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Interview with Virginia Lawyer Wayne OBryan on WRIR Richmond VA Radio

O’Bryan Law Firm – Testimonials

You’re listening to the Central Virginia Legal Aid radio show on WRIR 97.3 FM Richmond Independent Radio. We’re here at the law office of Wayne O’Bryan. Mr. O’Bryan in 1977 was elected to the House of Delegates where he served four years on the Courts of Justice Committee.  He saw firsthand there how our legislative system works and more importantly how it does not. He was able to see the influence of big insurance companies and that the rights of the average person were not being protected.

In 1981 Wayne formed a partnership which handled only personal injury cases and this establishment evolved into the largest personal injury firm in Virginia.

In 2000 Wayne retired from the firm but quickly discovered that he did not like being retired. A year later he decided to return to a solo practice to help people with personal injury cases.

Welcome to the show Wayne.

Thank you.

Wayne will you tell our listeners: What is a personal injury case?

A personal injury case is a case in which someone has received an injury due to the negligence of someone else.

What do you have to prove to win a personal injury case?

You have to prove that the other party was negligent, which means basically that they were careless and  that they didn’t meet a standard. We call it the reasonable man standard. That they didn’t act reasonably and that’s pretty much recklessness is.

What if you were at fault in some very minor way? Can you still win a personal injury lawsuit in Virginia?

Well Virginia is one of three or four states that still has the common law doctrine of contributory negligence. What contributory negligence says is that if you’re at fault, even one-half of one percent, you can not recover. As a practical matter in Virginia and in these other states that still have contributory negligence, we find that juries generally disregard that and pretty much return, if it’s a situation where one party is 90% at fault and the other is maybe at most 10% that the jury will disregard the 10% and return a verdict.

But nevertheless you are saying Virginia is one of a very small minority of states where if you are say 5% or 10% at fault you recover zero, at least in theory, rather than the 90 or 95% that you would ordinarily recover in another state.

That is correct. Most states have what is called comparative negligence, and there are several different forms of comparative negligence. Which basically says that you compare the negligence of the two parties so if one party is 90% at fault and the other is 10%, in some states you would subtract the ten from the ninety and come up with 80%. So if the jury came up with an award of $10,000 and then applied the comparative negligence rule to it, they would return a verdict for $8,000.
 
And I might clarify that while we talk about  it being theoretical that they could lose their case because of contributory negligence, it still happens sometimes. It is rare, but it does happen where someone will be very minutely at fault in an accident , and a jury, based on contributory negligence will refuse to give them anything.