 It is time to tell the story that I have not been allowed to speak about for almost two years. Hello there, my beautiful, lovely internet friends. Welcome back to my channel. This is a story that I've honestly been very anxious to share with you guys for quite some time but due to legal advice have not been able to for about two, two and a half years. The reason I am going to tell you the story of me choosing to sue a company that caused my second leg amputation that caused me not to be able to walk for about eight months to be on crutches, having another additional surgery in there because of the injury that was caused by them is to let you know what it actually is like and what the journey can be like for someone in this kind of a case. I know that there are people out there who have been injured by businesses or by negligence, have considered suing. Maybe you've always wondered what the process was like and so I'm gonna detail that out for you here. I have put timestamps down below if you wanna skip to different parts of the video as this is a bit of a longer story. This whole process start to finish was a little bit more than I bargained for more than I expected and so I wanted to share what the reality of being involved in a lawsuit can look like both mentally, physically, emotionally, financially, all of that and without further ado let's go ahead and dive in. I've talked about this very lightly in passing. I said I had a fall which led to more surgeries in the second amputation but the part that I've never really gone into depth about is what actually happened that day, the day that I fell on my freshly amputated leg which is just a gross sentence to say. So it's kind of a quick recap especially if you're new to my channel. Hello there, my name is Jo. I had a below the knee leg amputation in October of 2018 and two days before I was supposed to get fit for my very first prosthetic leg I went to get lunch with my husband Brian. I was on crutches at the time, this is nothing new. I've been on crutches for years of my life because I had so many ankle surgeries. I often joke that I'm a pro on crutches but I mean not to hype myself up. I know what I'm doing, I know how to stay upright. We went to this restaurant as we were going to our seats after ordering to sit down. I tried to take a step with my crutches but as soon as my crutches touched the ground they went flying out from underneath me and unfortunately I fell directly on my freshly amputated leg. I was six weeks out from my amputation surgery, skin and incisions and more importantly bones and soft tissue were still healing and pretty much my full weight came down on my stump as my crutches flew out from under me. I was on the ground sobbing in like a public restaurant which was super embarrassing because of the pain that I was in and also because of the understanding that something felt wrong and what just happened could severely impact my life. I was really scared. I was able to get up off the floor even trying to move past that location because I was still on crutches was incredibly difficult because the floor was so incredibly greasy, disgustingly so and slippery. My husband helped me out to the car. He went back in to get our food but also to take some pictures of the ground because when you're in a restaurant that deals with really greasy food there are regulations on degreaser that has to be used on the floors at certain times to make sure it stays safe for people especially disabled people but people in general and it was very clear that the floor was disgusting. Brian said when he was walking over that same kind of area he had a hard time staying up as well just cause you know your feet were sliding around which they shouldn't be in any restaurant. It's important to note that there were no signs up noting hey the floor might be slippery here. You know we recently cleaned because they had allegedly in my opinion they had not probably done that in a very long time and I got home I called my surgeons they said you know rest it, ice it, come see us as soon as you can and later that evening I ended up posting on Facebook. Now I really understand why caution signs and warning signs and keeping you know your business clean is so important because I just had this really horrible fall that could have compromised my surgery and you know if you own a business just please please be careful you could hurt people. Then a very good friend of mine who happened to work in the insurance industry gave me a call asked about what happened and said you really need to call them ask them to preserve the video footage for that whole day. What happened here was wrong that was not a safe environment for people to be in. So we did that and as I looked into things with my friends I realized oh okay places are supposed to be safe for you they are supposed to be safe especially for people with disabilities. There were medical bills related to what had happened that day and so we filed an insurance claim against this company. A very important point to note here is that when I filed that they preserved the video footage they reviewed it they accepted liability for the fall which is kind of abnormal for a company to do like they weren't fighting it they were like yep you absolutely have you know a claim here and as soon as my injury resolved I would you know send in the medical bills complete the insurance claim and move on with my life. I had no intention of doing anything other than just that and moving on with my life. But as many of you know my leg did not get better. I did get fit for a prosthetic that week it was very painful. I thought this is just part of the process right? So I got to take my prosthetic leg home tried practicing on it it was not uncomfortable but like sharp pain. Kept going back for adjustments being like this just doesn't feel right. Then we noticed that there was sort of this mass that started forming on the end of my leg where I had fallen. It ended up being something called a bursa and was so painful that I could not use my prosthetic leg by about Christmas. A bursa which is kind of like a big internal callus had ended up forming on the bottom of my leg because of the trauma of the fall. Long story short there was no way that I could wear a prosthetic and I was on crutches again until the end of March when they could get me in for surgery. They went in they found a little bit more than that they fixed it. Here comes April