The cause of her injury is the core of the lawsuit. Did she break her back when she hit the pole, or was the injury caused, or made worse, buy the fried who was in the car following her, and removed her from the car after hitting the pole?
Since it appears everyone was drinking and alcohol was involved, it's going to come down to who hires the better lawyer and what actually happened won't really matter. They were all in the wrong, should never have been driving and should not have been trying to rescue people. Assuming that one woman couldn't pick up another means that you've seen them and know if one was bigger then the other, or if they were both fairly thin. I know that my wife is 5ft 5in tall, weights 135 pounds and is strong enough to pick me up and carry me. She's done it, and I weigh 220 pounds.
Of course, that doesn't mean this happened with these women, it just illustrates that it's possible.
Did moving her cause the injury or make it worse regardless of whether she picked her up or pulled her out? Or did the fact that she drove into a pole cause her injuries?
I'm not a big fan of lawsuits and really wish we had a law here that if the person who files the lawsuit loses, they have to pay everyones fees. I think that would discourage allot of them. Too many people file lawsuits because they figure they have nothing to lose and the odds of getting something out of it are much better then winning the lottery. I know that when I was a Union Steward, that there were those who would file lawsuits knowing that the company and insurance would pay off up to $25,000 before going to court because it was cheaper to do so. Most of the time they lost their cases because they were just silly, or a lie that they were using to support their position would become obvious. But every now and then, they would get a few bucks for their efforts, and that would just encourage others to try it too. If the losers in those cases had to pay for everyones time when it became obvious that they were just surfing for free cash, I believe they would never have filed their complaint.
A good example was a woman who demanded time off when she was pregnant. She refused to come to work and got a doctors note saying that she should not lift anything over a certain amount. I forget the number, but she wasn't even showing at the time she stopped coming to work. A year later, another female employee got pregnant and worked until a week or two before having her baby. She worked just like anybody else and never tried to get out of doing anything. Because she was pregnant, common sense was used and she was never asked to do any heavy lifting, but in all honesty, the women employees there never had to lift the heavy freight anyway. The woman who refused to even show up for work filed a lawsuit claiming that she was due lost wages and overtime she "could" have earned if she had been allowed to work while pregnant. She claimed that the woman who stayed and worked during her pregnancy was allowed to work without lifting any heavy packages, and thus able to stay at work and earn overtime. This dragged on for a couple of years before being dismissed. Her version of events and her doctors statements all had to be investigated at an expense to the company, and in the end, was enough to have it all dismissed. Total BS, but the way things are.
Eddie
