Personal Injury–Cruise Accident Verdict: $21.5M
by
Douglas C. Weinstein on Jul. 07, 2017
Summary: Talk about sour grapes. Holland America, which got hit with a $21.5 million personal injury verdict, is now trying to get the verdict thrown out.
Talk about sour grapes. Holland America, which got hit with a $21.5 million personal injury verdict, is now trying to get the verdict thrown out. That’s right. Four years after the incident, and after probably three years of litigation and nine days of trial, only now is the cruise line accusing the plaintiff of “lying, destroying evidence, witness tampering and suborning perjury.”
It seems that one of those sliding doors — like at the grocery store — closed too fast and hit the plaintiff on the head. Result: brain damage, vertigo, memory loss and seizures. So HA, whom we may assume had the best lawyers money could buy, proceeded to fight the allegations for years. I’m sure they tired every gambit, and made every sort of negative insinuation it could to discredit the plaintiff. It forced a trial, thinking that a jury would turn away the plaintiff. They were wrong.
Now, doing what defense lawyers seem to love to do, HA’s attorneys are making new allegations, trying to muddy the water more, and in short doing anything they can to wriggle out of this very large jury verdict, that I’m sure they could have avoided had they simply fessed up and settled the case with the plaintiff for a reasonable sum.
