Funding for this program was provided by: ANSI National Accreditation Board And by: International Commision on Health Care Certification My mom taught me how to swim when I was six months old, so before I could even walk, I was swimming in the pool.

I love being in the water.

You feel weightless.

It's just very freeing and calming.

I just feel like me.

John and I met back in college and he was older than me.

Six months older.

Three.

That's right.

It is three.

I always say six.

I knew John was the guy.

We waited to get married.

When Sarah was born, we were certainly ready to be parents.

We had her as our first child.

She was very easy, she was very inquisitive.

She was never afraid to try new things.

She tried swimming, basketball, soccer, softball... When she went to college, she even did any intermural sport her sorority would put her in.

She was even runner up for the entire university in dominoes, even though she'd never played dominoes before.

Yeah.

Sarah was always a girl that was kind of the leader of the pack with all of her friends.

She was always socially involved with many things and very active.

She was actually just a few weeks short of her undergraduate.

She was scheduled to graduate the first week of December with her bachelor's degree, but her injury was November 15th, 2015.

John and I were in bed already.

It's a Saturday night, probably about one in the morning.

I received the call, it's from Sarah's phone, which is weird.

Pick it up.

It's one of Sarah's friends and she tells me, "Hey, Mr.

Milburn, we've been in an accident."

I don't know what happened.

I did what I was supposed to.

An ambulance taken her directly to Baylor Hospital.

All you want to do at that time is run as fast as you can to get to your child.

We're just thinking about is she going to live?

My name is Charla Aldous.

The first time I ever went in a courtroom, I thought, this is where I belong.

I'd never found my place in the world until I got in the courtroom.

It's the great equalizer.

Everybody is on the same level.

I do mostly all plaintiff's work.

That is I represent those who but for me would not have a voice.

My name is Juan Latorre.

After graduating from medicine, I was actually interested in becoming a psychiatrist, and I just happened to be in an accident where I became a patient.

I lost part of my left leg and the world of rehabilitation opened up to me, and became in love with the area of rehabilitation medicine.

I'm Leah Anne Levy.

Ever since I was a little girl I can remember being seven years old and I was always trying to triage in my stuffed animals.

You know, Kermit had a broken flipper.

Snoopy had a problem with his nose.

Because I have never been able to stand suffering without needing to try to stop it.

The doctor comes in and he says, "We think that she's paralyzed."

Having a spinal cord injury is a really serious problem, where the spinal cord is like a bundle of nerves that carry information from your brain to your body and allow your body also to communicate with your brain.

And when the integrity of the spinal cord is affected, then you have a spinal cord injury.

The most common cause in the United States is motor vehicle accidents.

Somebody with quadriplegia or tetraplegia is somebody who has an injury at the neck level like Sarah, so those people are going to have deficits from the neck down.

The first thing that goes through your mind as a mother is you know, why did this happen?

Our sweet Sarah, and I said, "Can I give her my legs?"

You know, what will her world be like?

I get a call from her dad, John, and he said, “Charla, we need your help.” We may need a lawyer.

And I said, I'll be there.

I'll be there as a friend and a lawyer.

What do you need?

And I remember going to Baylor Rehab and walking into that room and seeing Sarah in that bed, and I looked at her and I said, "I'm here for you.".

It was emotional and moving because you could see in Charla's eyes that she saw her own daughter laying in that bed.

Charla was always there for all the right reasons.

Sarah got into the rideshare in the back of the Honda minivan.

I looked at the rideshare and there was some question about whether the rideshare driver had run the red light, but then when we started researching further and found out that he had had a criminal background, he didn't own the car, the car had no insurance, all these red flags.

I'm like, hang on, why was he even driving under that rideshare application?

And then Sarah was the only one in that vehicle that had her seatbelt on, and everyone else walked away without a scratch.

I thought, something's wrong.

That does not make sense to me.

We sued both of them.

Honda fought us tooth and toenail on everything.

In Sarah's case, we are David going up against Goliath.

We made the decision to only have Sarah come into the courtroom one day.

I didn't want the jury to become desensitized to her.

I remember when we called her and those courtroom doors opened and she wheeled herself in.

The jury was on the edge of their seat.

Life was going one way and then all of a sudden it's just derailed.

I mourned the old Sarah.

I mourned that old life, all the things I expected, but I know that it'll be better if I just keep going.

My name's Sarah Milburn.

I read a quote one time that said the disability community is the largest minority community that anyone can be a part of any day of the week.

Whenever I was processing all of it, I'm like, okay, well, you're just doing this.

Let's go.

Let's figure out how you can do this today.

I have to give myself grace cause I get very frustrated if I can't do something.

Sometimes I'm like, you know what?

Try it.

And I tell myself, okay, try it three times.

If you cannot do it after a third time, you can give up for today, but tomorrow you're going to try the same thing over again.

Something as simple as opening a cap or brushing your hair, things that you don't even think about doing.

