A news story was recently posted regarding an auto accident case in which a client, represented by Orange County attorney John P. Burns, was going to mediation. That case went to mediation recently and here are the results.
The client was in a rear end accident resulting in little visible damage to his car. He went to the doctor after the accident but he had been to the same doctor two weeks before the accident for treatment to the same parts of his body that were injurd in the auto acciden.
The biggest problem in the case was the client’s lost income claim. There was some documentation of the lost income but the client’s lost sales commission income was difficult to document.
The case was scheduled to take place before a retired judge. Over the weekend the retired judge injured his back and was unable to conduct the mediation. Fortunatley, the mediation service found a highly qualified substitite mediator who happened to have an opening in his schedule.
The substitute mediator turned out to be a highly experienced attorney with forty five years of pratice, both as a plaintiff’s attorney and also as a defense attorney. The substitute mediator drove to Orange County from his home in Los Angeles and started the mediation right at the originally scheduled time.
The case was in mediation for all of a Monday afternoon. After approximately six hours of negotiation, the case settled for the amount of $67,500.00.
The mediator stated, at the end of the mediation, that he felt that it was an excellent settlement, given the difficult facts of the case for Mr. Burns’ client. He said that he felt that Mr. Burns’ client would not have received, from a jury, the same amount of money as the amount the client received from the mediation.