How Joseph Wilson's Riveting Opening Set Up Six-Figure Verdict in Armored Car Crash Trial

A powerful opening narrative about a plaintiff’s life and the magnitude of her loss often lays the crucial foundation for an effective damage claim. At a damages-only trial over an armored truck crash that shattered a Georgia woman’s arm, Joseph Wilson’s riveting opening about the wreck's lasting impact led to a six-figure verdict. 

Kirche Hall’s arm was broken in a 2017 crash with a Loomis Armored-owned truck. The injury required Hall, 29 at the time of the crash, undergo surgery and ongoing treatment.  

In openings of the three-day trial on damages, Wilson of JL Wilson Law, introduced Hall as a woman with a “caregiver’s heart.” Hall, Wilson said “fell into her passion” when her great grandmother needed home healthcare. “Out of everyone in her family, you know who stepped up?” Wilson asked. “It was Kirche, in her early 20s. And she took care of her great-grandmother up until she passed away at the age of 110 years old.”

Wilson told jurors that caring for her grandmother awakened a love of healthcare that led Hall to become a certified nursing assistant. “She actually had aspirations, before this collision occurred, of getting more clients,” Wilson said. “She wanted to do it full time. That’s how much she enjoyed it.”

However, Wilson said, the crash changed that. “When this impact occurred, her dreams of being a CNA? They were shattered, like dropping a vase on the ground. Shattered.”

“Shattered,” Wilson noted was an appropriate word, given that the term was how her treating doctor would describe the fracture that he says led him to recommend Hall not continue work as a CNA. 

“She’s going to tell you that it really hurts,” Wilson said. 

Wilson’s opening vividly introduced Hall to the jurors setting the foundation that would allow them to connect with her life story and the fallout she suffered from the crash. And it led to a $584,000 verdict in the case.