I am happy.

I'm happy most of the time, but like it's okay to be sad.

I always tell people, like you can see what I'm going through because I'm in a wheelchair, but everyone's going through something.

I broke my C-7 of my cervical spine, the seventh vertebrae, and so they had to go in the first night and cut across and clean up the bone, and then the next day they flipped me over and they cut down my neck and they put in a cage, essentially an internal neck brace so that I have a neck brace inside of me.

So in the ICU, you see PTs and OTs every day, and I used to beg them not to come because they would make you sit up until you'd pass out because at this point your body can't regulate your blood pressure, you can't do anything.

So you'd sit up and your blood would just go down and your body doesn't know, send it back up.

So I would sit up and I would almost pass out, lay down and be like, okay, back again tomorrow.

I hated it.

I would take a shower and I'd have to take a four hour nap after that.

I couldn't move my arms, I couldn't do anything, and I remember only being able to push two pushes and then I thought I was going to die because my arms were on fire.

I was so tired, but I had to learn, like hey, okay, it's okay if you just took a shower today.

It's okay if you just pushed down the hall today, tomorrow will be better.

You can do it again.

She was almost a month in ICU and luckily we had some good friends and neighbors that were able to help us with our domestic things here around the house while we could focus on someone being with her 24-7.

We had to learn everything from the basics.

We had no idea, and it's learning a lot of new things and you have to learn how to take care of her.

Since she was in ICU and then several months in the inpatient rehab hospital, and all the while, we also had to manage the construction project of getting the house wheelchair ready, because the rehab hospital will not release you unless you have a place to go that is wheelchair accessible.

We did not even know anyone who was not extremely elderly that was in a wheelchair.

We just had no concept of the lifestyle, of the community, of the resources and the lack of resources and just the whole complexities of caring for someone who has to live that lifestyle.

Medicine and the law are absolutely intertwined.

I met Sarah in 2018.

I was asked to do a life care plan for her, but from the time that I met her, it was Sarah actually educating me.

She was researching what would help her, what advanced technology was out there, what equipment could help her, and Sarah was determined that she was going to continue to live her life.

My role was to interview her and examine her and then come up with a diagnosis.

In terms of spinal cord injury.

It's very important to know what the level of somebody injury is, but also how complete the injury is.

That's going to be important implications on the treatment plan for that person.

And then I generated a document that was part of the legal case to get her the services that she needed.

Scoot your hips, loosened up first and... And so the life care plan was about making sure that Sarah could do everything that Sarah wanted to do, and addressing not only the medicines she would need, the procedures, but fostering as much independence as we could.

When we go to trial, it is bulletproof.

We follow the established methodology, we back it up with all the research, all the opinions, all the medical records, so a life care plan is telling their story.

I would never go to trial with a catastrophically injured client without a life care plan.

It is a very, very detailed analysis to show the jury how much money needs to be awarded just to take care of the person.

From a healthcare standpoint.

It is a great tool for us.

Right before my accident, I was actually interviewing for jobs.

I was graduating.

I was planning on living in Dallas.

I was looking at apartments.

I was doing all this stuff like that.

So then by the time it was the trial, two years post, all my friends are starting their careers, starting families, getting married, and I'm just kind of stuck.

Like, this happened to me for a reason, and I can help so many others.

I had to make the choice who sits in the back in the middle seat and for me, I couldn't live with myself if I knew anything about it because a child sits there.

How can you go against a big company like Honda Motors?

My friends and family asked me, "Are you scared?

I'm like, what else is going to happen to me?

I'm already paralyzed.

Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in the testimony you will give, so help you God?

2015, I was in my last semester of college, and we decided to go out for my friend's birthday.

We decided to call it a rideshare to go from one bar to another, and I had got in the very back of the middle seat and I put my seatbelt on.

My head hit the ground, and because I just went across my body, it just basically closed-lined me.

What broke my neck was me actually wearing a seatbelt.

A very very very special treat.

We have nationally renowned trial attorney, Charla Aldous with us today.

She's someone I look up to, and she's an amazing powerhouse attorney, so we're so excited to have her with us today.

And then we have Sarah Milburn with us today as well.

We try to think how can we simplify this for the jury to understand that it's not that the seatbelt if it were put on properly, it would've worked, but it was the way it was designed the average user would not know how to put it on correctly.

Sarah did what our muscle memory teaches us.

She reached at the ceiling and pulled it over and thought she'd put her seatbelt and pulled it over and thought she'd put her seatbelt on Ordinary people would not know how to work that seatbelt.

So we hired what's called a human factors expert, and that's somebody who can tell you what the ordinary person would do when faced with certain circumstances.

What is this?

Do you feel like you've buckled yourself in properly?

Yes.

You see how there's two latches on it, okay, and that first latch, it latches down by your right hip.

There you go.

There you go.

And then you do this way, I would assume.

Do you think you would've figured that out if I wouldn't have told you?

