We
established how the accident happened through expert inspection of the bicycle
and the place of injury and by careful, detailed depositions of others present
during the crash... |
Verdicts & Settlements
I
am equipped to handle the spectrum of damage claims for bicyclists, ranging from
mild to moderate injury cases all the way to those involving catastrophic injury
or death. Many times I have prevailed in cases where the defense not only denied
liability, but asserted the bicyclist was wholly or largely at fault for his
injury. While fighting for justice for bicyclists in court, I draw upon 25 years
experience as a personal injury attorney, my own experiences as a bicyclist and
the assistance of seasoned experts in bicycle safety, accident reconstruction,
lighting and vision, human factors, civil engineering, road design, pavement
deterioration, biomechanical engineering, bike helmets, medicine, orthopedic
surgery, physical therapy, exercise physiology and psychiatry. Below are brief
summaries of some notable cases I have handled.
$1,000,000 – 72 year old retired phone company sales manager suffered skull fracture, multiple brain contusions and fractures to his right shoulder and ribs in a solo bike crash during a group ride.
Plaintiff was in a marked Class II bike lane when the front tire of his Bianchi road bike struck a series of “washboard” ridges in the pavement caused by gradual encroachment of roots from roadside trees. This caused his front wheel to deflect at a 90 degree angle to the left, causing him and the front of his bicycle to pitch forward and down in a somersault motion with his bike shoes still attached to the pedal clips. Despite wearing a safety inspected bicycle helmet, he suffered a skull fracture to the bones around his right eye socket and behind his right ear. He lost consciousness and had no memory of the crash or its circumstances. A fellow rider made a police report one week after the crash.We established how the accident happened through expert inspection of the bicycle and the place of injury and by careful, detailed depositions of others present during the crash including fellow bike riders and the two truck drivers who happened to be passing by on the other side of the road when plaintiff crashed. Through review of the town’s DPW records on road maintenance and depositions of its DPW employees, we established the town was negligent in failing to properly inspect, maintain and repair the bike lane pavement and negligent in failing to barricade or warn of the presence of the dangerous condition by means of rough road signs or high visibility marker paint.
The town sought dismissal on the grounds of “recreational immunity,” but its motion to dismiss was denied on the trial court and appellate level, because the Court found that paved bike lanes are part of the street and highway system used for transportation and not off road trails designed and used for purposes of recreation. Defendant also disputed liability on the grounds that plaintiff should have seen the dangerous condition and either rode around it or slowed and gone over the bumps slowly. Our expert used measurements and photos taken at the scene on multiple occasions to establish that on the date and time of the incident the early afternoon sun was low in the winter sky and as its severely slanted rays filtered through the leafless branches of the roadside trees, they created a heavily dappled shade that rendered the pavement rides invisible to the plaintiff even though he was wearing yellow tinted sunglasses.Although the plaintiff was retired and had no wage loss, we established he was entitled to substantial damages on account of pain, suffering and lost quality of life. This included proof that he suffered total loss of smell and taste, partial loss of vision and hearing, imbalance, emotional lability with crying, difficulty with word finding and inability to process routine paperwork such as bills or taxes. We presented evidence that he had developed a passion for cycling after his wife died as a way of combating grief and depression; that cycling had become the foundation of his recreational, fitness and social activities; and that his doctors had urged him to stop cycling after his brain injury because of the risk he would become hurt again if he went road biking.
$450,000 – 51-year-old house husband devoted to Buddhist meditation practice was struck by an uninsured car in an intersection while riding his mountain bike home from errands in town.
Claimant sustained a fractured and totally dislocated left ring finger, partial left shoulder separation and concussion with neck and back strains. The concussion presented with no loss of consciousness but involved approximately 15 minutes of amnesia that wiped out plaintiff’s recollection of the crash. We were able to reconstruct the collision through expert inspection of the site, review of police photos of scratches to the side of the uninsured car and careful questioning of two eyewitnesses who heard it but did not see it happen. We were able to establish that claimant had no stop sign and entered the intersection with the right of way to make a left turn, and that the uninsured driver failed to stop at the stop sign and cut a sharp left turn directly across his forward path. This caused claimant to jerk his handlebars to the right to avoid impact, and led to a forceful “gliding contact” collision between the left side of claimant’s bike with the left side of the turning car. This collision crushed and fractured his left ring finger, torqued his neck and back to the left, twisted his saddle by 45 degrees and threw him off the saddle onto the pavement where his helmet struck the ground and sustained a crack through the Styrofoam over his left temple.
