We wanted to share this report and congratulations from David M. deRubertis of The deRubertis Law Firm for Henry Peacor of Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley for his verdict last Friday on a soft-tissue bus v. bicycle case against Michael Nebenzahl.

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The 3-day trial took place in Van Nuys in front of Judge Paul Bacigalupo. I’ll leave most of the details to Henry, but short story is that this was a true soft-tissue case with $17,824 in meds, no treatment for about a year pre-trial, yet Henry secured $250,000 in future non-economics in the absence of any future meds on truly a soft-tissue case. If that wasn’t enough, the case also had tons of credibility attacks on the plaintiff - Attorney referrals, chiro liens, subjective/inconsistent complaints of pain, Facebook photos used to impeach the plaintiff, and to top it all off there was a year and a half gap in treatment that only ended because of a few visits with their retained expert Jacob Tauber, MD just before trial.

Part of the magic I think Henry created in the courtroom was in true Henry (mentored of course by Nick Rowley) fashion, he got to the bottom of the story of his client’s life and human losses to make them transcend so far beyond the medical bills or the soft-tissue injury. I’ll spare details for Henry, but in working with the client he developed a compelling theme that his client growing up never had a stable, solid home. As an adult, achieving that home stability was so key to his life but for reasons I’ll leave to Henry to explain, this mere soft-tissue injury disrupted that life goal in a very bad way. I’m sure this explains the $250,000 in future generals without any future meds!

Jury returned a verdict of $353,174.
Past meds were $17,824.
Past noneconomic damages were $85,000.
Future noneconomic damages were $250,000.
Top pre-trial offer was $50,000.

David M. deRubertis | Shareholder
The deRubertis Law Firm, APC

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