A Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas jury returned a $1 million personal injury verdict on Monday in a case filed against the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. The case, James v. SEPTA, centers on a personal injury that occurred on a SEPTA bus in 2024, when plaintiff Tajha James was thrown into a metal pole in the interior of the bus after the driver suddenly stopped the bus. James was later treated for back and wrist injuries, with her care including extensive therapy, medial branch blocks and radiofrequency neurotomy, among other treatments, according to an email statement. Marc Simon, founder of the Philadelphia firm Simon & Simon, whose attorneys, Paraskevoula Mamounas and Chris Boyle, represented James, said he believed the video, which differed from the bus driver’s testimony, won the jury over. With the help of social media and the internet, Simon said, individuals can more quickly determine whether people are telling the truth, and jury members often can deliver a verdict faster and have a stronger sense of holding others accountable. Simon said a challenge in trying the case was helping the jury understand the extent of the plaintiff’s physical injuries and how they will affect her everyday lifestyle—including her finances—moving forward. “It’s always a challenge to explain to the jury how this is the only chance Ms. James and other victims like herself get,” Simon said. “She can't come back in five years when she says, ‘I’m still in pain and I need some more money for some more medical treatment’... the jury has to predict, in our judicial system, the lifetime of these forever injuries and the cost of the medical care that comes with these forever injuries.” It is a challenge often fought by the plaintiff’s bar in similar cases, Simon said, pointing to a personal injury and statutory damages case up for appeal before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Freilich v. SEPTA. The case on appeal concerns a $7 million stipulated verdict against SEPTA in 2021 for injuries sustained in a bus accident. A trial court molded the plaintiff’s award to $250,000, in accordance with the state’s statutory damages cap, to which Kline & Specter, representing Freilich, appealed, calling into question the constitutionality of the cap. Simon said that the state’s $250,000 statutory damages cap against commonwealth agencies, created in 1978, bars plaintiffs from recovering the true economic damages they face due to rising medical and health costs. “The medicine that was the standard protocol in 1980 is certainly not what the protocols for the same injuries or diseases are today,” Simon said. “These caps have been in place with the same dollar amounts for 45 years, with cost of living, inflation and financial markets developing over that time.”