When 25-year-old Tanya Weyker was hit by a driver who rolled a stop sign, she not only found herself fighting serious injuries, but also criminal drunk driving charges. Weyker, who is being represented by Hupy and Abraham, S.C. , was arrested despite being innocent all along.
On February 20, 2013, Milwaukee County Deputy Sheriff Joseph Quiles pulled onto Howell Avenue near the Milwaukee Airport and T-boned Weyker’s car after rolling a stop sign. After Deputy Quiles lied about being at fault for the accident, Weyker was arrested for OWI without any evidence of guilt.
Weyker’s injuries were so serious she couldn’t even provide a breath sample, much less perform field sobriety tests. Months later, blood tests proved Weyker was completely sober.
Just two days after the crash, the sheriff’s office discovered surveillance footage of the accident that showed Quiles rolling the stop sign. But instead of apologizing to Weyker, they threatened to sue her if she didn’t pay for the damages.
Even after surveillance footage proved Weyker wasn’t at fault and blood tests proved she wasn’t intoxicated, it took five months for a prosecutor to look at the case and decide not to file charges.
It wasn’t until ten months later that an internal investigator at the sheriff’s office interviewed Deputy Quiles about the incident. Since the footage definitively proved he was at fault, he finally admitted to rolling the stop sign.
Much like the Curtis Harris case that Hupy and Abraham handled, the video surveillance proved to be the smoking gun. The deputy in Weyker’s case probably would never have admitted to rolling the stop sign without the tape and the officer who threw Curtis Harris against a concrete wall tried (unsuccessfully) to justify his actions despite the video evidence.
Hupy and Abraham, S.C. is currently fighting for justice on behalf of Weyker, but previously obtained a $3 million settlement for Harris, the largest police brutality settlement in Wisconsin history. In respect to the Harris case, Attorney Jason Abraham said, “Without the videotape, there probably is no case here.”