Attorney Jonathan Kelly obtained a defense verdict in a case where the plaintiff drove into a dumpster that his client had placed on the street in front of his home. The plaintiff alleged that she had to cross over the double yellow lines to drive around the dumpster and that, as she was doing so, an oncoming car drove around a sharp bend in the road just beyond the dumpster, forcing her to swerve into the dumpster to avoid a collision. The plaintiff claimed that it was negligent to have placed the dumpster in that location due to its size and because of its proximity to the bend in the road which, she argued, deprived vehicles of enough time to pass the dumpster safely and avoid an accident with any oncoming traffic. Over objections, a police officer was permitted to testify that he remained on site after the accident and that every single car had to cross the double yellow lines in order to bypass the dumpster. He characterized the dumpster as a traffic hazard and ordered that it be removed.
In his closing argument, Attorney Kelly contended that it was for the jury, not the police officer, to determine whether the dumpster was hazardous. He reasoned that it was not a hazard because the situation the dumpster created was no different than other commonly accepted situations, such as when a vehicle has to cross the double yellow lines to drive around cars that are in the act of parallel parking, bicyclists, or delivery trucks and city buses that have stopped on the side of the road. For those reasons and because his client had obtained a permit to place the dumpster on the street, he argued that his client’s actions were reasonable. Attorney Kelly further asserted that inconsistencies between the plaintiff’s testimony and the version of events provided to the police called into question both the plaintiff’s credibility and the manner in which the accident actually occurred and that, under any circumstance, the evidence showed that the plaintiff herself had been negligent for failing to slow her vehicle or exercise an appropriate amount of caution as she approached the dumpster. The jury concurred with these arguments and returned a verdict in favor of the client homeowner.