Josh Ryan Ladwig | Attorney

SpyratosDavis LLC Attorney Josh R. Ladwig recently obtained an outstanding outcome following a jury trial in Kane County, in which the jury returned a verdict in favor of the defense finding the Defendant

The trial lasted three days including jury selection and extra precautions due to COVID-19 protocols. After multiple continued trial dates due to the ongoing pandemic, the jury verdict in favor of the Defendant was a breath of fresh air for SpyratosDavis LLC's client. The case arose out of a rear-end accident in heavy traffic on Randall Road in South Elgin, Kane County, Illinois. Plaintiff claimed he was struck from behind with a significant force while stopped at a traffic light. Although the Defendant did not deny making contact with the rear of Plaintiff's vehicle, the evidence presented by the defense indicated that the contact was at a low speed, and that the impact itself was minimal. Plaintiff claimed that a degenerative cyst on his lumbar spine was aggravated by the impact, and required periodic pain injections until he ultimately underwent a low back surgery more than four ears after the accident. Mr. Ladwig presented witnesses including the Plaintiff's primary care physician, the neurosurgeon who performed plaintiff's lumbar surgery, and a retained expert neurosurgeon who reviewed all the Plaintiff's records and diagnostic imaging. The witnesses" testimony discredited Plaintiff's claimed injuries and questioned whether Plaintiff was injured at all in the accident. During closing arguments, plaintiff asked the jury for an award of $150,000 in damages, with approximately $114,000 of the damages representing plaintiff's bills for medical treatment, including surgery. Mr. Ladwig highlighted key evidence and testimony, including photographs of Plaintiff's vehicle showing little to no damage, which suggested that Plaintiff was not injured in the accident whatsoever. After about an hour of deliberation, the jury returned a verdict in favor of Defendant and against Plaintiff resulting in no money being awarded to Plaintiff.

Josh Ladwig, Defense Counsel Cannot Proceed on Autopilot When It Comes to Self-Driving Vehicle Defense, The Brief Case: DRI Committee News (November/December ).

2023

DRI published our article “The Big Problems With Mini-Openings” in the July/August edition of The Brief Case. The article focused on the problems ed by mini-opening statements and included an example where asbestos plaintiffs’ counsel sought to ask potential jurors in voir dire if they were open to awarding non-economic damages of “over 34 million dollars” to the adult heirs of a sixty-seven-year-old man who “had various medical issues such as being severely obese and having two heart attacks” prior to his death. (Wennerholm v DAP Products Inc., JCCP, Los Angeles Superior Court, Case No. 19STCV4 [1/31/23].)

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In response, counsel for plaintiffs in the Wennerholm case defended their claimed right to mention particular dollar amounts in voir dire in a Commentary titled “The Right to Liberal and Probing Examination of Jurors for Bias Against Large Verdicts,” which was published in the June edition of COLUMNS Asbestos.  In turn, the DRI published our reply, “Voir Diring for Dollars,” in the September edition of The Brief Case, where we pointed out that:

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Plaintiffs’ counsel’s Commentary failed to address any of the numerous studies regarding the psychological effects of anchoring on jurors. See, e.g., J. Campbell et al., Countering the Plaintiff’s Anchor: Jury Simulations to Evaluate Damages Arguments, 101 Iowa L. Rev. (); see also Mollie W. Marti & Roselle L. Wissler, Be Careful What You Ask For: Anchoring Effects in Personal Injury Damage Awards, 6 J. EXPERIMENTAL PSYCHOL. APPLIED 91, 91–103 (); Gretchen B. Chapman & Brian H. Bornstein, The More You Ask For, the More You Get: Anchoring in Personal Injury Verdicts, 10 APPLIED COGNITIVE PSYCHOL. 519 (); Verlin B. Hinsz & Kristin E. Indahl, Assimilating to Anchors for Damage Awards in a Mock Civil Trial, 25 J. APPLIED SOC. PSYCHOL. 991 (); John Malouff & Nicola A. Schutte, Shaping Juror Attitudes: Effects of Requesting Different Damage Amounts in Personal Injury Trials, 129 J. SOC. PSYCHOL. 491 (); Edward (Ted) L. Sanders, et al., Reptiles, Picassos, and Stealth Bombers: Combating Inflated-Non-Economic Tort Damages, MUNICIPAL LAWYER: THE JOURNAL OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT LAW, 19-23 (Vol. 60, No. 6, Nov./Dec. ). Instead, they renamed anchoring “preconditioning” and attempted to sweep the associated science under the rug.

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With the competing Commentaries complete, the debate moved into reality as fate paired opposing counsel against each other in Patrick W. Dennis v. Air and Liquid Systems Corporation, et.al., Case No. 2:19-cv-3-GW-KS, United States District Court for the Central District of California. On behalf of a defendant, we filed various motions in limine, including #10, TO PRECLUDE REFERENCE TO TENS OF MILLIONS (OR MORE) OR SPECIFIED DAMAGES AMOUNTS.

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