Transcription:
Brendan Lupetin:
Pete, why do you think the case had to be tried?
Peter Pentony:
Primarily the reason was because there were no fair offers made. This is not going to be anything that’s shocking news to the other plaintiff’s lawyers out there, but maybe other folks don’t realize how hard it is to get a reasonable offer that balances the scales for someone who’s been hurt, but doesn’t have enormous medical bills or clear debilitation or disabling injuries. You have to go in there and explain it all to a jury. Insurance companies won’t do what it takes to find out what a person’s really going through. And so they can’t evaluate the case. You have to go in there and put it on.
Brendan Lupetin:
So because of that sort of lack of those clear cut, big economic damages that are sort of the barometer for insurance companies, they just said we’re not interested in fair value on this case?
Peter Pentony:
That’s exactly it, Brendan. They don’t see it as important. They don’t see the fact that, for example, my guy can’t go out in the yard and throw a baseball with his son who’s a college baseball player anymore. They were stuck at home during this whole stupid pandemic and he couldn’t even go out and do a little batting practice with him. That was a huge thing. I mean, my guy was a former Marine. He was a man’s man. But it brought tears to his eyes to talk about not being able to do that. That’s meaningful, and the insurance company’s not gonna give any dignity to that whatsoever.
Brendan Lupetin:
Pete, when did you actually try the case? When did the trial take place?
Peter Pentony:
First week of August this summer. It was the first one in Jefferson County, West Virginia, at least since the shutdown in March. First one that I knew of, although there had been a few others dotted around the County.
Brendan Lupetin:
And when had the case been filed, how long had the case been around for?
Peter Pentony:
That’s a good question. Probably we’d been, I would say about 18 months. We’d actually been set for trial sooner, in June. And the judge did bump that date, by necessity, just because he felt like he hadn’t been able to come up with a good enough protocol to make sure everybody was safe. And the defense frankly, was agitating for a continuance at that point in time. We are incredibly grateful and feel really fortunate that the continuancy granted was only to August and not to something like next June, which is what I was really worried about.
