Our client was walking along the sidewalk on her lunch break. An underground electrical vault exploded, blowing off a manhole cover and burning her severely. We filed a lawsuit against the electrical company on her behalf; she faced months of medical treatment and rehabilitation. Normally a case of this kind would take two years or more to prepare and bring to trial but the client wanted the situation resolved quickly; we set a goal of two months.
We interviewed eyewitnesses of the explosion and doctors who treated our client, on camera. We also interviewed friends and family members. We even managed to locate former employees of the utility who helped us determine the cause of the explosion, long before the government’s investigation was completed.
We ended up with 40 hours of recorded testimony which we edited down to 60 minutes. We sent the video presentation to the utility company’s upper management with a message stating that, unless they settled our client’s claim immediately, we were ready to go to trial.
Two days later, the utility settled for $20 million.