After a long day of work, an elevator fire door in Mrs. K’s apartment complex nearly killed her when she stepped out onto her floor. The 400-pound emergency barrier suddenly shut and violently struck her head, knocking her unconscious. She fell and slammed her head onto the floor. When she awoke, she screamed for help. Luckily, a neighbor heard her and contacted 911. When first responders arrived, she complained of symptoms indicating a traumatic brain injury and spinal damage.
Mrs. K was taken to the emergency room and evaluated by doctors. They ordered medical imagery of her spine and brain, but surprisingly, all scans showed no objective injuries. However, after a month of battling post-concussive symptoms and back pain, Mrs. K went in for a second check-up, revealing fractures and disc bulges along her spine.
Greyson Goody of The Simon Law Group was referred to help Mrs. K after the incident. After meeting Mrs. K and hearing her story, Greyson agreed to represent her. He encouraged Mrs. K to continue her medical care and the corrective surgeries her doctors recommended.
Greyson’s first challenges were figuring out what caused the fire door to malfunction and whose negligence caused it. It took hours of research and investigation, but he eventually found the responsible party.
During discovery, Greyson found there were regulations regarding the elevator door’s functionality. Seeking an expert’s opinion, an elevator inspector found the faulty door was not only non-compliant with those regulations, it closed with so much force that it could have severed an arm or killed an infant had one been in the way.
Greyson anticipated a challenge connecting Mrs. K’s injuries to her initial trauma due to her normal radiology reports. As Mrs. K recovered from her procedures, Greyson looked to communicate the extent of her damages to the Defense and potential jury. He contacted DK Global to create a series of animations that outlined Mrs. K’s mechanism of injury and the depth of her treatment.
The presentation began by demonstrating the coup-contrecoup injury caused by the door. When Mrs. K’s head was struck, her brain was thrust backward, collided with her skull, and ricocheted towards the front, resulting in a traumatic brain injury. The next animation showed Mrs. K’s canal stenosis and myelopathy, an injury caused by severe compression and disc bulges. After that, an illustration of Mrs. K’s invasive kyphoplasty procedure demonstrated how her broken vertebra was repaired using surgical cement. Finally, her three-level cervical decompression and fusion surgery was shown.
The visuals were presented to the opposition a week before trial during the deposition of Mrs. K’s treating surgeon. The expert authenticated the accuracy of the DK Global animations, persuading the Defense to offer a favorable settlement for Mrs. K to aid her in her recovery.
Greyson Goody is a partner and senior trial attorney at The Simon Law Group. Since beginning his career, Greyson has obtained over $40 million in jury verdicts. In 2019, Greyson was named “Street Fighter of the Year” by the Consumer Attorneys of California and has been consecutively recognized as a “Rising Star” by Super Lawyers since 2018.
