In this personal injury action arising out of an auto accident, Amina Ahmed appeals the jury verdict entered in her favor in the amount of $14,715.20, arguing that the jury awarded her less money than she requested because the trial court erroneously admitted prejudicial evidence of a separate unrelated lawsuit. Beyond the fact that Ahmed acquiesced to the admission of this evidence, some evidence showed that this other lawsuit involved an earlier claim by Ahmed for a similar injury, which impeached Ahmed’s testimony and which showed that her injuries were pre-existing. Accordingly, we hold the trial court did not abuse its discretion in admitting the other lawsuit, and we therefore affirm. Construed in favor of the verdict, the evidence shows that Ahmed was injured in an auto accident on February 16, 2006, which accident resulted from the negligence of Christopher Clark. Ahmed sued Clark, who disputed the extent of Ahmed’s back, shoulder, neck and head injuries. After a jury awarded Ahmed $14,715.20, she expressed dissatisfaction with the amount and moved for a new trial on the ground that an unrelated lawsuit was erroneously admitted into evidence. The court denied the motion, giving rise to this appeal.
The sole enumeration of error is the admission of the separate lawsuit into evidence. This matter came up when during the trial, Ahmed testified that she had not suffered any injuries from any prior auto accidents and that she had never suffered a workers’ compensation injury before. Clark sought to contradict this testimony by showing that Ahmed’s alleged injuries arose from two prior separate incidents. First, Clark introduced evidence that Ahmed in 2002 had made a disability claim at work for back pain. Second, Clark showed that in June 2005, a person by the identical name of Amina Ahmed had filed a separate lawsuit, seeking to recover for serious injuries from a July 2003 auto accident. When Ahmed objected to the admission of a certified copy of the complaint in this lawsuit, Clark showed from Ahmed’s tax returns that during 2005 Ahmed had lived in the same apartment that the person who had filed the June 2005 separate lawsuit had alleged was also her residence at the time of the filing of the separate lawsuit.1 The court initially refused to admit the evidence of the separate lawsuit.
