Attorney Adam Paul Johnson's Legal Cases

Personal injury

Motorcyle crash with contested facts

Aug 01, 2022

OUTCOME: Settled

I represented a client who was injured in a significant motorcycle crash in Fremont, Nebraska. As my client drove his motorcycle down a main street in the middle of Fremont he noticed a car several blo ... cks away sitting at a cross-street stop sign. When he was roughly 100 feet away, the car began to pull into the intersection in an attempt to make a left turn and head the opposite direction of the same street my client was on. To be clear, the defendant was turning in front of my client. My client immediately recognized that there was not enough room or time for the defendant to make the turn, then slammed on his brakes. Just before impacting the defendant's car, my client laid his bike down and slid across the pavement for approximately 20 feet before crashing into the rear quarter panel of the defendant's SUV, which then catapulted him over the vehicle and into the street beyond. My client suffered an open left ankle fracture, broken ribs, and a head injury. He was treated via rescue squad and then life-flighted to a Omaha for treatment. He endured several surgeries in an attempt to fix his mangled ankle, months and months of rehabilitation, but ultimately ended up getting a fusion of the ankle. The fusion effectively eliminated the joint, causing a great loss of range of motion and utility. As we prepared for trial, the Defendants hired an accident reconstructionist who opined that my client was traveling upwards of 80 mph prior to slamming on his brakes. However, my client, along with uninterested witnesses at the scene, said my client was going about 40 mph (the speed limit of that street was 40 mph). Through our own accident reconstructionist and with the use of very good visual depictions of the scene, we were able to expose how the defense expert has essentially made up his conclusions. During deposition he had to admit that his opinion was based on an assumption - an assumption that he could not know (how far the Defendant had made it through her turn when impact occurred). The expert agreed that all of his conclusions were based upon this one assumption and that if his assumption was wrong, all of his opinions were wrong too. Fortunately defense counsel understood that the defense expert had been effectively discredited and we were able to resolve the case for confidential settlement prior to trial.

Contracts and agreements

Jury verdict for Plaintiff on Oral Contract

Jul 19, 2022

OUTCOME: Plaintiff's verdict for $116,000

In 2015, Prairie Construction was building the Arbor View Elementary School in Elkhorn, Nebraska. Part of its contract with Elkhorn Public Schools was then subcontracted to Terumm Constructors, Inc. Te ... rumm, in turn, subcontracted a portion of its subcontract to Yong Construction. After alleged defects and delays, Terumm’s owner, Timothy Carter, terminated Yong Construction from the job. It was now early May of 2016, and Terumm’s contract had to be completed by the time school started that fall. This is where things became messy. John Main had been working as an employee of Terumm’s for several years. However, shortly after terminating Yong Construction, Mr. Carter terminated John Main’s employment and immediately asked that he finish Terumm’s contract as a subcontractor, rather than an employee. As part of that agreement, John would be allowed to retain all the profit that was left under Terumm’s contract with Prairie and Terumm would pay the costs of all the materials needed to complete the work. Mr. Carter alleged that $366,000 remained to be paid under its contract with Prairie. John reviewed the contract drawings, took measurements, and discussed what work would be needed from various laborers and concrete crews. After concluding that there was plenty of profit for him to complete the work, he agreed. Everything went fine, and John was able to complete all the work just before the school opened in the Fall of 2016. Despite having completed the project on time, Terumm refused to render payment and litigation ensued. This case should have been a slam dunk. Unfortunately, none of these agreements were written. Plus, John had, in fact, been working as an employee up to the point of the agreement to complete the project as a subcontractor – a set of facts that we suspected may raise the eyebrows of the jury. After long discussions, John and his attorney agreed that while the truth may sound odd, we would have to simply embrace it, be honest with the jury, and trust that truth would prevail. As anticipated, Mr. Carter testified at trial that John had always been an employee – even during the completion of the Arbor View project – and that John’s assertion of the agreement “just didn’t make any sense.” Defense counsel then made a big tactical mistake – they introduced ancillary lawsuits between the same parties over unrelated matters. We assumed this was done to try to muddy the waters and divert attention away from the real issues being tried in our case. In reality, it forced Plaintiff’s counsel to dive deep in these other lawsuits, read all the pleadings, deposition testimony, and rulings in those other proceedings. There, buried deep in those files, was the smoking gun. It was discovered that in these other lawsuits Mr. Carter made affirmative statements that John was, in fact, a subcontractor on the Arbor View project; that John had, in fact, hired its own crews to complete the work; and that John, in fact, completed the project. In addition to Mr. Carter’s own prior inconsistent statements, Plaintiff’s counsel also called rebuttal witnesses to contradict other parts of Mr. Carter’s testimony and put on an expert witness to confirm that the fair market value of the work John completed was roughly the same as the agreed price. The case was submitted to the jury around noon on July 19, 2022. A unanimous verdict was returned in Plaintiff’s favor around 2:00 p.m. the same day.

Adam Paul Johnson's Legal Cases (2)

Motorcyle crash with contested facts

Jury verdict for Plaintiff on Oral Contract