Claimant’s insurance company accepted full responsibility for his injuries but disputed the nature and extent of the injuries.We used a neuropsychologist, a balance testing expert, a hand therapist and an expert on Buddhist meditation to prove his injuries. We established that the cognitive and physical injuries he sustained, precluded him meditating at his formerly high level of competence, precluded him from returning safely to bicycling or driving a car, and precluded him earning income by doing odd jobs as handyman or by finishing and publishing the book he had nearly completed on water color painting technique. We also established lost quality of life due to chronic cognitive slowing with lost concentration, poor balance with frequent trips and falls, insomnia, depression and lost libido.
$325,000 – 68 year old retired mechanical engineer suffered a concussion, a fracture of the right hip and PTSD in a solo crash caused by dangerous road conditions.
Plaintiff was riding his bike in a designated inter-county bike route from San Francisco to San Mateo along Route 35 southbound in Daly City. As he came around a downhill curve at 25 mph, he saw the bike route was totally blocked off by cement k-rails to protect employees of Caltrans and its contractor Gordon Ball while repairing a tunnel that had collapsed under the highway. In violation of its own regulations, Caltrans had not posted any signs ahead to warn road users that the bike route was closed, that cars should reduce speed and watch for bicyclists. Caltrans further violated its own rules by not leaving any portion of the bike route open for bike travel during construction, by failing to providing a safe, alternative corridor of travel for bicyclists around the temporary traffic control area and failing to post flagmen to help them get safely past it. Plaintiff was forced to divert to his left into lane #2 of Rt. 35 where cars were going 60-70 mph. He stayed as close as possible to the cement k-rails to avoid being struck by a car.
Unbeknownst to plaintiff, defendants had placed a flimsy section of orange plastic mesh fence on the last k-rail, which they secured in the weakest possible manner against the 20-30 mph cross winds blowing off the Pacific Ocean through the construction site. Instead of using metal guy wires to secure the mesh fence tautly to closely spaced, cleated metal posts, they stapled the plastic fence to widely spaced wooden boards that were loose and shifted position. This allowed the fence to sag and blow in the wind. As plaintiff neared the end of the row of barriers, a gust of wind suddenly blew the orange fence towards his right side. It hooked his handlebar, instantly decelerated his bike from 25 mph to 0 and snapped him down so hard against the pavement he cracked his helmet, broke his right hip and bounced up into the air.Because plaintiff was a very experienced rider he was fully conscious of the risk that he would be run over and killed, especially because defendants had not posted any signs warning cars to reduce speed. As he fell he said to himself, "I'm a dead man."
For his non-displaced inter-trochanteric hip fracture plaintiff had a metal plate and screws implanted for 20 months. During that time he experienced daily discomfort from the metal plate rubbing against his quadriceps. He has also episodes of shooting pain that caused him to collapse to the ground. Plaintiff had 2 months of psychological counseling after the incident to deal with the terror and acute anxiety from this experience.Plaintiff was later able to return to mountain biking with a metal plate in his hip. He rode wearing hip protector pads on less steep, less challenging trails at a slower pace. However, he was never able to return to trail running or road biking. The doctor told him the risk of refracture was unacceptably high with trail running on Mt. Tam given the tree roots and stones. With respect to road cycling, he could not shake the fear he would fall again and get run over. After 9 month off, he began to sail his boat again, but never on extended trips through rough, choppy water, as he feared falling and rebreaking his hip.Defendants' expert in orthopedics claimed that plaintiff's hip fracture had healed well. Its expert in psychiatry claimed his PTSD had resolved within 3 months of the incident. They asserted plaintiff was fully able to return to and had returned to his pre-incident life style including many forms of vigorous sports and adventure activities.
