14 Trial Lawyer • Winter 2024 By Robert Le OTLA Guardian A jury trial in June 2022 showed my co-counsel and I that it can be well worth pursuing even uncertain attorney fee claims in order to improve your clients’ total recovery. Jaime and John had almost finished the drive from their home in Boise to a planned outdoor adventure in northeast Oregon’s Minam State Recreation Area on June 3, 2017, when a young man coming the other direction crossed the centerline and hit them at high speed. The crash shot them towards the cliff to their right. They hit the guardrail a split second later, rolled at least one and a half times, and began a skid, upside down. The scraping sound was deafening. All John could think of was please don’t let the scraping sound stop. As long as the Robert Le car was scraping on something that meant it hadn’t gone off the cliff. The car came to rest in the middle of the highway, 109 feet from the impact point. John was afraid of what he would see when he looked over at Jaime. When Jaime knew the car had stopped, she smelled smoke and prepared to jump into action. Hanging upside down she first had to get the seatbelt to release. After she released the seatbelt, she fell. The glass went unnoticed during her first two doctor visits. She kicked at the door as hard as she could. It finally flew open. They got out. The car was not on fire after all. It was just the smoke from 12 airbags deploying. John and Jaime could see down the highway to where the other car had come to a stop. It was an older car, with one airbag. John thought there was no way the other driver could have survived. He asked Jaime to wait there. But as he walked toward the other car John saw its door open. They sat with Curtis, the other driver, for almost an hour trying to keep him from going into shock while they waited for a sheriff to arrive, eventually followed by paramedics. Jaime was more badly hurt than John. No broken bones, but she suffered neck, back, shoulder and hip injuries, and a concussion. She went through extensive treatment for her injuries but was still suffering in the years that followed. This was hard for Jaime, once a professional cyclist, whose friendships and enjoyment of life centered around outdoor activities like mountain biking and backcountry skiing. Even years later, John said that instead of him trying to keep up with Jaime, like before, she would try to ride or run with him but they couldn’t go out for long. She would pay for the activity and be in a lot of pain the next day. Jaime also couldn’t focus well and hardly slept at night because of her right shoulder and right hip pain. Both shoulder and hip had labral tears that her treating orthopedic surgeons said might need surgery. The couple tried almost a dozen mattresses and kept the one that worked best. But even at the time of the trial, five years later, she would awaken dozens of times and average only a few hours of sleep per night. She delayed surgery so she could continue to care for their infant nephew, who brought her joy even as he became a toddler and too big for her to carry. The claim My co-counsel, Matt Kirkpatrick, and I filed a lawsuit against USAA, Jaime’s and John’s insurance company, because it denied their PIP and UIM claims and treated them so poorly. It was not the treatment they had expected from USAA. Jaime’s father had been in the military and she had USAA insurance her whole life, paying premiums herself for 20 of her 39 years. But USAA started denying No Safe Harbor SECURING FEE AWARDS UNDER FEE-SHIFTING STATUTES
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