$250,000 Settlement – 22-Year-Old Graduate Student Loses Hearing Due to Auto Collision

In August 2019, our young client was traveling southbound on a highway in Michigan when traffic came to a stop due to an accident ahead of him. As he waited behind other cars for traffic to resume to its normal pace, the defendant failed to stop or even slow for traffic and rear ended our client at approximately 75 miles per hour. The impact from this crash caused a chain reaction, with our client’s car jolting forward into the car in front of him. As a result of this horrific collision, our client sustained several facial fractures, one of which caused him to lose hearing in his right ear.

Before this accident, our client was a young and active man, set to begin graduate school where he planned to study Physics, just a week after the accident occurred. Due to the accident, he was forced to miss the orientation and the social experience that goes along with it. Our client also had continued hearing loss, a specialist determined that he would likely never regain hearing in his right ear. This hearing loss took a significant toll on him, and it is now hard for him to have conversations in areas where there is a lot of background noise. He now also experiences overall body weakness and fatigue as he struggles to do the activities that were once easy for him. Our client also experienced driving related anxiety after the accident, to the point that he feared driving on the highway.

Although this rear-end accident occurred in Michigan, both our client and the defendant were residents of Ohio. This required our dedicated team to decide which state’s laws applied, which was critical for evaluating theories for our client’s recovery. Through careful research and analysis, our team of attorneys decided that Ohio law was applicable in this case. Through negotiations, we were succeeded in avoiding litigation and obtaining a settlement for our client. While our client can never be made completely whole due to the permanent hearing loss he incurred, the substantial settlement we secured for him will go a long way to account for his pain and suffering and help him as he moves forward into the next chapter of his life and studies.