I was able to show that plaintiff had not made anything close to a full physical or psychological recovery, that his activity level had been permanently reduced and he had suffered a permanent loss of self-confidence and self-esteem. Our physical therapist established that plaintiff had permanent atrophy and weakness of his hip flexors and glutes from the fracture, permanent loss of mobility from extensive scar tissue in his right lateral quadriceps and reduced neuromuscular coordination. Our experts in psychology showed that plaintiff had become anxious, self-doubting and insecure over his athletic perforance ability and his ability to protect himself from injury during sports. He was now feeling his age, after a lifetime of being a superior athlete with superior conditioning and fitness. This led to anxiety and depression, which he struggled to conceal from himself and others. His global functioning went from superior to a mild-moderate impairment.
$250,000 settlement for bicyclist who fell upon and fractured his left hip after striking an unmarked ridge of pavement with his front wheel.
62 year old retired mailman was riding his bike on a street through an industrial area which had no signs posted indicating rough road or uneven pavement. As he rounded a blind curve he encountered a 9 foot trench between the asphalt pavement and the cement gutter. He could not divert to the left, because of car traffic in his direction so he diverted to the right side of the trench and continued riding on the cement gutter which was flat and smooth. As the curve straightened out he observed a forklift stopped half in and half off a driveway that was blocking the cement gutter. He looked to his left and saw no cars and no road hazards, then turned his front wheel to the left to get around the back of the forklift. His front wheel instantly hit something hard and flipped him and his bike down and to the left where he fractured the neck of his left femur on the road surface. While lying in the road, he observed a ridge of pavement protruding about 3 inches up that extended from the end of the trench for 25 feet to the beginning of the driveway where the forklift was stopped. He had not seen it before, because it was the same gray color as the surrounding asphalt and the overcast sky and it was not marked with brightly colored spraypaint.
The client had surgery the next day to fix the fracture by placing a long screw through the neck and head of his left femur and compressing the fractured bone with a compression plate and 4 additional screws. He incurred approximately $52,000 in hospital charges and $4,000 in post-operative physical therapy. There was no wage loss. The client had to user a walker at first and then a cane. He was eventually able to walk without a cane but with a slight limp and he returned to riding his bike with an unusual posture -- his left knee sticking out to the side and his torso bent forward and to the right.
The town filled in the trench and cut down the ridge after the client reported the incident, but denied legal responsibility for his injury on the grounds that it did not own the street and had never accepted it into its system of city streets by formal resolution, and that the accident was wholly caused by plaintiff's own negligence in not seeing and avoiding the ridge and by the forklift operator illegally blocking the driveway. The town also claimed it had no prior knowledge or notice of the ridge, and that the street sweeping firm it hired to sweep the street breached its contract by failing to report the hazardous condition of the pavement.
Investigation revealed the ridge had formed during the summers when the sun's heat softened the asphalt and heavy trucks rode around the curve, pushing the asphalt to the side of the road where it bunched up against the cement gutter. The trench was likely formed when the street sweeping trucks rode over the ridge at night and sucked up broken pieces of asphalt. During the lawsuit, I obtained documents and took depositions showing that the leader of the town's road repair crew knew about the ridge for 17 years, because he had to cross over it once a month to read water meters on the street. Although the town was correct that it did not own the road, it had never posted the road as being a private road that was privately maintained. Rather the town had treated the road as its own by painting the curbs red, issuing parking tickets, paying someone to sweep the street, including the street in its pavement management program and fixing the street when my client complained of his injury. My investigations also showed that 35 years before the incident the town had purchased an easement from the property owner, a railroad, authorizing the town to construct, reconstruct, maintain and use the area as a street or highway. This gave the town the legal right to control the street. This legal right of control coupled with many activities exerting control were sufficient to convince the court that a rational jury could find the town was legally responsible for the condition of the street, despite the lack of a paper resolution by the city council stating the street had been accepted into its system of streets.