I start working with my prosthetic sack to build a new leg something still really doesn't feel right. I question maybe I'm just a big baby but I go back to my doctor and explain something still doesn't feel right. And after going back and forth on that for a little while they eventually did a CT where they discovered that the bones had never fused after my amputation. Now normally there wouldn't really be any reason for this. My surgery went perfectly but I had this fall as the bones were attempting to fuse and that fall made it so that the bones just never properly fused. That was the reason that I had to have the second amputation where they went in they completely redid the previous amputation that I had. They took I think about an inch off my leg again. I restarted the whole process and this time it worked because they fixed the underlying problem. By November I got my new prosthetic leg. I started learning how to walk and kind of the rest is history. And right around then when I knew that pretty much everything medically was resolved from the fall we sent everything in to the insurance company from the restaurant at which point they then decided yeah actually we're gonna reverse that whole it's our liability thing. Because at least in my mind I assume they didn't realize that it was actually gonna be kind of expensive. So they basically told me it was our fault but now it's no longer our fault. And I worked with my friend who knows the system to try to get something done without involving lawyers who I am not a fan of. But long story short by January we had to bring in professional help and began a formal lawsuit against this company. I really wanna stress the fact that I never ever would have gone forward with any of this if it weren't for the fact that my doctor clearly stated the reason that this did not heal is because of the fall. Like those months where I was on crutches those months where I should have been learning to walk and getting active again finally after so many years of struggle the reason that I was not able to do that is because this restaurant did not clean their floors and additionally did not have any signs up. So we ended up meeting with a couple lawyers. I'm just gonna put a asterisk on my relationship with lawyers, we'll circle back to that and formally filed a lawsuit. Hello again, quick point of clarification. When I say I'm suing this company technically I am suing that company but it is their insurance company who is going to pay for it. This is not money coming out of a business owner's pockets. Additionally this is a major large nationwide franchise. The location in particular did close prior to a settling this that honestly didn't have an impact because we're dealing directly with their insurance company. This is why businesses pay for insurance is for these kinds of situations. So I just wanna clarify, I wasn't like going after small business owners. It is their insurance who ends up fitting the bill for any kind of settlement, anything along those lines. These things aren't a fast process. So then there was months of evidence gathering on both sides and then came the depositions. This is where things started getting really weird for me. If you are involved in a lawsuit you might be deposed where basically the other side can ask you questions. You can have your lawyer there to object if they're outside the scope of what they're allowed to ask but what they're allowed to ask of you in my mind is obscene. Just kind of a harmless example. I had to give them every place I went to school and every place I lived back to kindergarten. I walked into a restaurant that was unsafe and fell and they have a right to all of my personal information dating back to age five. Absolutely nuts and that was information I had to provide even prior to the actual deposition but I get their day off. And my only experience with the legal system prior to this is when I attempted two filed charges against the man who had assaulted and abused me. That was an incredibly traumatic experience within our legal system. My only experience with lawyers and depositions prior to this year has been over things that were incredibly sensitive. Being handled very insensitively and in a very re-traumatizing way. So even getting to the deposition was really freaking hard for me but I knew I could do it. I sat there, I went through with it and it was hours of personal questions. I'd say maybe 20 to 30% was like what actually happened the day of the fall. They presented me with 63, I believe 63 pages of social media posts after the fall, after the surgery like over the past year and a half where they're like, well you're here clearly hiking so you're fine, right? You're fine. What's this one mean? What's this one mean? I'm like, well that's me hiking, that's me with my dogs, that's me whatever. And it became clear that their strategy was to basically prove that because I had chosen to live life and because after that last surgery that worked I got my prosthetic leg working and started doing things like running and going to a ninja gym. Because my life was fine now it seemed like their strategy was to prove that it wasn't really that bad what happened. Now everything is working back from a trial date that's already been set that was set for October but mediation is something that's required in my state where basically you sit down with a professional in our case it was a retired judge who is there to mediate the two different sides and the idea is to hopefully come to a settlement come to an agreement to not have to go to court. I consider myself to be a pretty diplomatic person. I know generally when I need to hold my tongue how I need to keep my tone especially in professional environments and I can say that being in this mediation was one of the only times where I was genuinely concerned I might lose my cool and say something disrespectful to people in authority like an ex judge the mediation went terribly. They were instructing me about how prosthetics worked like the basics of prosthetics and using it against me like well sometimes it's just hard to get a prosthetic fit what you don't understand is that oftentimes amputees have to go back more than once and it felt so insulting because that is literally my life that is literally my lived experience and also I talk about this stuff all day every day. I'm not an expert on prosthetics but I am an expert on my experience with prosthetics and to have