This is the second of a two-part story. Click to Read Part 1.
By the time Ted B. Wacker of TBW Law and Joseph Low of The Law Firm of Joseph H. Low IV were fully aligned on Bhagbat’s case, they understood that a just outcome would require more than proving a crash. They had to prove a life. The defense could look at Bhagbat and see a recent immigrant, a food delivery worker, and a man with limited English who had only been in the country a short time. Ted and Joseph saw something else entirely: a husband, a father, a political asylee, and a relentless provider who had crossed continents for his family only to have his future nearly destroyed by a defendant’s illegal left turn.
Joseph later explained that to properly represent a client, he must understand who that person really is. For Bhagbat, that meant looking beyond the records and into the life he had built before the collision. Joseph traveled to Bhagbat’s tiny village in Nepal with a documentary crew and spent time learning the story directly from family and friends. What emerged was not just helpful background — it was the emotional core of the case.
In Nepal, Bhagbat had operated a motorcycle and scooter repair shop. He was known as a hard worker with a dream: to lift his family out of poverty and eventually give his children educational opportunities in America. When local corruption and intimidation targeted him, he refused to submit. He paid for that decision dearly. The violence and pressure he experienced forced him to leave behind the business he had built. Even then, he refused to give up. Over 18 months, he moved through multiple countries, was arrested numerous times, and was sent back more than once before finally reaching the United States. He legally obtained political asylum and went to work immediately. Food delivery was not a glamorous job, but it was honest work, and it let him support his family. There was even a quiet symmetry to it: the scooter he rode in San Francisco echoed the kind of machines he had once repaired in Nepal.
Joseph’s trip also illuminated one of the most moving themes in the case: Bhagbat’s bond with his daughter. After the crash, strokes, and coma, Bhagbat awoke in a state of confusion and temporary amnesia. He did not recognize his wife or children. He assumed another identity and did not believe he was a married man with a family waiting for him. For his daughter, that loss was heartbreaking. During Joseph’s interviews in Nepal, her grief and love made clear just how much the collision had taken. It was no longer enough to show jurors scans, diagnoses, and procedure notes. They needed to understand what it meant for a father to forget his own child.
That insight shaped the attorneys’ trial strategy. Ted and Joseph pressed forward on every front. The case required extraordinary resources. Between medical records, police materials, and deposition transcripts, the team had to work through nearly 100,000 pages of records. They retained roughly 22 experts, with that number growing to 43 as trial approached. The disciplines spanned medical causation, neurology, brain injury, economics, life care planning, damages, and collision reconstruction. Every expert had to be not just qualified but coordinated. In Joseph’s words, brain injury cases require the exact right information, with the right people, at the right time, using the right testing and methodology.
The attorneys also faced a separate logistical battle: bringing Bhagbat’s daughter and additional family members to the United States so they could testify. Strict immigration policies at the time created visa obstacles. Joseph and the team enlisted a prominent immigration attorney based in the United Kingdom to help navigate the process. When delays threatened the trial schedule, Joseph appealed to the judge for more time. The court granted additional months, and the family was eventually able to come to the United States. Their presence gave the case a depth no chart or exhibit ever could.
Still, one major problem remained. Bhagbat’s medical deterioration was extraordinarily difficult to explain. The jury would need to understand how blunt trauma caused internal bleeding, how surgery saved his life but reflected the extent of his injuries, how blood clots bypassed an IVC filter through a congenital hole in his heart, and how those clots caused embolic strokes throughout his brain. They would also need to see how his orthopedic injuries, abdominal trauma, surgeries, and brain deficits fit together into one coherent narrative of harm.
That was the pain point that led Ted and Joseph to DK Global.
DK Global was brought in to transform an immense, medically dense case into something a jury could follow and feel. The team created a 15-minute medical animation and a second animation reconstructing the collision itself. The medical presentation opened with a 3D model of Bhagbat, identifying his visible injuries before moving deeper into the body. Internal organ damage was shown alongside imaging scans. Fractures to his ribs, spine, wrist, and other extremities were illustrated throughout the skeleton. The animation then walked viewers through the surgery in which doctors removed 12 inches of dying colon, showing the invasive steps necessary to save Bhagbat’s life. Additional sequences depicted procedures used to drain his heart and stabilize fractures with surgical hardware.
From there, the presentation shifted to Bhagbat’s brain injuries. MRI scans were correlated with a 3D head and brain model to identify the sites of traumatic and stroke-related damage. The animation concluded by showing how injury to different regions of the brain produced specific deficits, helping explain why Bhagbat’s cognition, memory, personality, and daily functioning had changed so profoundly. The second animation recreated the crash at the San Francisco intersection, showing how the illegal left turn placed the truck directly into Bhagbat’s path and how the impact launched him from the scooter.
Meanwhile, the defense continued to make offers. At an initial mediation before a private mediator, they offered around $5,000,000. Later came a CCP 998 offer of $10,500,000 million. Ted and Joseph declined. As trial preparation intensified and more expert work and visual development came together, the defense increased its offer to $15,750,000 two months before trial. Still, the attorneys held their ground. They believed the case was worth more, and more importantly, they believed Bhagbat deserved more. Pressure kept building. The matter went before a settlement judge, and the numbers climbed: $20,000,000, then $25,000,000, and finally $30,000,000. Ted and Joseph accepted. The result became one of the highest settlements or verdicts in San Francisco history.
Ted B. Wacker, founding partner of TBW Law, has litigated cases for over 30 years as a trial lawyer. In 2015, he served as president of the Orange County Trial Lawyers’ Association. He specializes in catastrophic injury cases, including accidents, medical malpractice, elder abuse, and mass tort pharmaceutical and medical device cases. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA). He has been selected as a California Super Lawyer for the past 10 years.
Joseph Low, founder of The Law Firm of Joseph H. Low IV, served as a U.S. Marine and has worked as a national trial lawyer for over 25 years. He specializes in personal injury and TBI cases and has secured more than $444,000,000 in verdicts and settlements. He was honored with the Criminal Courts Bar Association's President's Award in 2026. He is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA), Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles (CAALA), Consumer Attorneys of California (CAOC), Association of Trial Lawyers of America, American Civil Liberties Union, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
