And Justice For All?

The plaintiff says he got to the end of the block before he realized he's not wearing his safety goggles. When he reached up to his helmet to pull them on, he can't find them. He says he stopped the motorcycle, looked back and saw the goggles laying halfway up the street, in front of his house.

He says after he saw there was no oncoming traffic, he made what he called "a safe U-turn"–admittedly, now going the wrong way on a one-way street–to retrieve the goggles.

He says he stopped next to the goggles, put down his kick stand and was preparing to climb off the bike when he saw a car coming up the street. He decided to wait for the car to pass. He says with his headlight on, he "made eye contact" with the driver of the oncoming vehicle, and saw the woman behind the wheel on a cellphone. She then hit the side of his motorcycle and sent him flying.

He says the next thing he remembers is the woman standing over him as he's lying flat on his back on the street, still on her cellphone, telling her supervisor she probably won't make it to work (at a 24-hour Post Office) because "I hit some fool on his motorcycle." He is then taken to the hospital by ambulance.

The plaintiff is suing the defendant for the damages caused by her allegedly negligent driving, although we do not hear any testimony about his injuries–and won't unless we, the jury, find the defendant at least partially at fault for the accident.

The plaintiff rests without presenting any witnesses.

On cross-examination, the defense attorney gets the plaintiff to admit he's lived on this block for 10 years, that there were numerous people out and about at the time of the accident who knew him, including one friend in particular who moved his damaged motorcycle off the street after he was taken to the hospital.

Yet no one came to court to back up his story. When asked point-blank why the friend who removed the motorcycle wasn't there to corroborate his testimony, the plaintiff says, "I couldn't get him to come here."

Also on cross-examination, the defense counsel seemed to pull a trick out of the old "Perry Mason" handbook. Dramatically waving a piece of unidentified paper in his hand, he asked the plaintiff: "Isn't it true you told the attending physician at the emergency room that you got hurt while biking up your block, popping a wheelie?" The defendant said no.

At that point, the judge piped in. "Do you have an objection, counselor?" When the plaintiff attorney said he did not, the judge said: "Well, you should!"

She then turned to the jury and repeatedly insisted that we disregard this question. "Unless the defense counsel produces a document from the hospital to the effect of what the defendant told him, or produces sworn testimony–either from a prior deposition or here in court–you are not to consider what the defense counsel said. It is not evidence."

She Says:

The defendant testifies that she was driving at normal speed down the block, with a full hour to go before her shift began, taking her time since the Post Office was only a half-hour away.

Halfway down the block, she says she sees a motorcycle coming at her the wrong way up a one-way street, "popping a wheelie." She says because the guy had his front tire pointed upwards, she didn't see any headlight, and that he was practically on top of her before she could react.

Still, she says, she pulled to the left, away from the oncoming cyclist, and came to a full stop. However, the biker still plowed into the right side of her car and "went flying." 

She insists under both direct and cross-examination that she was absolutely not on her cellphone while she was driving the car. She says she pulled out her cellphone to call 911 first, then her supervisor at work, and told him, "I'm going to be late for work because some fool ran into me with his motorcycle."

On cross-examination, the plaintiff attorney fails to rattle the defendant. The only chink in her testimony is that she failed to see the cyclist until he was almost on top of her, except to explain that since the front of his bike was pointing towards the sky, she could not see his headlight.

However, we in the jury are disappointed that the plaintiff's lawyer did not request cellphone records to see who the defendant spoke with that night and when, to try to corroborate his client's story that the woman who hit him was distracted because she was talking on her phone.

The next day, the defense calls the police officer who filed the accident report. It turns out the cop didn't arrive on the scene until almost 90 minutes after the accident took place. (The defendant driver did wait around to talk with the cop, even though she was on the block where the plaintiff lived, which could perhaps be considered hostile territory.)

The cop filed a report based solely on the driver's account–the story repeated in court by the defendant. At no time did he seek out the plaintiff's side of the story. When asked on cross-examination why that was, he shrugged and said he didn't know which hospital the defendant had been taken to. When pressed further, he added, "the plaintiff didn't seek the police out, either."

The defense rests.

So, that's it! All the jury has to go on are the two conflicting stories of the plaintiff and defendant.

I thought it was odd that the driver did not at least hear the biker coming up the block towards her. After all, I speculated, I cannot imagine a motorcycle sneaking up on a driver, because their engines tend to be so obnoxiously loud.

But my speculation is not evidence in the case, and is waved aside by my fellow jurors. We focus instead on the only testimony in the case beyond dispute–that the plaintiff was going the wrong-way on a one-way street.

At best, the defendant is only partly at fault. But absent any corroborating evidence, in this "he said, she said," we sided with the defendant, and found no fault on her part.

The driver's version was simply more credible–that the guy was joy-riding late on a Saturday evening on his home block and ran into her car. It just did not seem plausible that she would run into a motorcycle parked on the street with its headlight shining in her eyes.

Case dismissed.

What do you folks think?