We've spent over a decade representing cyclists and motorcyclists who have been injured. It's simple really in my office. We ride. So we know what it's like out there. And we know how to tackle issues that are unique to two-wheeled collisions. There are a lot of personal injury lawyers, but my firm is different at Roman law. We guide you through the legal process, and we listen, we get to know you and we fight for your rights. I have successfully litigated hundreds of cases, and I'm skilled and getting case is settled. I'm devoted to taking on insurance companies and big corporations to get injured people, the compensation, the losses they are entitled to. I've been a lawyer in San Francisco for 17 years. And now I'm part of the Central Coast Community with an office in Paso Robles, bringing the resources of a big city law firm to you, Ramallah handles, personal injury cases on a contingency fee basis.
The first one is visibility. If you're going to go out on a bicycle ride, make sure that your clothing is visible, that you have reflective gear on the bicycle, that you have flashing lights everywhere, and do everything you can to make yourself visible to vehicle traffic with everything that goes on inside of a car texting, listening to music, talking to passengers. You know, even on speaker phones talking to other people and concentrating on conversations, folks that are in their cars are not paying attention. The more visible you are, the man, I'm not even talking about it. Not even during the day, you should have flashers on you should have visible clothing on, because during the day, even if people are driving in the sunlight, they see a flashing light in front of them always be visible. Maintenance of your bicycle is critical. The last thing that you want to do is have a tire blowout when you're writing two feet away from a car going 40 miles an hour right next to you.
You want to make sure your brakes are working. So that if a car pulls out in front of you, your brakes are proportioned properly so that your back brakes work first, and your front brakes work s, and that you press them in the right order so that you don't flip over your wheels. And you want to make sure that you've got your chain properly maintained, and you want to do everything you can to make sure that everything on your bicycle is safe so that it will not in any way be the cause or a contributing factor of any kind of an accident that you might have obey the laws. People think that if they're on a bicycle, they're they're not in a vehicle. So the traffic laws don't count. If you're electing to ride your bicycle on the roadway, you're considered a motor vehicle while you're not considered a motor vehicle. But you're required to follow the same rules that our vehicles follow your required to follow the signs that say, no, turning, you're required to stop at stop signs. You're required to pretend your vehicle. If you're on the roadway, I know someone that even got a speeding ticket on a bicycle and a 15 mile an hour speed zone. So be aware of the fact that traffic laws apply to you on a bicycle. Wear a helmet. I mean, that's obvious, but head injuries of the number injury that happens when somebody gets into an accident on a bicycle. So please always wear a helmet. Don't worry about whether it's a violation of law or not worry about whether your brain is protected. That would be the most important thing and be aware of your surroundings. Understand where you are, or you in a school zone? Is it nighttime is a daytime. Are you in an area where there's a lot of elderly people that don't really pay attention, or you where they might be pulling out of driveways without notice? Seeing you? Are you in an area where there are a lot of kids that are getting out of school, where they're really not focused on on you? Are you writing with traffic? Are you writing close to the roadway? Are you riding with the sun in your eyes? And imagine if it's hard for you to see it's going to be just as hard for the driver of the car next to you to see as well. So these are some of the things that I've noticed over the years that if you follow some of these safety tips on a bicycle, there's of a chance that you'll have a catastrophic injury with a vehicle. And God forbid.
If you do have an accident with a vehicle, the driver of that vehicle won't be able to turn to your conduct, or turn to the way that your bicycle was maintained, or turns any of the factors that involve your conduct and your condition of your bicycle to argue that your injuries are not compensable and that they were your own fault. That's the last thing you want to happen if someone causes you injury while you're riding a bicycle. So if you need help with the bicycle case in Florida, give me a call. last year in 2019, where we were able to successfully win a bicyclist knockdown K. So this was a young kid 18 years old. He was working at a cafe. And after about midnight, he was done with his shift. He was a busboy cleaning and whatnot. And he lived just a few blocks away. So they got on his bike. And he was riding home, and you had the green light, you know, no one on the road. And all of a sudden, as he's going through an intersection, a black Mercedes come speeding right through the red light, hits them just T-Bones him. He flies off the off the bike onto the hood of the car, and then down onto the ground. And the injury he sustained was a clavicle fracture. So it's the bone like, right here that runs horizontally. And you could see here we have some exhibits Abbott. So he had a clavicle fracture. And so we, we showed the jury pictures of the fracture we showed the actual x-ray showing where the where the broken bone was. And so here you could also see the clavicle running across. And we talked about the fact that it's a serious injury. It's a broken bone. And this particular fracture was comminuted, which means that little little pieces of the bone were there. It didn't. You didn't need surgery. The fracture was able to heal without surgery, but it was mildly comminuted. So he did have some pieces. And the way it healed after the after the injury was that he had a little bit of a bump like a little bit of a protrusion here because of the way healed. So we're talking about just generally about the bone itself, different views of the bone, how people get affected by it, and and how the that particular clavicle interacts with everything else, because you see here the clavicles in the front, but it connects to the shoulder muscle, which then connect to various muscles in your thoracic spine, which is your mid-back.
It connects to muscles in your neck c 1 c 7 connects to the shoulder. So it kind of affects everything. And he ended up having some neck injuries to on bulging discs. So basically, we showed the that we showed the injury to the neck how the disc the rupture beyond the actual disc itself and the leak would touch the nerve root. And then that, in turn would cause pain. And then the pain from the neck would shoot into the arms that's called radiculopathy or radiating pain. So it's traveling down to the arms. And then, you know, again, we showed that this the way the disc leaks through, because a disc like you can see here in the photo at this is basically like a perfect circle, right? Right? And it sits between two vertebrae, which are bone. And then you have these Rings inside the disc, kind of like, if you cut a tree and you look at the tree to tree has rings. Some people say that's how old the tree is the same thing with a disc. But each of these Rings is a wall. So for that nucleus, that jelly the break through all of these walls, and then to leak outside of the disk and touch the nerve Roots. That's a pretty serious impact. That's a pretty serious injury. So we back to the jury. And this particular case, we actually had a claim for some lost wages. He was going to school, but he had plans to become an accountant. And because of this crash, he wasn't able to ever finish school, because he wasn't able to write with a broken clavicle. So we claim that it's called unrealised occupation. He would have been an accountant, but he ended up losing a year two years behind. Then, because of other Financial constraints, he ended up doing other things like driving an Uber and just, you know, making ends meet. And then now he may still do that become an accountant, but he's way behind now. So so we claim that. And that was, I think, the total of about 60 thousand dollars for the unrealised occupation because of the delay in becoming an accountant, which is what he wanted to do. So all together, we try this case. We try the entire case in about about one day, which we spent one day picking the jury and the other day during the trial. It's called a summary jury trial. It's a new method that they have in Brooklyn. And so everything is done really quick. So you put on opening statement is 10 minutes you put on the plaintiff. He testifies that's under an hour. You can do a medical option instead of asking doctors to come in, because the doctor would have to charge for putting all his patients on hold coming in and testifying you might charge 5000 some doctors will charge ten thousand dollars. It doesn't make sense. This was a case against Allstate with 100000 policy.
