$450,000 Car Accident Lawsuit Settlement for Compound Arm Fracture in Fort Lauderdale

A Fort Lauderdale mother recovered $450,000 after a T-bone collision that another law firm had walked away from. Our client was driving her son to school one morning, heading eastbound through an intersection on a green light, when a southbound SUV made a left turn directly into her path. Both vehicles were totaled, and both drivers were taken to the hospital by ambulance. The crash and airbag deployment left our client with compound fractures to her arm. She needed surgery to repair the fractures and plastic surgery to treat the scarring.

The case focused on a single question: who had the green light? The other driver told police her light was yellow. However, there was no camera footage and no witnesses listed on the police report, so the officer could not determine fault and issued no citations. The other driver’s insurer denied liability, and our client’s previous law firm dropped her case. To recover compensation, we had to prove that the other driver entered the intersection against the signal and failed to yield, and that her account of the crash could not be trusted.

We filed suit and used discovery to take the defense’s story apart. Just before the suit was filed, the insurer claimed a new eyewitness had come forward. When we tracked her down, she admitted she never actually saw the crash, and her description of where she had been did not match what the defense claimed. The defense also produced two written statements. One came from the other driver’s nine-year-old son, while the other came from the driver’s mother, who was on the phone with her at the moment of impact. Both statements said the driver had announced, unprompted, that the light was green, and the child’s statement contained an unusual amount of detail about the damage to the vehicle. In deposition, we exposed how rehearsed those statements were and established that the driver was on a phone call as she approached the intersection.

At mediation, we made clear that a jury would see the statements as contrived and that the defense could not take them back. The case settled for $450,000, which was $200,000 more than the other driver’s $250,000 policy limit. A claim that had been denied outright and abandoned by another firm became an above-limits recovery, without video footage, independent witnesses, or the police finding fault.