On September 15, 2015, Caelen Peshek, then 22, was standing on a sidewalk at the corner of Ashland Avenue and Roosevelt Road in Chicago when a semi-truck operated by Said Mohamed Shire and owned by Hub Group Trucking, Inc. made a right-hand turn too tightly. The rear wheels of the truck ran over Peshek and dragged her approximately 60 feet before a nearby University of Illinois security officer spotted the incident and intervened, saving her life.
Peshek sustained multiple pelvic injuries and severe degloving injuries to her legs. She was a young athlete with her entire career ahead of her. Expert witnesses testified that her permanent disabilities would severely limit her ability to work for the rest of her life.
The injuries were extensive, anatomically complex, and difficult to convey through testimony or static photographs alone. Trial counsel needed a way to walk the jury through each injury site, showing the specific damage to skin, muscle, and underlying structures across both legs and the pelvis — not as a single image, but as an interactive presentation that could be controlled in real time during examination.
California Technical Media produced an interactive 3D injury presentation for plaintiff’s trial counsel — Robert A. Clifford, Kevin P. Durkin, and Tracy A. Brammeier of Clifford Law Offices, Chicago.
The presentation rendered the plaintiff’s injuries as a navigable 3D model, allowing counsel to rotate, zoom, and isolate specific injury regions during testimony. Rather than flipping between photographs or static diagrams, the attorney could direct the jury’s attention to individual injury sites in sequence — showing the degloving injuries, the depth of tissue loss, the pelvic fractures, and the relationship between the injuries and the dragging mechanism — all within a single interactive environment.
The tool was designed for courtroom use: operated by counsel in real time, responsive to the pace of testimony, and structured so that each injury could be examined independently or in the context of the full pattern of trauma.
The case settled seven days into trial before Cook County Circuit Court Judge Thomas J. Lipscomb for $35 million — a record in the state of Illinois for any verdict or settlement involving a pedestrian. The prior Illinois record was a $29.1 million verdict for a child who lost both legs in 1992. The settlement was with Hub Group Trucking, Inc. of Oak Brook, Illinois and the truck driver Said Mohamed Shire.
A navigable 3D model of the plaintiff’s injuries — degloving trauma, tissue loss, and pelvic fractures — designed for real-time courtroom operation by trial counsel during witness examination and closing argument.