Pedestrian crossing street knocked 20 feet down the road

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Case:  Pedestrian injured by car.  Driver lies to her insurance company about what happened when striking a pedestrian crossing the street.

(Pedestrian struck by a car turning left. The driver claims pedestrians ran into their path. We located a witness that the police had not been able to talk to and the witness confirmed our client’s version of the collision).

Our client came to us because the insurance company was denying her claim and saying she was at fault.  She was a pedestrian who had been out walking that day for exercise along a main road on the sidewalk.  At the time of the collision, she had started to walk across a residential street that had a stop sign.  A driver on the main road was turning left onto the residential street where the pedestrian was crossing.  This driver was attempting to beat traffic and struck our client, flipping her over the vehicle, into the air, and onto the pavement next to the curb.  The driver of the vehicle told the police officer that she was slowly turning onto the residential street and was almost through her turn when our client ran in front of her as my client was crossing the road.  Additionally, the driver claimed that my client was not crossing at the intersection – that she was 20 feet down from the intersection crossing.  Our client stated that she was crossing at the intersection, but when the driver struck her the impact knocked her 20 feet down the street.

We ordered the police report.  The officer’s report stated that he could not determine who was at fault due to conflicting statements.  At the bottom of the report, he listed the phone number of a witness who had left their information with the first officer to arrive at the scene.  The witness had to leave before the 2nd officer arrived.  The 2nd officer was the officer who wrote the report.  The reporting officer was unable to make contact with this witness before they wrote their report.

We contacted the witness.  The witness stated that our client was walking across the street at the intersection (as our client had said) and was almost across the street.  The driver that struck our client was turning left and trying to beat the traffic coming from the opposite direction – so they were accelerating quickly when they struck our client.  The collision had knocked the pedestrian out of the crosswalk, flipped her into the air “like a rag-doll”, and landed our client onto the street near the curb about 20 feet from down from the intersection.

We gave this information to the insurance company along with the witness information.  The insurance company still denied the claim.  We filed a lawsuit, took the deposition of the witness which was now sworn evidence that their driver was at fault.  We then were able to force the insurance company to settle the claim for the limits of their insurance policy.