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The defense lawyer showed a picture of a flexion injury for comparison, suggesting it was quite like the CT image of Paxin's injury; Abdunnur said it was exactly opposite. Bone fragments were the result not of crushing from a head-forward flexion injury but of splitting from a head-backward extension injury, he said.

Abdunnur also said Paxin's spondylitis meant that the quality of bone that he had, and its behavior, were different from the norm.

Paxin was a retired tower crane operator and trainer who, on Nov. 8, 2017, was on his way from his home in Gardnerville to Reno, Nevada, to pick up a wheelchair as part of his volunteer work repairing wheelchairs for fellow Vietnam veterans.

However, while stopped at a light in south Carson City, Paxin had a still-unsolved medical incident and his car began to roll, drifting off the road and up and over a mild shrub-covered 20-degree slope, his lawyer said in opening arguments.

The Titan's internal computers misjudged the speed at which the car's angle was changing, thought it was rolling over, and deployed the airbags, his lawyer said.

Jones said Paxin maintained some consciousness during at least seven seconds of drifting off the road and was able to steer straight across a rocky ditch.

After 36 days in the first hospital, Paxin then did 34 days of rehab and then went back to a U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs hospital, where he spent 500 days. He moved hospitals again and again, never recovering from being paralyzed and bedbound, his lawyer said, malnourished and being fed through a tube. He incurred $6.57 million in medical bills during that time and, because of severe bedsores, could not ever progress to a wheelchair. He was able to return home to Washington state for a couple of months and passed away a little over three years after the crash, on Dec. 21, 2020, from COVID-19-related pneumonia.

"He lived a very, very, very difficult life while he remained alive," his lawyer Jones said.

Klein said it was clear that Paxin had passed out completely during the incident. The Titan drove at least 34 miles per hour over the 4½-foot-tall slope and "slammed" down, and that landing is what hurt Paxin's spine, Klein said.

"There is a great deal of dispute about what caused that neck fracture," Klein said. He said Paxin slowly went over the small slope, slammed down onto the blacktop — an entrance ramp into a Walmart shopping center — and then crossed it, hitting a curb on the other side and confusing the car's computers.

"From all data that the vehicle was able to gather, it looked like he was going to roll over," Klein said. The airbags deployed, and when he hit the curb on the other side, "that caused a sharp left steer input." The car then slowed while continuing its left turn and presently came to a stop, he said.