Congratulations to the MichieHamlett team of Bryan Slaughter, Kyle McNew, and Ashley Davis on their recent settlement of $18.5 Million for a 49-year-old woman who was paralyzed as a result of a rear-end collision. This settlement was the result of meticulous work by the Michie Hamlett team. We at Jury Impressions were honored to work with this incredible team with regard to the focus group that tested value and other issues unique to this case.

The following is the description of the case as reported in Virginia Lawyer’s Weekly:

The plaintiff is a 49-year-old woman. She is married and has four children. In late fall of 2024, she was driving to work in Albemarle County. She was stopped in traffic when she was hit from behind by a commercial motor vehicle.

The force of the impact broke the driver’s seat and threw the plaintiff into the backseat. After a prolonged extraction from her vehicle and transport to the hospital, she was diagnosed with a catastrophic injury to her spinal column and cord beginning at the T2-T3 level and continuing to T5.

Despite immediate surgical attempts to stabilize the column and decompress around the cord, the plaintiff was paralyzed from the chest down. She spent over three weeks in the hospital and was then transferred to inpatient rehabilitation, where she stayed another seven weeks.

Plaintiff’s counsel was retained while the plaintiff was still in the rehabilitation facility. Counsel immediately engaged with counsel for the commercial motor carrier.

Plaintiff’s counsel was able to negotiate an advance of funds in anticipation of eventual settlement or verdict to help clear one of the earliest obstacles of finding a suitable place to live following discharge, as the family’s apartment could not accommodate the equipment necessary for her comfort and care.

Plaintiff’s counsel also immediately began preparing the damages case in order to posture the case for early resolution or a quick trial date. This included engagement of a PM&R expert and life care planner to begin evaluating the plaintiff and interacting with her providers to develop a future care plan. Plaintiff’s counsel also worked with a video production company to produce video for use in focus groups and to accompany a future settlement demand. The video included interviews with experts and plaintiff’s family and friends, as well as footage of plaintiff’s daily life and rehabilitation efforts.

Plaintiff’s counsel provided medical records and bills to the defense on a rolling basis, and provided the demand video and accompanying expert reports to the defense several months before the scheduled mediation.

Prior to the mediation, plaintiff conducted a focus group to test value and to gauge the impact of certain facts unique to the case. For purposes of the focus group, plaintiff’s counsel commissioned alternative experts to produce a defense-oriented future care presentation.

Mediation occurred approximately ten months from the date of incident, and the settlement was finalized approximately one week after mediation. Plaintiff’s counsel, including in-house trust formation counsel Jim Cox, have worked with the plaintiff to engage a trust company and develop a trust that will protect and grow the settlement funds while providing for the plaintiff and her family.

Congratulations to the Breit Biniazan team of Lee Floyd, Scott Perry, Justin Sheldon, and Kevin Biniazan for their groundbreaking verdict of $360 million for three young women against a Virginia hospital and its former medical director for sexual abuse and fraud. 

The verdict resulted in justice for the young women and affirmed their worth and restored their trust in the system. 

Irv Cantor stated, “Kevin Biniazan and I did several focus groups prior to trial, and Kevin did a masterful job in the focus groups and then in using the intel he obtained from the focus group jurors to craft his strategies for trial. Kevin was meticulous, creative, prepared, and unflappable. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Kevin.

Kevin Biniazan also shared, “Our firm is incredibly grateful for the work and insight of Irv and the team at Jury Impressions. Our clients may never truly understand the great work they did to help achieve this outcome, but our firm will never forget it.”

We are pleased to announce that Jury Impressions was selected as the Virginia Lawyers Weekly Reader Rankings winner for the top Jury/Trial Consulting Company in Central Virginia!

This edition of Reader Rankings focused on the metro Richmond area and the surrounding cities. The idea of the rankings is to recognize the businesses that assist the commonwealth’s lawyers in their work across the many variety of their law practices.

In past editions, Jury Impressions has been nominated and selected as a finalist. However, we are so excited to be voted as the top Jury/Trial Consulting Company for 2023, and we would like to thank everyone who took the time to vote for us.

Jury Impressions was started in 2005 to make the mock trial system and consulting services available to trial lawyers nationwide. Thank you for your votes, and support, and for trusting us with your cases.

Jury Impressions conducted multiple focus groups for this case. This is the largest known settlement ever in Virginia for a single injury victim.

Congratulations to Chris Guedri & Trent Kerns of Allen & Allen on this settlement.

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Congratulations to Keenan Nix and Chris Graddock of the law firm of Morgan and Morgan for obtaining an $11 million verdict in a mild traumatic brain injury case in DeKalb County, Georgia. Keenan and Chris asked Jury Impressions to conduct a focus group in the case a few weeks prior to trial. The focus group also returned a verdict for $11 million.

Irv Cantor discusses his experience and expertise in the field of brain injury litigation.

Recognized as an expert in the field, Cantor’s cases include more than 400 traumatic brain injuries suffered by clients ranging from attorneys to physicians to claims adjusters – brain injury does not discriminate. And Cantor, say his peers, has a palpable empathy for those whose identities are often distorted by their injuries.

Read the full article here

Congratulations to Scott Perry and Mikhael Charnoff for obtaining a verdict of $2,000,000 in a medical malpractice case in Fredericksburg, Virginia. The case involved a podiatrist’s failure to recognize a blood clot before a routine surgery, which led to an above-the-knee amputation. Scott and Mikhael asked Jury Impressions to conduct a focus group in the case a few weeks prior to trial.

Scott and Mikhael stated: “We completely changed the presentation of the case based upon the feedback we learned from the focus group jurors, specifically focusing on the metadata which uncovered a late entry in the medical records. This was a no offer case, and we obtained a $2,000,000 verdict from the jury, who deliberated for only 45 minutes.”

On June 12, 2018, Jury Impressions Legal Consultant Irvin V. Cantor was inducted into the Virginia Lawyers Hall of Fame. Virginia Lawyers Weekly established the Hall of Fame in 2018 to recognize Virginia’s most significant senior lawyers. Membership in the Hall of Fame is reserved for Virginia lawyers age 60 and over. Criteria for inclusion in the hall include: career accomplishments, contributions to the development of law in Virginia, contributions to the bar, contributions to the Commonwealth of Virginia, and efforts to improve the quality of justice in Virginia.

Irv was one of only 33 total members of the Hall of Fame’s inaugural class. The induction ceremony took place at the John Marshall Hotel in Richmond, Virginia.

Read about it here