Articles Posted in Personal Injury

If you’ve been injured in an accident, chances are the last thing you want to do is go to trial on issues that the other side has no reasonable ground for contesting. Contesting issues without a reasonable belief of victory can be costly to the side who does this, though. In one recent Southern California case, the California Court of Appeal ruled that an accident victim was entitled to receive additional compensation from the driver who injured him, since the other driver decided to fight liability in spite of overwhelming evidence he was at fault.

The case originated with an auto accident in Orange County. In that crash, Levik Mansourian’s vehicle collided with a car driven by Timothy Grace. Mansourian told an investigator that his traffic signal was yellow. An eyewitness, however, said Mansourian’s traffic light was red. Following the accident, Grace underwent both ankle surgery and back surgery.

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Back seat (or passenger seat) driving usually holds little risk other than potential annoyance to the driver. However, an important new California Court of Appeal case recently concluded that a woman was potentially liable for the instructions and encouragement she gave the driver of her vehicle, which led the driver to speed so fast he lost control of his SUV and crashed into a family and their SUV.

The crash that triggered the lawsuit involved 18-year-old Brandon Coleman, a newly licensed driver who was transporting companions Hayley Meyer and Levi Calhoun to a Riverside County Rite Aid drug store to purchase soft drinks on Thanksgiving night in 2009. On the way, Meyer told Coleman to turn down a 25-mile-per-hour residential street because the street had several dips that could cause a car to become airborne if taken at a high rate of speed.

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An uninsured bicyclist, who was severely injured by a vehicle involved in a two-car accident, was allowed to retain most of the $3.75 million judgment a jury awarded him against one of the drivers. The California Court of Appeal decided that uninsured accident victims, like the bicyclist, could prove their damages by offering up their medical bills alongside medical expert testimony stating that those charges were fair and reasonable.

The accident in question involved drivers Nathan Heacox and Faith Ciolek, who were traveling in opposite directions on Talbert Avenue in Orange County when their vehicles collided in the intersection of Talbert and Bushard Street. The crash knocked Heacox’s vehicle onto the sidewalk, where it struck bicyclist Omar Bermudez. Bermudez, who suffered serious injuries including multiple fractures, sued both drivers. Although a jury decided that Heacox was speeding, it concluded that only Ciolek was “a substantial factor in causing harm” to the bicyclist.

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Auto accident cases, in most situations, involve dealing with insurance companies. While insurers try to carve out coverage exclusions when they can, California law limits the exclusions an auto insurer may include in its policies. In a case originating with an auto accident in Orange County, the California Court of Appeal ruled that the at-fault driver’s insurer could not evade paying the judgment recovered by the driver’s passenger, even though the two were residents of the same household. The law only permitted insurers to carve out exclusions for cohabitating persons if they were relatives, and the driver and passenger in this case were unrelated college roommates.

The case began, as many personal injury matters do, with an unfortunate accident. Hung Chu crashed his 1995 Honda Accord when he turned left in front of a vehicle driven by Krystal Nguyen Hoang in Garden Grove. Riding alongside Chu was his roommate, Tu Pham. Pham, who was injured in the accident, sued Chu, recovering a judgment in the amount of $333,300.

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Suffering serious injuries in an auto accident caused by someone else can leave you with many major decisions to weigh. If you decide to settle, the other side will likely demand that you sign a release document as part of the settlement. Achieving a clear understanding of the precise boundaries of that release is imperative, since a broad release may potentially impair your ability to recover from others responsible for your injuries. Such was the case for a motorcyclist who recently lost his appeal before the California Court of Appeal.

The motorcyclist, Ronald Lee Cline, was severely injured in a collision with a car driven by Colby Homuth. Homuth, who had only a provisional driver’s license, was executing a turn onto a road in Calaveras County when Cline’s motorcycle crashed into the rear of his car. The accident report stated that Homuth was to blame for the accident.

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California law allows people to pursue premises liability claims if the landowner’s actions or inaction created an unreasonable risk of harm to offsite individuals. This potential for recovery from injuries does not extend to people harmed through secondary exposure to the clothes of a relative who wore asbestos-contaminated work clothes home. The California Court of Appeal concluded that allowing such second-hand asbestos exposure claims could lead to “limitless liability” for premises owners.

Frank Beckering worked as a machinist for Shell Oil Co. at its facilities in Dominguez and Wilmington in Southern California for nearly four decades, from 1954 to 1992. Beckering died 17 years after he retired. Four years later, his wife, Wanda Beckering, sued the employer. The wife launched a premises liability case, even though she never visited either of the Shell sites where her husband worked. According to the wife, Shell was still liable to her, since her act of laundering her husband’s work clothes for decades caused her to develop mesothelioma.

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In many auto accident injury cases, insurance companies are central figures in the process. In a recent California Court of Appeal case involving a drunk driver, the drunk driver’s employer and a fatally injured motorcyclist, the court decided that the motorcyclist’s wife was not entitled to recover payment under her and her husband’s auto insurance policy, because the insurers for the drunk driver and the employer each had already paid the wife, and the sum of those payments exceeded the limit of the couple’s policy.

The tragic events that ended Greg Elliott’s life began when Lesa Shaffer, a worker at Peterson’s Corner, a restaurant and bar, decided to drive home at the end of her shift despite being drunk. Shaffer’s truck crossed the center line of Route 49 in Nevada County and collided with Elliott’s motorcycle, killing the man.

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Any time you’re injured on someone else’s premises due to the negligence or misconduct of the property owner, there’s a lot that goes into obtaining a court judgment providing you with a damages award for the harm you’ve suffered. This is especially true if your injury occurred on your employer’s property because, in some of these cases, the law only allows you to recover workers’ compensation benefits. In one recent case involving a prison guard, the California Court of Appeal ruled that he should be allowed to pursue his premises liability lawsuit, since he both lived and worked on prison property, raising the possibility that he may not have been acting in the “scope of his employment” when he suffered his injury.

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A car salesman injured during a test drive when the customer crashed into a guardrail saw his $1.2 million award disappear due to a series of impermissible questions that the trial court allowed. The California Court of Appeal recently decided that the driver was entitled to a new trial after the trial court improperly allowed the salesman’s legal team to use the driver’s past speeding tickets as proof tending to indicate that the driver was negligent.

When Ran Li visited a BMW dealership in Concord, he probably never imagined that his test drive would be so eventful. While driving a M3, Li lost control of the vehicle on a highway ramp and crashed into a guardrail. Riding alongside Li was Kenneth Gonsalves, a salesman for the dealership. Gonsalves sued Li for major injuries he suffered to his back.

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The family of a motorcyclist killed along the Pacific Coast Highway recently succeeded in persuading the California Court of Appeal that the case they presented against the owner of a restaurant property should not have been thrown out by the trial court. The family’s victory is notable because the fatal injury did not occur on the restaurant’s property. Even though the injury in question occurred offsite, the attorneys for the family raised a potentially valid basis for finding the restaurant owner liable because the owner reasonably could have anticipated that the restaurant’s confusing parking lot exit could lead to an accident and injuries.

The family’s suit arose as a result of the tragic events of March 16, 2011. Joseph Annocki was driving his motorcycle when he was struck by a vehicle driven by Terry Turner. Turner was leaving the parking lot of Geoffrey’s, a restaurant situated along PCH and owned by Peterson Enterprises LLC, when he attempted an ill-advised left-hand turn and collided with Annocki. Annocki died as a result of the crash.

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