Reckless Disregard for Human Life: Defendant Driver Sped Down Suburban Street at Over 2x Limit

Western Springs, Illinois, is the kind of community where families expect their children to be safe on the road. That sense of security was shattered when a teenage driver sped a Range Rover through a residential area at more than twice the posted speed limit. As the SUV tore down a 35-mph street, it slammed into the driver’s side of a Jeep carrying two teenage girls to cheerleading practice. Inside the Jeep was Beth, a 17-year-old high school student whose life changed in an instant when the violent collision left her with a severe traumatic brain injury.

The T-bone impact was so violent that the Jeep vaulted, rolled, and crashed into a utility pole across the street. Emergency responders found Beth unconscious and suffering a seizure. She had to be extricated with the Jaws of Life before being rushed to the hospital. Though Beth later appeared outwardly unchanged, the collision left her struggling with the hidden realities of traumatic brain injury: cognitive dysfunction, fatigue, memory loss, and processing difficulties that made her feel, in her own words, unlike the person she had been before.

Beth’s family turned to Timothy Tomasik, founding partner at Tomasik Kotin Kasserman, LLC, for help pursuing justice. Tim quickly recognized both the severity of Beth’s injuries and the complexity of proving them. From the beginning, he saw the case would involve punitive damages. He immediately consulted an accident reconstructionist he had trusted in numerous prior cases and began building the scientific foundation necessary to explain both how the crash happened and why Beth’s injuries were so profound.

As the investigation unfolded, Tim confronted two major challenges. First, he needed to prove just how recklessly the Range Rover had been traveling. Tim’s reconstruction expert suspected the SUV was going at least 80 mph. To confirm that suspicion, the team pursued event data recorder information from the Range Rover. That process proved unusually difficult because the luxury European vehicle’s black box data had to be sent overseas. Roughly ten months later, the data revealed 62 critical data points and confirmed what the evidence had suggested all along: the Range Rover was indeed traveling more than 80 mph, with the accelerator fully depressed. At the same time, the defense attempted to soften liability and damages, suggesting Beth looked fine, was back in school, and had made a “good recovery.”

Tim fought back by organizing the case around the two truths the defense wanted to minimize: the shocking recklessness of the crash and the devastating seriousness of Beth’s invisible brain injury. He worked closely with his accident reconstructionist and retained medical experts who could explain the lasting effects of traumatic brain injury. But testimony alone was not enough. Tomasik knew the case needed visuals powerful enough to show what words could not — both the mechanics of the collision and the microscopic damage inside Beth’s brain. Early in the case, he enlisted DK Global. Together, they created two demonstratives: a scientifically grounded crash reconstruction and a separate brain injury animation depicting Beth’s diffuse axonal injury at the microscopic level.

The presentation began by situating viewers in Western Springs, a residential village filled with homes, parks, schools, backyards, and the ordinary markers of suburban family life. From there, the animation shifted to a bird’s-eye view tracing the Jeep as it carried Beth toward cheerleading practice. The reconstruction then showed the left turn onto 47th Street and the Range Rover approaching at extreme speed. Using black box data and expert analysis, the animation replayed the crash step by step, emphasizing the SUV’s velocity, the fully depressed accelerator, and the violence of the broadsiding impact that sent the Jeep vaulting, rolling, and crashing into a utility pole. Next, the video shifted to the Jeep driver’s perspective, showing how the crash unfolded from the roadway and underscoring the impossibility of avoiding the collision. After establishing liability, the presentation narrowed its focus to Beth herself. A 3D medical animation zoomed into her brain, revealing the diffuse axonal shearing caused by the rapid acceleration-deceleration forces of the impact. In doing so, it made visible the injury that could not be seen from the outside, showing why a teenager who looked normal could still be permanently and profoundly impaired.

Tim used these visuals well before trial, sharing them early to drive value and demonstrate readiness to present the case to a jury. The defense, the insurance decisionmakers, and eventually the retired judge mediating the case, all received not just the animations, but also the punitive damages motion and the scientific evidence underpinning the visuals. Together, they conveyed a clear message: this was not an ordinary crash case, but one involving egregious speeding in a residential community and a permanent traumatic brain injury to a teenage passenger. After mediation, the case resolved for $5,850,000, providing Beth with substantial compensation and allowing her to move forward with the support she would need for the lasting consequences of her injury.

Timothy Tomasik, a founding partner at Tomasik Kotin Kasserman, LLC, is adept at handling medical malpractice, truck accidents, and catastrophic injury cases, with a history of securing multi-million-dollar verdicts and settlements. Notably, he was a leading member of the Plaintiffs’ Executive Committee in the World Trade Center litigation, contributing to a landmark $1.2 billion settlement.