Amy P. was on her way to the airport to catch a flight for a business meeting. She worked as a senior actuary for a major health insurance company. As a result of being hit by the bus, she had a mild brain injury and a neck injury. She was a rising star at the health insurance company, having received the CEO Award for outstanding achievements, and was on the path to become a VP with much greater compensation. However, being hit by a tour bus caused her brain damage that affected her ability to think, concentrate, and made her fatigue out by the afternoon. Simply put, she was not able to do her job, and had to be off work for several months. When she returned to work, her cognitive abilities were still affected, and her job performance suffered.

She then placed in another position by the company in the hopes that she could perform at that job, but again had difficulties keeping up with the cognitive demands of her job, and was ultimately let go from the company and given a severance package. She was later able to find another job with the state, but it paid much less than her private sector job. Another attorney brought the case to BILS to represent her, and the defense promptly asked to mediate. However, the defendant did not take the brain injury seriously, and only offered $100,000 to settle the case because they claimed there was not objective evidence of brain injury. BILS and AMY walked out of the mediation.

After obtaining enhanced imaging of her brain that provided objective evidence of brain damage that was causing her cognitive problems, this was presented to the defense, but the defense tried to claim all of the findings were caused by things other than being hit by a bus. The bus company also tried to blame other phantom vehicles that forced Amy to slow down, which resulted in the bus hitting her, but this defense was soon defeated, and the bus company then had to admit liability. After admitting liability, BILS then focused on getting the bus company to accept responsibility for the brain injury. A new defense attorney was hired for the bus company, and on the even of trial, after losing its motion to exclude the enhanced imaging, the defense finally caved in and accepted Amy’s officer to settle for $1.95 million.