A manager for a large corporation drove through San Francisco’s steep streets with his attention divided between the road and Google Maps. At one intersection, he ignored posted signs prohibiting left turns and hooked an illegal left through a yellow light. In that same moment, a 38-year-old Nepalese refugee named Bhagbat was making a food delivery on his scooter and entered the intersection lawfully. The truck slammed into him with violent force, hurling him from the scooter and across the pavement. In an instant, the defendant’s careless turn shattered the life Bhagbat had fought so hard to build in America.
The tragedy was especially cruel because Bhagbat’s life had already been shaped by extraordinary perseverance. In Nepal, he had operated a motorcycle and scooter repair shop and dreamed of earning enough to give his two children a better future — dreaming of sending his kids to college in the United States. According to the family story later uncovered by counsel, that dream was threatened when he was shaken down and beaten after refusing to submit to corruption and intimidation by the local government. He left Nepal and undertook a harrowing 18-month journey on foot across multiple countries in search of safety and opportunity. He was detained repeatedly and sent back more than once, but he kept going. Eventually, he reached the United States, obtained political asylum, and settled into grueling work. With limited education and limited English, food delivery was one of the few paths open to him. He worked 12 hours a day, seven days a week as a food delivery driver, sending money home and trying to build the American life he had imagined for his children. Then one illegal turn nearly erased all of it.
At first, Bhagbat appeared conscious after the crash. He even expressed concern about being late with his delivery. But what looked survivable quickly became catastrophic. As paramedics rushed him to the hospital, Bhagbat rapidly deteriorated. By the time he reached the ER, he was near cardiac arrest from internal bleeding and profound blood loss. Surgeons performed emergency surgery to save his life, removing 12 inches of dead colon in the process. Bhagbat suffered 12 to 13 rib fractures, wrist fractures, and numerous additional orthopedic injuries. Doctors later placed an IVC filter to protect him from blood clots, but clots passed through a congenital hole in his heart and traveled to his brain, causing embolic strokes. Bhagbat was placed into a drug-induced coma for two months. When he finally woke up, he did not fully understand who he was. For a time, he believed he was someone else — an 18-year-old with no wife and no children. The father, husband, and provider his family knew had been altered forever.
Bhagbat’s original attorney referred the matter to Ted B. Wacker, founding partner of TBW Law. Ted did not treat the case like a file to be reviewed from afar. He flew to San Francisco to meet Bhagbat while he was still recovering in the hospital. What he found was a client whose injuries were devastating, whose ability to communicate was limited by both language and brain injury, and whose future had been thrown into chaos. Ted understood immediately that this was not an ordinary collision case. It was medically complex, emotionally layered, and likely to become a fight over whether the life of a recent immigrant from Nepal would be valued fairly by the defense and insurance company — in a city he believed a jury would have an established bias against his line of work.
That concern only grew as Ted began evaluating the defense’s posture. On paper, liability initially appeared straightforward. The defendant had admitted fault in the police report. But Ted knew simple-looking cases can become dangerous if they are not fully built. The medicine alone demanded precision. Bhagbat had suffered traumatic orthopedic injuries, major abdominal trauma, massive blood loss, embolic strokes, and lasting cognitive impairment. To present the case correctly, every phase of that deterioration would need to be understood, connected, and proved. Ted began assembling the records, consulting with experts, and mapping the medical timeline. He also recognized another reality: cases involving immigrants, especially recent arrivals working low-wage jobs, are too often discounted by insurers who assume the plaintiff’s life story will not resonate. Ted was determined not to let that happen here.
As the work-up continued, the defense made the kind of calculations Ted feared. Despite Bhagbat’s catastrophic injuries, they appeared to be valuing the case through a diminished lens. To Ted, that was unacceptable. This was a man who had crossed continents for his family, survived political upheaval, built a life from almost nothing, and then suffered life-changing injuries because a corporate driver ignored basic traffic controls. Ted wanted the case prepared at a level that would leave no room for minimization — medically, factually, and morally.
He also knew when to strengthen the team. Because the case involved a traumatic brain injury component and highly complex trial issues, Ted teamed with Joseph Low, founder of The Law Firm of Joseph H. Low IV. Joseph’s practice focused heavily on trial work, including difficult brain injury cases, and Ted believed his experience could help bring the matter to perfection. Joseph later said that when Ted contacted him, what stood out was not a lawyer looking for someone to clean up a mess. It was the opposite. Ted had already built a strong, well-worked-up case and wanted to maximize every possible outcome for Bhagbat. Joseph respected that immediately. He also shared Ted’s concern that the defense was undervaluing Bhagbat because of who he was and where he came from.
Then the case took another turn. Months after the collision, when Ted deposed the defendant, the driver’s story changed. The same person who had admitted liability now claimed he had stopped in the intersection and waited for a red light before turning — implying Bhagbat must have run the light. It was a direct attempt to rewrite the crash and push blame onto the victim. Ted responded the way strong trial lawyers do: with evidence, not outrage. He retained an accident reconstructionist who downloaded data from the truck. The vehicle data showed the defendant had never stopped and never waited, undercutting the revised version of events.
That development clarified the true nature of the fight ahead. This was no longer just a severe injury case. It was a battle over truth, value, and dignity. Bhagbat could not advocate for himself in the way he once might have. His memory had been damaged. His cognition had changed. His family was overseas. His voice had to come through the work of the attorneys willing to stand in the gap for him.
Ted and Joseph were prepared to do exactly that. But to fully tell Bhagbat’s story — and to defeat a defense effort that seemed poised to reduce him to a set of medical bills and immigration stereotypes — they would need to go much further than the usual case preparation.
This is Part 1 of the story. Come back here for the conclusion in Part 2 on July 16th.