No.

Out of 40 people, 38 of them put it on exactly as Sarah had done.

It was a two week long trial.

My parents were there every single day.

You're faced with this extremely difficult situation, so you don't really think about yourself very much.

You think about, okay, what do we need to do to support Sarah.

And for the future.

And that was important to us as parents, is that she would be okay when we're not around, and what's the future going to be if this doesn't work?

The only date I know that is permanent was the day that we got the verdict, which was February 14th, 2019.

Verdicts feed egos and settlements feed families.

I believe that.

And what gave you the strength to hang in there with us?

I survived my accident and there's a reason and I wouldn't take it back.

People have asked me that, would you go back to that day and not get in the car, and no, because I would rather it happen to me than anyone else that I've ever met.

And I know I'm strong enough, and I know that's tooting my own horn a little bit.

You can toot away, baby.

We won.

It was kind of like a weight lifted off my shoulders.

I'm just like, okay.

It was like, wow.

Everyone else sees what I saw.

That's what it was about.

It was like for the justice of it.

I would give back the money tomorrow if that meant I was walking, but that's not the reality of my life.

What's even greater is we just learned Honda no longer has that particular seatbelt in these cars, and that is what we really, really wanted.

You kiddo.

You did it.

You made a difference.

After the verdict, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association asked if I would be interested in being a witness for SB 30.

Our legislature was going to pass a bill that would limit the amount of money that people who have been injured by the negligence of others can recover, and the bill was going to basically take away life care plans, which would have been catastrophic for our clients.

Sarah went down and testified before the Senate and house representatives, their committee.

I went and testified.

Leah Anne went and testified.

We fought against it because it absolutely would've been horrible for people like Sarah.

And so between the three of us, we were there basically speaking for the same thing, which is people deserve access to care and they deserve to have someone in the room explaining the numbers so that we get it right.

And we won.

We defeated the bill.

Not we, but a lot of people collectively together did.

Badness happens if it's in a vacuum.

I didn't find out about Senate Bill 30 until it was two weeks before we were going before the legislature, and so we hired a lobbyist to make sure that if something pops up that we're notified.

Now, the other side to that is our work isn't done.

We don't just celebrate when we have a huge victory like that.

We celebrate and then the next day we go back to work because the education and the need is always going to be there to have that voice in the room.

Alright, so reach up with that left arm and then straighten out their right elbow and go straight up to the sky.

Okay, now take that right arm out.

Good.

And then control on the way back in.

Nice.

Good.

I work out often because it's not about being fit.

It's not about being the strongest person ever.

It's about I want to be able to push my wheelchair in 10 years.

I want to do these things that help make me stronger and make me, makes my life easier so that I can live a longer, more fulfilling life.

Be done.

Ready?

1, 2, 3.

Okay.

Up.

Let's do two more.

I wish everyone could meet Sarah because I deal with so much sadness and so much loss, but Sarah embodies what is possible if you have those resources.

When I was injured, I was like, I do not want to drive a minivan.

I found a man in Amsterdam that had done some things different.

When you adapt a car, when you put a ramp in or hand controls or anything like that, you go to third party aftermarket.

I had found the video of it and I had taken it to three separate aftermarket car manufacturers and the ones that I took it to, they said, that's never been done before.

We can't do that.

I don't take no for an answer.

And I said, well why, like why not?

They actually were able to get it to work.

The butterfly doors come up and then my chair comes all the way out.

I took the seats out from behind the driver's seat.

It was a bench seat and I took out two seats, left one, and then the third row has two seats, and I also have a passenger seat, and I put, it's like a crane inside my car, and then I have a platform next to the driver's seat that I am sitting on.

And because that was a proven concept, now these other people can do that.

Navigating the world like this, I know the world's not accessible.

I a hundred percent know that, but you still want to go where it's off the beaten path.

I think my car is really cool.

I want everyone to see you don't have to be just like everyone else.

It says, Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanks to God for Sarah.

I wrote that in there.

When Sarah was told in the hospital that she was paralyzed, what she said to the doctor, I don't know that I would be able to say, but she said, well, I guess God has another plan for me.

She felt like it was the plan for her to make a difference in the world.

She's the mentor for the Christopher Reeve Foundation nationally.

She's really been a mentor to many.

I decided I wanted to kind of see what I could do with swimming.

I'm ranked number two in the Paralympic division of S3 backstroke.

Sarah is thriving.

Sarah's goal was to be able to write at some point.

Sarah was able to write me a handwritten note.

I've got it in the shadow box in my office and said I was waiting for the day that I could do this and write this in my own writing.

Never give up.

But also, it's going to be hard.

It's going to suck, but it's so worth it to make a difference.

I think now this injury has made me even better.

You do not need to think that you can't live just because you can't walk, or you can't use your arms.

There is a life after your tragedy.

Funding for this program was provided by: ANSI National Accreditation Board And by: International Commision on Health Care Certification