a judge trying to tell me that well sometimes amputees struggle to get a good fit offering like some kind of excuse that maybe the fall wasn't really that bad when I have a doctor who literally put in writing for this whole lawsuit that the fall that I had in their restaurant caused the second leg amputation that I had. Another thing that they brought up as like actual evidence against me was the fact that they went in and did a analysis of the floor and said that it was safe and when asked when this analysis was done it was done this year. So they checked the floor out after the business had closed by the way three years after the fact and said no it seems safe you should have been fine walking on it sucks that you fell but clearly this was a safe environment. Three years later, they analyzed the floor three years later after the conditions were totally different after that restaurant had moved out of that building and I'm gonna stop it's just crazy to me that that was actual evidence that would be considered that was taken seriously and then there was a lot of finger pointing to like you're living a great life now so why does it really matter? Those were not the words used but they continued to bring up different activities that I now participate in as if that was an accusation against me. It became very clear to me that it would have been much better for me if I had just decided to stop actively living life and sat in a sad hole and never did anything. They kept bringing up all these things as if the eight months of not being able to walk being in pain, not being able to wear a prosthetic having to have more of my body hacked off of me was not really that big of an issue and we did not even get close to the idea of a settlement we could all agree on that day. Now at this point, which was like a month and a half ago I was mentally and emotionally at the end of my rope. This is not something I wanted to deal with anymore this is not something I wanted to talk about anymore I didn't want to have to keep reliving that fall. In and of itself it wasn't emotionally traumatic to me but it definitely did leave a huge impact. The reason that I chose to have a leg amputation was so that I could get active again hopefully and stop having surgeries. Instead I was significantly less active where for the majority of the time the problems were actually unknown. I was in a lot of physical pain that took a toll on my mental health and I didn't know if I was gonna be able to walk again and I had to have more surgeries which is the thing I was trying to get away from. This had a significant impact on my life and I feel like the way that lawsuits go and the way that our legal system is set up it really brushes over that issue like you suddenly become a subject for questioning and being picked apart on things that are painful I understand that's how it goes. There were more details that were very insulting that I won't include here that they brought up and offered but because we did not come to a settlement number that day I really had two options, three I guess. I could drop the whole thing and walk away. We could try to come to a settlement even though we were very far apart in our ideas of what might be fair or we could go to trial. Going to trial is exactly what you would expect it to be. It's a trial there is a jury involved you have witnesses I would have to give my account in front of people we'd have to bring people in we'd have to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to pay my doctor to show up to have him testify but then they're gonna hire another doctor who reviews my medical records and says nah I actually don't think that's the reason why so they kind of cancel each other out and at the end of the day what I was told is a large portion of it comes down to luck and a large portion of it comes down to whether or not the jury likes you and I'll be totally honest I know that I'm a pretty likable person. I am super grateful that I like people and as a very general thing people usually like me too and I knew and I was told that if I did go to trial I would have a decent chance of winning and the figures that are involved in winning a case like this are substantial but there also was substantial risk in that if the jury did not side with me I would owe all of their legal fees and we are talking tens plural of thousands of dollars which I do not have which would financially ruin my family for the foreseeable future and Brian who is an incredible support was completely gung-ho like yes let's do this I know you have a case like this is a real thing I'm willing to take that risk let's do it let's go get them but there were some pretty big factors going on in my head number one while I am fully aware of the fact that I am capable of handling it having to deal with our legal system having to deal with being basically interrogated in front of other people for something that has hurt me because I have such a negative and traumatic history with that it takes a toll it takes a real toll on me to even think about and all the preparation that would go into that the risk of potentially losing more from a situation of fall that already cost me so much in my life in my time in my emotional energy and also financially the idea that I could lose even more was actually horrifying to think about and most importantly of all there have been a number of difficult things that I've gone through in my life that I've had no say in bad things happen and you've got to adjust you've got to deal and you're forced to figure out a way to get through it so rarely has there been anything in my life that happened that was significant and uncomfortable or bad that I could opt out of hey there I wanted to pop back in to mention something that I kind of brushed over along with kind of the mental health implications of like stress leading up to the trial one of the biggest decision factors for me is chronic migraine and fibromyalgia when there is external or internal stress that is a big trigger for physical pain for feeling very unwell for having more migraine days or I'm unable to work and I'm very uncomfortable and in a lot of pain and if I had decided to move forward a trial I knew that I was signing up for a lot of physical pain as well just because of how my body works right and also because courts have been so backed up because of COVID we had an October date set for trial but that was probably going to be continued