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We're now in part four of this fascinating sledding accident case where I found an old
transcript hiding in some papers and now I want to share with you the rest of what I
said in closing remarks. You want to learn what happened here? Come join me as I share
with you this great information. Hi. I'm Gerry Oginski. I'm a New York medical malpractice
and personal injury trial lawyer practicing law in the state of New York. Again, you should
know that before I started out my career representing injured victims for the first four years of
my legal career I represented people who were sued in accident cases. And as I was cleaning
out some papers in my home, I came across a transcript of a case that I tried back in
May of 1990 in Minneola where I represented a winter resort up in the Poconos. And here's
what the case was about. A gentleman and his wife go up to the Poconos. They're going with
a couple that they know and now it had just snowed and they wanted to go sledding down
this hill. And ultimately this guy takes one of those flying saucers, gets on it and spins
around as he's going down builds up speed, hits something at the bottom, flies off and
breaks his tailbone. And now, this is the closing remarks. We're now up to part four
so listen in, it's really fascinating. "Plaintiff traveled. It's his testimony that he traveled
70 feet from the point of where he got on this sled to the point where this incident
occurred. Seventy feet in four seconds, four seconds. A little bit of math and the judge
is going to give you a calculation. He'll give you a formula to determine how fast he
was going. But if you merely divide the time it takes to travel seventy feet, you can determine
how many feet you're going per second. That would be 17 ½ feet per second. Now, 17 ½
feet per second is kind of a hard concept to really understand. Most of us are familiar
with traveling in cars, driving cars. We know about miles per hour. So there's a simple
little formula the judge is going to give you that you can even calculate yourself.
And by plugging this number into the formula to find out how many feet per second equals
miles per hour, it comes out to about 11 ½ to 12 miles per hour. Now driving a car that
may now seem much because in cars we're used to going considerably faster. But getting
on this sled in the nice winter air on a little dinky sled, 180 pounds of man, you're going
down a hill with no breaks, no way to steer, going 11 to 12 miles an hour is fast. That's
now slow at all. That may be like riding a bicycle down a hill and this is fast. For
a sled like this, that's uncontrollable. That spins, you're really moving now. And the Plaintiff
said he was moving slow. Slow. Well, let me tell you something. If you're moving slow,
if you're going slow on this thing, you simply don't have any fun. You get down to the bottom
of the hill if you're moving slow and it's like it's not a refreshing feeling. And the
only way to have a great time on this thing is if you're going fast. And ladies and gentlemen,
he was going fast. Now what happened here?" So now what I'm doing is I'm setting the jury
up to get them to understand in their minds exactly what it was occurring. "Now he's coming
down, we're still up on the hill. Three quarters of the way down something happens. Nobody
knows what happens. Plaintiff doesn't even know. His wife doesn't know. The neighbor
doesn't know. These were all people who were watching him go down this hill continuously.
They don't know what happened. Now the owner's son who saw from the kitchen the guy go down
the hill, he didn't know what happened at the time. A day later he comes out to examine
the area to see what could have caused it and all he could find were railroad ties.
But he doesn't know for sure that that's what it was. Maybe there was a rock there that
someone moved overnight. Maybe there was something else. Ladies and gentlemen, we just don't
know. I wish we did. I wish someone could say that yes, this is what it was. This is
what caused this incident. Because if we knew then, we wouldn't be here. We would not be
here. But the reality is we don't know. Now the plaintiff says because there was no signs
up." And here's part of the argument that I'm trying to address and get the jury to
focus on to realize this is a ridiculous argument. Now remember in New York in an accident case,
the defense makes closing remarks first. And when I'm done, the plaintiff (the injured
victim's attorney) then goes ahead and gives his closing remarks. So he's the one who actually
has the last word. So now I'm raising an argument that I believe the plaintiff is going to raise
and now I'm going to address it and get the jury to focus on how ridiculous this argument
really is. "Plaintiff says because there were no signs up (I'll presume he'll say that)
because there were no signs up on that hill where this incident occurred. And ladies and
gentlemen, there were no signs up. Now here you have the beautiful country inn run by
family. They have 400 acres. Four hundred acres of terrain, of land with different typography.
You have hills, you have flat places, you have forests, you have all kinds of different
areas. What are you going to do? Are you going to put up signs for every single type of event,
for every possibility that could occur, for every single season that can happen?" I'm
setting this up to make fun of the plaintiff's argument. To show them how ridiculous this
argument is really how preposterous it is. "So what are you going to have? Signs that
say beware: road way ahead? Or one of the summer: beware, don't walk in grass. Could
get stung by a bee. How about this one? Beware: rocks below. Or beware: tree stump over there.
Beware: don't ice skate on the pond, ice could break." So I'm explaining to the jury and
pointing out this argument is absolute nonsense. And putting in the jury's minds and recognition
that what they're claiming here made absolutely no common sense. And that's one of the things
that I get them to focus on during the course of my closing remarks. So come join me in
the next video as I continue on as we finish up these closing remarks and I show you exactly
what I did and why. You know, I realize you're watching this because you likely have questions
or concerns about your own particular matter. Well if your matter happened here in New York
and you do have legal questions, what I encourage you to do is pick up the phone and call me.
I can answer your legal questions. This is something that I do every single day and I'd
love to talk to you. You can reach me at 516-487-8207 or by email at Gerry@Oginski-law.com. That's
it for today's quick video. I'm Gerry Oginski, have a wonderful day!