Melissa Murphy-Petros (Of Counsel-Chicago) was brought in as appellate counsel to the team at trial and then handled the post-trial and appellate litigation in a case involving a child hit by a truck and severely injured while riding his bicycle to school on a dark, late October morning. He was on his bike because he had missed his school bus, operated by our client. The jury found against the client on negligence and proximate cause, but allocated only 16% of fault to it. The remaining fault was allocated to plaintiffs (56%) and the truck driver (28%). Because plaintiffs’ fault exceeded 50%, they were barred from recovery under Tennessee’s comparative negligence statute. In a 2-1 decision, the Sixth Circuit affirmed on the ground that the district court’s exclusion of the client’s employee handbook and plaintiff’s school bus expert, even if erroneous, was harmless error because the jury found against the client on liability without this evidence. The majority further reasoned that plaintiffs had waived their appellate argument that the exclusion of this evidence impacted the jury’s allocation of fault because they never sought admission of the evidence for fault allocation purposes but rather sought admission only to show our client’s negligence.