so I'd be signing up for months of stress leading up to this for months of having to think about this and prepare and months of additional stress on my body that was going to cause physical repercussions along with mental health ones and that was a really big factor for me because I've been trying to work on making my life as healthy of an environment for the body that I live in as I can being able to manage stress well and adding so much more to it and I'm trying to get pain more under control just didn't seem like a good idea and the thought of going through with this process the thought of prolonging this stress which has been hanging over me for years the thought of dealing with more lawyers and more conflict and my character and reputation being put on the stand because I walked in somewhere and it was unsafe the fact that I could now be picked apart and was being picked apart for that there was a huge piece of me that was like you know what? I think I want to opt out of this I really do I've never had the chance to be like no, I'm done with something really that was significant and painful to me and it was a really hard decision to make I had a lot of voices involved many of whom were encouraging that it might be a good idea to move forward with this you know even if it's uncomfortable but at the end of the day with it being my choice I had and have a good deal going on with my health there's enough going on in my life over the past few years that I kind of wanted a break from all of it and so instead of going to trial I made the decision to work for a settlement outside of court after mediation we came to an agreement on a number that didn't come close to covering a whole lot but at least it was something, right? So I was able to do things like payoffs and medical bills which is fantastic and some other things I'm just gonna speak personally here for a second I understand why our systems work the way that they do but when you are injured by someone else's negligence actions or lack of actions and it impacts your life in a severely negative way and you are seeking for that to be made right the things that you have to go through the parts of your life your personal life that you have to justify and defend it's obscene to me the things that they were allowed to ask me and know about my life down to medications I am currently taking they have no right to know that at one point they wanted to access my therapist's records and that is not a door that I am willing to open for people like I get why it works the way that it does but I honestly can't imagine a scenario in which I would ever optionally go through that again at the end of the day I am glad that I went through with this the emotional toll that it took was significantly more than I would have expected a large part of that was due to pre-existing trauma, conditions in my brain that made this all a very trigger-filled kind of situation for me it did give me an opportunity to work through a lot of my triggers with PTSD when it comes to lawyers and depositions and things of that nature which I think was a good thing though it was not a comfortable thing and again at the end of the day I am grateful that the settlement we arranged did allow for the alleviation of medical bills and things along those lines so that is a good thing it was a heck of a process to go through and was a lot more than I ever could have expected and I probably should have looked a little bit further into what a lawsuit really entails it's not a short process it's not an easy process it requires a lot from you it can get pretty darn expensive talking about the lawyer aspect of things they only get paid if you get paid unless you go to trial however with that being said there are a lot of expenses involved in the process from getting medical bills and medical records which is insanely expensive little did I know and bringing in expert witnesses and all this different stuff so there is a lot involved to it but all in all it's over now I'm glad I never have to deal with this again and I think I am glad that I went through with it but it was very stressful and is probably not something I would optionally choose to ever be a part of again if you have any questions about this process please leave comments down below I might do a follow-up video on this with some other kind of tidbits and interesting information especially from kind of the deposition and the mediation and the things that they said about me and asked me but that is what has been going on for almost three years now that I haven't been able you know to speak about because you're not supposed to speak about ongoing litigation that's the word but it's done now so yay also I would ask that no one speculate in the comment section about what restaurant this was I could name them I am not under an NDA to not disclose anything but I just don't think that there is a reason to this is one location out of many just that particular location is no longer in business so I don't think that there's a reason to talk about the restaurant as a whole so I would ask you not to speculate down below so I mentioned earlier in the video that it was a friend of mine who works in insurance that helped me kind of get this process started and walked with me through a lot of it you know who you are I just want to say again thank you so much for all of your help there's no way that I could have done literally any of this without you I wouldn't have been able to make the call in the first place and so much of the follow-up and the support that you gave me was just incredible so thank you so much my dear friend so with that being said happy happy fall this is my yay it's actually getting cold outside a colored shirt I'm excited for long drives in the mountains with warm beverages with my husband in the near future and the changing of the leaves but on that note thank you for watching this video thank you to my patrons for making these videos possible for continuing your amazing support I am truly grateful for your generosity and you guys are the reason why I can continue to do this and do you watching this video right now thank you for spending a few minutes out of your day here with me today you could be anywhere else in the world doing absolutely anything else but you chose to hang out with me for a few minutes and I really appreciate that I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I'll see you in the next video bye guys