Teenagers are notorious for paying more attention to their devices than to their own surroundings. One morning in late 2018, a sixteen-year-old in rural California strutted across her school’s parking lot, her eyes trained on her phone instead of the potentially hazardous environment around her. Consequently, she failed to see the school district van that was slowly pulling out of her path. She bumped into the side of the van. Stunned, the teen fell to the ground, directly in front of the van's back tires. Inside the van, the driver felt an unexpected bump. He hadn't seen any obstacles in the parking lot when he pulled out, so what did the van roll over? He stopped and exited the van to find the teenager on the ground in the path that he’d just traveled.
The driver wasn’t just a regular chauffeur; he was the Director of Transportation for the entire school district. He had a long and distinguished career of serving the needs of local schoolchildren throughout his county. On the morning of the accident, he was shuttling students with special needs to their classroom on the far side of campus. His experience with children from diverse backgrounds taught him never to be too cautious while on the job. That he could ever inadvertently injure somebody was unthinkable to him, but the impossible became a miserable reality for this public servant. As a result, he ended up on the receiving end of considerable scrutiny.
The case immediately fell into the hands of the school's Claims Administrator, who required substantial assistance in navigating the ambiguity. He wasted no time in securing the experience of attorney John Kelley. His firm, Morgan & Kelley, had been defenders of school districts throughout Northern California for decades. John had a long track record of delving deeply into complex cases to uncover even the most hidden nuggets of truth. In this case, all that John had were the plaintiff's and defendant's conflicting stories and a vague police report that blamed the driver. The parameters around the case had cut out his work for him, but he knew where and how to begin a thorough investigation.
John tirelessly contacted everybody who might have been in the area at the time of the accident — including other students and school employees — but nobody was helpful. He searched high and low for surveillance footage, but none existed. The paucity of readily available evidence meant that robust scientific analyses would be needed to fill the gaps. He hired an accident reconstructionist to inspect the defendant's van and map out the scene of the collision in exhaustive detail. He also sought the assistance of a biomechanics expert to work backwards from the plaintiff's injuries to their exact causes.
Meanwhile, the plaintiff's attorneys demanded a high-seven-figure payout, citing only the police report's rash allegation that the driver had been entirely at fault. However, the teenager believed the front of the van had hit her, while the driver maintained he had never seen anybody through his windshield. The plaintiff’s side argued that the driver was not only negligent but that he bore 100% of the liability. John was sure that he could prove the contrary, and he took advantage of the litigation process's slow pace to assemble a comprehensive picture of the accident. Precisely one year after the accident, his experts revisited the scene and used the knowledge they'd gained to recreate every second of the incident. They deduced that the plaintiff had ambled around the side of the van and walked straight into it while the vehicle was making a left-hand turn in front of her. She'd been distracted by her phone, and she'd been squarely in the driver's blind spot — and therefore behind him — at the moment of impact. No one could have reasonably expected him to see a person in a position infamous for its dangerously low visibility. Nevertheless, proving that fact to a jury wouldn't be easy, so John contracted DK Global to translate his experts' complex findings into a concise animated reconstruction.
The DK Global presentation began with a satellite view of the accident scene, showing the plaintiff's and driver's starting locations and paths, marked with graphical overlays. The animated reconstruction began with an overhead analytical view of the incident's key elements: the plaintiff, the vehicle, their paths, and where the plaintiff's phone was discovered on the ground. The animation played with the driver's simulated field of view shown by another overlay, demonstrating that the plaintiff had indeed walked into the driver's blind spot. Replays showcased the accident from increasingly zoomed-in angles, the assemblage of which clarified the otherwise confusing collision. The final animation was from the driver's point of view and showed his inability to see the plaintiff throughout the incident.
John and the plaintiff’s attorneys argued the case over four years. Initially, the plaintiff demanded $8,000,000 to settle the matter. They refused to budge until expert disclosure occurred in the weeks leading up to trial. John's prudent early involvement of experts ultimately paid off: after deposing John’s experts and reviewing the DK Global presentation, the plaintiff's attorneys filed an offer to compromise for $2,600,000. Because the value of the plaintiff's injuries was estimated to be in the eight figures, John was pleased to accept the hard-won offer.
John Kelley has been licensed to practice law in the State of California since 1993 and has been a partner at Morgan & Kelley since its inception. The firm specializes in litigating cases involving personal injury, automobile accidents, and wrongful death. They have over thirty years of experience in defending school districts in every county north of Sacramento. In 2025, John was awarded the Notable rating by Martindale-Hubbell, an organization of peer reviewers recognized for upholding strong ethical standards. Morgan & Kelley has been awarded the AV Preeminent rating by the same organization, their highest possible peer rating.
