CVN screenshot of defense attorney Marc Schecter delivering his closing argument
West Palm Beach, FL - A Florida state court jury returned a defense verdict on Friday in a lawsuit stemming from a three-car pileup, and the full trial was recorded gavel-to-gavel by Courtroom View Network.
The Palm Beach County jury delivered their verdict shortly after hearing closing arguments in a trial that began on April 29. Plaintiffs Charles and Deborah Carey, in addition to another driver Peter Lafroscia, sued defendant Sanjeet Gupta in 2022 after he collided with both of their vehicles.
They sought more than $14 million in damages, but the defense successfully argued that despite speeding at the time Gupta didn’t cause the collision but was instead cut off by Lafroscia.
CVN subscribers get unlimited on-demand access to the full trial, including all witness testimony and digital images of the exhibits and demonstratives shown in the courtroom. Not a subscriber? Sign up today for monthly or annual access to CVN’s trial video library, which includes this trial and hundreds more featuring many of the top plaintiff and defense attorneys in Florida and throughout the United States.
The Careys’ attorney, attorney Ryan Wechsler of Long Jean & Wechsler PA, told jurors they both sustained serious injuries in the collision and had to undergo multiple spinal surgeries. Wechsler accused Gupta of speeding and failing to pay attention to the road, telling jurors he first slammed into Lafroscia and sent him over the median before hitting the Careys’ car.
Both Weschler and Patrick Mourin of Goldman Daszkal PA, representing Lafroscia, asked jurors to place the blame for the crash entirely on Gupta, however defense attorney Marc Shecther of Robinson Pecaro & Mier insisted that despite Gupta’s speeding Lafroscia caused the accident.
Shecther argued to jurors Gupta was traveling 55 miles per hour in a 45 zone, but that Lafroscia swerved directly in front of him and hit the brakes, which would have caused an accident at either speed.
Lafroscia maintained he was going with the flow of traffic, but Shecter said testimony from accident reconstruction experts and forensic data from the cars’ electronic data recorders proved that he caused the crash and not Gupta.
The parties did not respond to a request for comment with the exception of Mourin, who suggested scheduling could have played a role in the trial's outcome.
“Don't send your case to a jury on a Friday afternoon,” he stated.
The case took place before Judge Carolyn Bell and is captioned Carey v. Gupta, case number 2022-CA-008884 in Florida’s 15th Circuit Court in Palm Beach County.
E-mail David Siegel at dsiegel@cvn.com
