Congratulations to Trial Guides reader Ross Pesek on receiving a substantial verdict for a client with multiple pre-existing conditions. This $512,000 verdict—more than twenty times the defense’s best pre-trial offer—grew from lessons in David Ball on Damages, Trial by Human, and Running with the Bulls.
Case Summary
Plaintiff: 60 year old, disabled, Spanish-speaking Black immigrant (Cuban)
Defendants: a propane truck driver, the propane distributor, and the tractor driver
Suing for: medical expenses, loss of enjoyment of life, permanent disability, and physical pain
County: Buffalo Country, Nebraska
Best Pre-Trial Offer: $25,000
Final Verdict: $512,000
The Story
The case involved a collision involving a propane truck and an oversized tractor on a two-lane highway. The tractor’s cultivator, extending beyond the lane and over the center line, forced the propane truck into a tight space. Instead of taking evasive action and using 10 feet of available highway shoulder, the propane truck driver collided head-on with the tractor, causing an explosion. The plaintiff, trailing the tractor, was struck by flying propane tanks.
Following the accident, the plaintiff accrued $38,000 in medical bills. He also lives with ongoing pain and suffering as a result of the explosion.
The plaintiff, a 60-year-old Cuban immigrant, was a former worker at a Tyson meatpacking plant in Nebraska. As a result of the work, and several preexisting conditions, he was declared disabled by the SSA in 2014. He lived with pre-existing scoliosis and chronic back pain, both of which were aggravated by the accident.
The plaintiff's team, led by Ross Pesek of Pesek Law, LLC, brought a case against three defendants: the propane truck driver, propane distributor, and the tractor driver. The defense tried to shift blame to the tractor driver, a respected farmer whose equipment size contributed unavoidably to the situation. The propane company denied any fault and claimed their driver acted safely, but dashcam footage from the plaintiff’s car showed a lack of evasive maneuvering in the moments before the accident.
The Case
Pesek’s legal team used a trial strategy of sequencing witnesses in order to highlight the corporate defendant’s insistence that company drivers should be able to repeat the same conduct in future.
The medical case was complicated by the plaintiff’s longstanding health conditions and prior disability. The treating doctor, a longtime family physician, clarified that the crash caused a chronic and ongoing aggravation of the plaintiff’s pre-existing conditions, contradicting the defense’s suggestion of temporary harm. While the doctor testified that he was forced to stop treating the plaintiff for unpaid bills, he also testified that the plaintiff had never had unpaid bills until after this crash.
“The last witness was the corporate rep,” explains Pesek. “In that corporate doublespeak way, he kept saying what his driver did was ‘safe’ and that merging to the available shoulder to avoid the crash was ‘not necessary.’ On re-direct, I asked him to imagine he was holding a training session with eighty propane truck drivers with this incident as the subject of the presentation. ‘Are you going to tell all your drivers to do the same thing next time they see a tractor on the road?’ I asked. He answered: ‘Yes.’ I sensed the crescendo we hoped for had happened, and the jury was giving me permission to let loose on the corporate defendant’s callous disregard for truth in closing.”
The Verdict
After a zero-dollar offer, followed by a $25,000 settlement offer on the Friday before trial, the jury found for the plaintiff with a verdict of $512,000 for both economic and noneconomic damages. Pesek believes the jury was moved by the presentation, particularly including the testimony of the plaintiff’s English-speaking son, whose testimony allowed the family’s story to resonate with the local jury. The verdict represented a significant win in a county insurance lawyers claim is hostile toward any plaintiff, not to mention an immigrant plaintiff.
Trial Guides Titles in Action
Pesek is an avid Trial Guides reader, having purchased and read a number of books in our catalog. He credits three titles with reaching this outstanding outcome: David Ball on Damages, Nick Rowley’s Trial by Human and Nick Rowley’s Running with the Bulls. “If David Ball On Damages is the spine for how to handle your trial,” he says, “Rowley’s books are the spine for adjusting your pre-trial activities so you can try your case and collect your verdict.”
David Ball on Damages is available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook.
“Damages was almost scary in its level of accuracy about trial dynamics,” says Pesek. “This book carried the day for us. It helped underscore how serious this crash was for our client. After he was unable to pay his medical bills, he was sent to collections, got sued by his own doctors, and then he got fired by his long-time doctors which meant being shut out from medical care, right when he needed it the most.”
Damages allowed Pesek and his team to emphasize the noneconomic harm of this event. “In closing, I used Damages arguments about the danger of isolation from his doctors, right when he needed them the most.”
Damages became a critical tool throughout the trial. “I was going through David Ball on Damages both before trial and at the end of each day of trial, while I was preparing the witnesses for the next day and before my closing argument,” says Pesek. “Its level of accuracy in anticipating our courtroom dynamics was essentially perfect.”
Trial by Human is available in paperback and ebook.
“Nick Rowley’s book, Trial by Human, was indispensable for this case,” says Pesek. “If you can see your client as a person rather than a collection of demographic information or a paycheck, then you can begin to be more persuasive when asking for the full value of your cases at trial. Trial by Human was extremely helpful here.”
Running with the Bulls is available in paperback and ebook.
“Running with the Bulls is not so much a trial tactic book as it is a book about how to prepare cases for a collectible verdict,” explains Pesek. He has found it useful in documenting insurance bad faith to increase the value of his cases. As a lawyer in a red state, his work confirms that using first- and third-party insurance bad faith claims to collect above policy limits settlements and verdicts is possible in unexpected places.
“Running with the Bulls should be required reading for every law firm all over the country, particularly among attorneys who believe they are limited by insurance policies in terms of the collectability of verdicts,” he says. “We have settled first-party cases above policy, we have settled third-party cases above policy limits, and we have collected excess verdicts as a result of these ideas. We did all that despite a long line of insurance lawyers saying it wasn’t possible.”
Pesek’s law firm is 100 percent bilingual in English and Spanish. After the first Trump administration, Pesek realized that the only way he was going to win cases built upon the value and the dignity of his immigrant clients was by going all-in on jury trial cases. “Jury rights are civil rights,” said Pesek. Running with the Bulls has helped him create a successful trial practice after years of running an immigration practice without access to juries.
About The Attorney
Ross Pesek is a distinguished trial lawyer from Omaha, Nebraska. He is passionate about representing victims of negligence, particularly among immigrant and Spanish-speaking communities. In addition to his private practice, Pesek also founded a free legal clinic where he and volunteer attorneys have provided thousands of no-cost legal consultations to historically underserved communities. This clinic has been run continuously at a local church since 2011.
The law firm also organized and administers the True Potential Scholarship for immigrants who are ineligible for federal or state educational benefits like merit scholarships or student loans. Since 2013, the True Potential Scholarship has awarded more than 300 full-tuition scholarships allowing immigrant students to attend Nebraska and Iowa community colleges. Ross is a community college graduate and believes that educational opportunities at community colleges can start any professional journey - even leading to a career as a trial attorney.
