OFF THE WIRE
http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/16/4126504/contentious-motorcycle-accident.html
Contentious motorcycle crash case heads to Sacramento jury
By Andy Furillo afurillo@sacbee.com By Andy Furillo The Sacramento Bee Last modified: 2011-12-18T18:52:51Z Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 - 10:52 am Copyright 2011 The Sacramento Bee.
This much we know for sure: Jack Wilson slammed the brakes on his 2008 Harley-Davidson Road Glide touring bike and sent it into a freeway slide that propelled his wife into a netherworld of traumatic brain injury.
It's also undisputed that one of the first things Wilson told the first California Highway Patrol officer who responded to the wreck was that his antilock braking system had somehow malfunctioned.
Nobody's arguing, either, about another key fact – the bike never was equipped with an "ABS," even though a little icon on the iconic motorcycle's tachometer suggested that it did.
From there, a dispute rages on, and it's up to a Sacramento Superior Court jury to decide whether Harley-Davidson pays in the millions or nothing at all.
In two days of bitter closing arguments that stretched into Thursday, the lawyer for Harley-Davidson's Sacramento dealer called the brain-damaged woman a liar and suggested she perjured herself.
The plaintiff's attorney countered that the personal attack on his client – and, by extension, himself – represented a desperate attempt by the defendant to get out from under its own responsibility.
"It shouldn't be personal, but it is," plaintiff's attorney William L. Veen of San Francisco told jurors. He characterized his client, Judy Wilson, 50, of Lincoln, as a "valiant, courageous woman who fought back from being a vegetable." To call her a liar "disgusts me," Veen said.
Defense lawyer James William Rushford, representing Harley-Davidson of Sacramento, set off Veen by saying Wilson, a one-time medical assistant, lied about her income on the credit application for the bike and repeated it in court.
It's "a big deal" that reflects on her credibility in a "he-said, she-said" case, Rushford told the jury.
"You need to look her in the eye and say 'No,' " Rushford said.
Wilson engaged in an "unconscionable" scheme to get rich, the lawyer charged. Besides the lie about her income, it included an orchestrated "dance" cooked up by Veen in the way Wilson moved around the courtroom to make her look physically worse than she really is, the defense lawyer charged.
Judge Alan G. Perkins sent the jury into deliberations after the incendiary exchange, and it's now the panel's job to determine if Harley-Davidson of Sacramento was negligent in selling the Wilsons the bike and whether the Harley-Davidson Motor Co.'s product bore a design defect in the form of the "ABS" icon.
The since-estranged Wilson couple bought the motorcycle in January 2008 and crashed it April 11, 2009, while heading north on Highway 99 at Mack Road. Jack Wilson said he hit the brakes when traffic backed up while he was going 65 mph, locking up the rear wheel and catapulting his wife 35 feet forward into the pavement.
She came out of the crash with skull, facial, rib and scapular fractures. She now has a prosthetic skull and permanent brain softening. Pain and assorted disorders will render her unemployable forever, Veen said.
Her attorney told the jury she will sustain $2.6 million in lifetime economic damages. They, in turn, will amount to only 10 percent of "the loss of the personhood," Veen said of a client who can't remember the names of her children.
Wilson and her husband testified the Harley salesman told them the bike contained the antilock braking system, with an elbow-to-the-ribs-type aside that "chicks love ABS."
As for the icon, Veen focused the jury on a Harley engineer's deposition testimony that the manufacturer puts it on all of its bikes "to make sure that those bikes that did have ABS would definitely have the icon in."
Rushford said the dealership made no such representation, and Harley-Davidson Motor Co. attorney Gary A. Wolensky of Newport Beach said there's nothing "odd or unique about having an ABS icon on a non-ABS bike."
If the icon doesn't light up when you start the bike, anybody should know you don't have ABS, according to Wolensky. He said in the six years Harley-Davidson has offered the braking option, nobody has filed a claim or lawsuit or even complained to a dealer.
To require separate tachometers for the two types of bikes would "bring the assembly line to a halt," Wolensky said.
Wolensky and Rushford blamed Jack Wilson, 48, for the crash. They both said he should have known the bike's features after riding it for 15 months and 12,000 miles.
"Jack Wilson should have prevented this accident," Wolensky said. "He didn't know his bike."
Veen laid a third of the fault on Jack Wilson and told the jury to award the estranged husband only $100. But he said the ABS icon and the alleged remark by the salesman mean the manufacturer and the dealer have to pay.
"How many brain-damaged people will it take?" Veen asked.
