Our client, a 63-year-old man, was leisurely riding his bicycle in his neighborhood of Mount Prospect, IL. While heading eastbound on Busse Avenue, approaching the intersection of Wa Pella Avenue, our client was struck by a vehicle attempting to make a left hand turn from Busse Avenue onto Southbound Wa Pella Avenue.
Our client was immediately rushed to Lutheran General with intracranial hemorrhaging that necessitated an emergency cranial decompression (craniotomy). He subsequently underwent a second operation to correct a skull defect in the front of his head, caused by the collision. The severity of the traumatic brain injury required him to learn how to walk, speak, and use basic daily motor functions at an inpatient rehabilitation facility.
Understandably, because of the significant brain injury, our client had no recollection of the collision or anything that occurred in at least the fifteen minutes prior. Despite the inability to provide his own account, and to much of the dismay of his family, our client was then issued a citation for failure to stop at a stop sign and somehow deemed at fault for the accident. Not surprisingly, relying on that initial investigative report, the motorist’s insurance carrier denied the claim and attributed 100% of the fault on our client.
Luckily, our team was able to recover a ring video from a nearby house which shows that our client was not riding at any high rate of speed, as previously reported, but merely cruising. We also took several screenshots of that intersection which illustrates that nothing could have impaired the view of the driver to our client’s bicycle, had the driver been paying attention. Lastly, we were able to uncover that the driver had intended to go north initially, and it was only after realizing that northbound Wa Pella Avenue was closed, that the driver pivoted at the last second to head southbound. Piecing together all of the circumstantial evidence, we made a time-limited policy demand to the insurance carrier. Within 30 days the motorist’s carrier reversed course and tendered the entirety of their policy to our client.
Willens & Baez, partner, David Baez, was able to secure a $250,000.00 policy tender, even though the responsible insurance carrier initially denied the claim by attributing fault for the motor vehicle collision to our client, a cyclist.
