When a traffic light turned yellow, a bus driver hit the gas, expecting the driver ahead of him to do the same. Instead, the driver stopped to avoid running a red light. The bus driver slammed his brakes, throwing his passengers out of their seats. Frank, a 62-year-old mechanic sitting in a side-facing seat, was on his way to his first date in years, a cluster of balloons in his hand. The sudden stop hurled him face-first into the bus’s railing. His eye smashed into hard metal and burst open. A gush of bloody fluids poured down Frank’s cheek as the bus driver watched him in his review mirror.
Frank was taken to the hospital and rushed into surgery. He had suffered a deep tear to his eye wall, the intraocular tissue had prolapsed, and his pupil had lost its definition. Tragically, surgeons were unable to salvage his eye. Eventually, his medical team would scoop out his eyeball and, through a multi-month process, surgically replace it with a prosthetic. For a man who worked with his hands, the loss of depth perception proved difficult. Frank was known as a hardworking, highly conscientious guy who lived by himself and had no family in town. The traumatic loss of his eye left him physically and emotionally scarred for life.
Frank’s lawyer knew the case was headed to trial and referred it to Sean Breen, partner at Howry, Breen & Herman, LLP. Sean was highly experienced in litigating personal injury and transportation liability cases like bus and train wrecks. He had nine months before the trial was scheduled to start, and he immediately set to work preparing the case. He received little pushback from the defense regarding liability, as it was indisputable that the bus driver should not have tried to gun it through a red light. However, the defense team’s strategy was to minimize Frank’s damages.
Sean’s biggest obstacle was overcoming the defense’s argument that, according to jury verdict research, a single eye was not “worth much” because Frank still had his other one. The defense tried to dismiss mental suffering, noting that modern eye prosthetics looked nice and were a vast upgrade to a wooden eye or a pirate’s patch. In researching past jury verdicts and awards, Sean discovered that many cases were under-settled because the lawyers failed to convey how serious losing an eye truly was. He knew he needed to show a jury how devastating Frank’s injury, surgery, and recovery were.
To show the depth of Frank’s suffering, Sean hired a liability expert, an ophthalmologist, and an eye surgeon. A video inside the bus had captured Frank’s tumble into the railing, but it was grainy and failed to convey the grotesque trauma. Sean brought on DK Global early in the process to recreate the incident from close-up vantage points. DK Global worked with the eye experts to ensure the mechanism of injury was depicted accurately and vividly. Sean did not shy away from the graphic elements of the injury. He knew the visuals may turn people’s stomachs, but he felt the truth of Frank’s lived experience needed to be conveyed to a jury.
The DK Global animation opened with footage from the bus, where Frank was seen being propelled forward onto the railing. The incident was then animated from various angles and slowed down to show each stage of the impact. A close-up of his eye hitting the railing revealed how it burst open. 3D reconstructions of his skull and eye anatomy were correlated with radiological imaging. Photos of his injury were shown, followed by 3D illustrations of his eye removal and his surgeries to implant a prosthetic.
With his team of experts and animations ready, Sean was prepared to take the case to trial. The defense filed a motion for a continuance, but Sean held their feet to the fire and was able to defeat it. He revealed the DK Global animations during mediation and noticed “uh-oh” expressions across the defense attorneys’ faces. The defense settled the case for a confidential sum that was twice the amount a normal loss of eye case likely would have been. When Sean revealed the news, Frank cried tears of joy, immensely grateful for the outcome Sean and his team had achieved for him.
As a founder of Howry, Breen & Herman, LLP, Sean Breen has achieved multiple seven- and eight-figure recoveries for his clients. He specializes in accident, personal injury, premises liability, and dispute cases. He has been included amongst the nation’s most respected and preeminent high-stakes trial lawyers based on his verdicts and settlements, with recognition among 7 Figure Litigators® and 8 Figure Litigators® by America’s Premier High-Stakes Litigators® in 2020. He has repeatedly been acknowledged for his accomplishments by Best Lawyers in America®, Top 50 US Verdicts, Texas Verdicts Hall of Fame, Multi-Million Dollar Advocates Forum, National Top 100 Trial Lawyers, Civil Plaintiff, and Super Lawyers®.
