car saga!
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