Speaker 1: A picture is worth a thousand words or it can at least help if you are suing to recover significant medical costs from an accident.
Speaker 2: Attorney Karl Truman is with his again. Explaining that, uh, this case pertains to one of his clients who was walking down the street, steps on a utility box that gave way, and, uh, this person was badly hurt walking to work in downtown Louisville. Hey Karl good to see you again.
Other Speaker: Good morning…morning.
Speaker 2: Well, you certainly don't expect something like that to happen.
Other Speaker: Yeah, this was a situation where, uh, client was walking to work downtown and I don't want to get into the, the details. There was a litigation case that's concluded, but there is a utility box on the sidewalk. And imagine walking to work. You know, you're just focused on getting to work. And you're stepping off and, you know, you always see those little utility boxes in the, in the sidewalk and stepping on it and your foot falls into it. And you've injured your leg and ankle and, and have pretty serious injuries.
Speaker 1: And so I see pictures right here. From what I understand she was lucky that somebody walking by and of course in this day and age everybody's got a camera phone and all that, but somebody walking by, saw this and said hey, ”I'm gonna snap some pictures.” Is that how you got these photos?
Other Speaker: Right. These pictures were from just a bystander, uh, that happened to be walking by and saw what happened and took some pictures and passed it on. And this is very important. I've had other cases particularly in where someone has fallen or slipped on something and that type of evidence is, it disappears and even though a utility box like this without the pictures the, uh, the company that owns it, it would be gone. They would, you know, pick it up, take it away, and I would never be, have a much harder time proving the case. And in this situation we were able to prove.
Speaker 2: When we talk about photos, what about video? It seems like everybody has video capability? Don't you get sound and get impressions from the person, you know, at, at the moment of, of a crisis like this.
Speaker 1: An immediate reaction.
Other Speaker: Oh absolutely. And sometimes those can be very, uh, persuasive, very powerful evidence, you know, because once the insurance companies and their lawyers get involved with their, uh, people, then sometimes stories change. And so unless you can preserve that evidence right away, it makes it much more difficult.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the intonation of someone's voice after they've been hurt would be, I would think would be quite a graphic display for, for a person.
Other Speaker: Right, sure. I mean that, that's certainly a situation too where someone, you know, obviously, you know, spontaneously is very, uh, hurt and very compassionate about what they're going through. And then the other person that, you know, may make statements that, uh, admissions of fault.
Speaker 1: Okay now the person that took those photos, do they have to be a witness in court and actually say hey, I saw this happen. I captured this on camera. Do you actually need that testimony or are the pictures enough for that?
Other Speaker: Well, I think the pictures can be admissible by themselves. Someone has to authenticate in court. Someone has to authenticate it. And hopefully and in most situations we don't actually have to go to court. We have to be prepared to be able to go to court and so the other side knows that we will prove our case. Uh, but hopefully most of the time we're able to have enough persuasive evidence to persuade the other side that yes, we are going to win in court and let's try to reach a settlement.
Speaker 2: And this person in this case did recover lost wages and medical and bills and paying stuff.
Other Speaker: We, we were able to collect, uh, you know, quite a range of damages to, you know, be able to get a good recovery for her.
Speaker 1: Because of that accident she was hurt badly enough she couldn't work for some time.
Other Speaker: And off work and, and wasn't able to go back to, you know, work for a long time because of her injury, which we see quite a bit.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 2: All right Karl. Thanks a bunch. Hey to get in touch with Karl Truman you can call 502 and then all 2s, 222 and 2222. Find him online at trumanlaw.com.
Speaker 1: Truman Talks Law on Great Day Live is sponsored by the Karl Truman Law Office. Well if you or someone you know has been hurt on the job there may be other options beyond workers' compensation available to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one of those options is the Jones Act Claim for people who work on the river. Attorney Karl Truman visits with us every Wednesday. Karl good to see you again.
Karl Truman: Good morning.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the Jones Act.
Karl Truman: Well the Jones Act, since we are on the Ohio River one of the types of cases I see a lot of is uh maritime workers. People who work on barges, work on uh loading barges or building boats and barges type thing and so today I kind of wanted to talk about an actual case that I handled rather than just talking about you know generalities.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Karl Truman: You know that there are real people who really get hurt and killed and so this is a case that I wanted to talk about where my client was representing a widow whose husband was actually crushed by a crane that broke.
Speaker 2: Oh my.
Karl Truman: What happened here is that he worked for a company who was building docks on the river and his employer basically took a crane truck put it on a small barge really changed the physics and dynamics of it and actually the barge was taking on water, was leaking and so without actually knowing what he was doing and creating this barge crane and without just, just kind of putting this truck on here uh, really created a hazardous situation and what happened was they were using this crane to uh, lift these docks and these pieces from the dock and it actually broke right there on the top is the crane, the top of the crane that actually broke off of the crane and crushed and killed this gentleman and so I was representing his wife, the widow and making a claim. See since this was under, since he worked on the river, if this were on land, state workers' compensation his only remedy would be state workers compensation law which under state workers' comp you cannot sue your employer. That his employer would be immune from any lawsuits. He would only get, his wife would only get a minimal workers' comp recovery. Since this was on the river what we were able to do is pursue a claim under what's called the Federal Jones Act which protects maritime workers and under the Long Shore Act we're, you know he's a, he's a harbor worker basically and so we could hold his employer as the owner of the vessel to a higher standard and greater accountability than if it were just on land.
Speaker 1: And so this had tragic consequences in that this gentleman was killed. If he had been hurt badly, that maybe hadn't lost his life, would he still have been able to use the Jones Act to claim a settlement?
Karl Truman: Yes, yes. We will still use the same legal principles, the same legal basis to hold the company responsible for it. But you know so it's just a matter of you know, they had more tragic consequences and so you know rather than, you know I talked a lot about general legal principals but I wanted to be able to show an actual case where someone really suffered consequences from somebody else's negligence.
Speaker 2: Makes perfect sense and of course if you think uh, someone in your family, someone that you love, has been hurt at work your advice is check with an attorney and make sure what they are entitled to.
Karl Truman: Sure, whether it's work or any type of situation and like in this case it's really important that I get involved quickly because if they had waited, I mean years, you know either deadline could run, evidence can be gone, you know all of this property and the crane is long gone and I really can't do an investigation so you know some people may be critical about while why do you hire a lawyer quickly, well the sooner I get in the case the better job I can do.
Speaker 2: Thanks Karl.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that very much. Thanks for sharing that specific case with us, too. So if you'd like to get in touch with Karl Truman you can reach him at 502-222-2222.
Speaker 2: Find him online at trumanlaw.com. We're comin' right back.
