South Carolina, like most states, has a minimum amount of automobile insurance a person has to have to drive a car on our streets and highways. In South Carolina the minimum coverage is $25,000.00 but there is a self-insurance loophole that for some unknown reason allows taxi cabs to just have $10,000.00 in coverage. The defense of taxi cab lawsuits was handled on a contract basis by a local lowlife lawyer who, as the saying goes, if you ordered a trainload of sons-of-bitches and they sent you this guy, you’d mark the invoice paid in full. He would deny every claim just to delay having to the paltry coverage for as long as possible.
My client, who was run over by a taxi and suffered significant injuries, wasn’t offered anything to settle his case before trial. To be honest, his case had more than a few problems seeing as though he was two and a half times the legal blood alcohol limit and positive for cocaine in his blood when he was passed out in the road and run over by the taxi just a couple doors down from his own home.
The taxicab was dropping off a fare in the neighborhood and missed the house number, so the driver backing up to find the right house when the driver and his passenger heard a ba-bump as the rear wheels of the taxi went up and down. The driver turned around to look out the rear window, didn’t see anything, and said to the passenger, “Must have been a dog.” He then continued backing up and they heard it againas the front wheels jumped up and down too. When he pulled back a little further, his head lights revealed what he had run over and the passenger in backseat of the cab shrieked, “That ain’t no dog, it’s a human being.”
So, here it was three and a half years later and I was sitting in a courtroom pulling a jury to try the case. My client was going to be of little help having no actual recollection how he got so intoxicated, how he got home, or how he ended up passed out in the road. He was taken from the scene in an ambulance and didn’t regain consciousness until the next morning in the hospital. The cops weren’t much help either as they charged my client with causing the accident. Thankfully, they had written down the name and address of the passenger in the cab that night. I knew her story from the statement she gave to my private investigator, but still didn’t know if her testimony would be enough to overcome my own client’s stupidity.
I asked family, friends, and fellow lawyers what they thought of my case and they all said it was a dead loser. One friend, who ran track at the University of South Carolina under legendary coach, Weem Baskins, gave me some advice, “Whenever we were getting ready to run a meet against an obviously better team, Weemie would tell us just put one foot infront of the other, lift your knees high as you can, and get alittle reckless.” So I called the passenger as my first witness. She took off running like a thoroughbred. She didn’t tell the jury what happened, she acted it out with her entire body. She’s the one who used the words “ba-dump” to describe what it sounded like while she jumped her whole body in the witness stand as she said it. When she said what she said about it being a human being, her eyes got as big as they must have gotten that night. I thought her description of the driver continuing to back up running over my client for a second time was just I needed to save the day. But her cross examination by the experienced taxicab lawyer was brutal. She admitted the cab driver was nice and polite, drove safely the entire trip. That nobody saw my client dressed all in black as he drove down the street. And the man was at least half way in the road. Thew taxicab driver held his own on direct and cross examination. I couldn’t read the jury and thought at best, it was a toss up when the time came for closing arguments.
Sometimes an idea just comes to you in the middle of an argument. I remembered there is an exception to the general rule a person contributing to their own injury can’t recover called the doctrine of the last clear chance. It said if a person is in a position of danger and peril from which he couldn’t escape, then someone can’t escape liability if they had the last chance to avoid injuring him. I couldn’t get around the fact my client was passed out on alcohol and drugs at least half-way in the road, so I told the jury the problem with the defense’s case was the taxi cab driver didn’t know why my client was passed out. I suggested he could have been having a medical emergency, a heart attack, a seizure, or a diabetic hypoglycemic attack. It just came out and I didn’t even really think that much about it until the jury deliberations became heated and the jurors started raising their voices in their jury room loud enough so everyone in the courtroom could hear them. One woman juror’s voice rose above the others and said, “My sister has diabetes. You can’t run her over!”
It wasn’t long thereafter the jury returned with a verdict in favor of my client. It was a compromise verdict to be sure but still a large one, not that the size of the verdict mattered much as it exceeded the taxi cab’s $10,000.00 coverage. One of my all time favorite lawyers, Stanley Feldman, happened to be in the courtroom that day. The next time I saw him, he laughed out loud and said I had won the impossible case by conjuring a diabetes defense out thin air. I laughed and qotied Weems Baskin When no offer is made, and your stuck trying an impossible case, you just have go ahead and get a little reckless.
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