After the court denied defendant's motion for summary judgment and refused to dismiss the case, the town repaved the whole street and settled the case. The 3 defendants all denied liability and claimed plaintiff was at least 50% to 75% at fault for not seeing the ridge, stopping his bike and walking it past the hazard. In plaintiff's behalf, I argued he was riding slowly and carefully, but could not avoid injury because the 3 defendants had set up a trap, since the trench was on the left, the forklift was dead ahead and the curb on the right was 6 inches tall. Further the ridge was hidden in plain sight since it was the same faded gray color as the road and blended with the gray of the overcast sky; it was not marked with paint; and there were no signs warning of the ridge. The town ended up paying $220,000 with the rest of the $250,000 paid by the forklift operator and street sweeping company. The hospital's insurer agreed to cut its reimbursement by half.
$125,000 - Right Turning Pick Up Truck vs. Bicycle Settlement for a college student and part-time criterium, amateur racer (training for the Summer Olympics) who was struck in the thigh by a right-turning pick-up truck.
My client was standing still over her bike waiting to cross the street at the corner of a 4 way intersection. The oblivious driver ran her over and only moved off her when she yelled, "get off me!" The crushing injury caused necosis of a small portion of her quadricep muscle that had to be surgically removed. Following recovery, her high burned when she sprinted on her bike, and she transitioned herself from racing to making films about cycling and other topics. There was no wage loss and a small hospital bill, but we argued she had sustained disfigurement, lost career opportunity and substantial daily suffering from leg pain and reduced performance as a recreational bicyclist.
$100,000 - Left Turning Automobile vs. Bicycle. Policy Limits Settlement for a 33 year old Systems Administrator struck on left side while commuting home from work by bike.
The driver at fault was coming home from work by car, and attempted to enter
his driveway by making a left turn from the center turn lane in the opposite
direction. He failed to yield to my client who was on her bicycle in the bike
lane. The impact caused her to suffer a fracture of the radial head in the left
elbow with joint dislocation that required an open reduction-internal fixation
surgery, and a fracture of the 4th metacarpal of her right hand. She had casts
or braces on both arms for 7 weeks and was disabled from work during that time.
She cannot fully bend her left elbow and has persistent
stiffness in her right hand with mild loss of grip strength and some
loss of fine dexterity.
$100,000 - Policy limits settlement on underinsured motorist coverage for bicyclist struck by hit and run car in Golden Gate Park
44 year old fine arts mural painter riding mountain bike home across Golden Gate Park after renting a video was struck by a vehicle that sped up, passed him and then made a sharp, unsignaled right turn across his forward path. The car fled the scene and the client was unable to give the police a description or license plate other than to say he saw a "gray car turn in front of him" causing him to "hit the brakes and fall." Due to concussion, the client could not remember the impact between his front wheel and the right rear bumper of the hit and run car until the next day after the police wrote it up as a non-contact incident. In addition to a concussion with chronic headache, dizziness, poor memory and insomnia, the client sustained sprain injuries to his neck and left wrist and a non-displaced fracture to the head of his left humerus. Medical expenses were approximately $15,000 and there was a disputed wage loss from his being unable to perform mural jobs that he had already contracted to do.
Careful accident reconstruction by a bicycle expert showed a contact had taken place between the front wheel of the bike and the right rear bumper of the "phantom" car because of smudge transfer and subtle impact damage. Investigation finally turned up a witness, a chiropractor, who heard a crash, turned and saw the client on the road and saw a gray car completing a right turn just ahead of him. He ran after the car but was not able to get the license plate and left the scene before the police arrived.
Based upon this corroborating evidence the client's insurance company paid policy limits for his documented injuries from the collision.
$80,000 - Left Turning Car vs. Bicycle Settlement for a single 53 year old woman who owned/managed a 5 unit apartment building.
Plaintiff was riding her Trek 1420 up a mild grade on a busy commercial street, and moved from the right hand curb to the crosswalk (on the green light) to avoid the cars. A car operated by a college student on the opposite side of the street entered the intersection on the yellow light at 25 mph, and executed a left turn without slowing significantly or scanning the crosswalk. Although plaintiff wore a bright neon yellow jersey on a clear, sunny day, he did not see her until he was one car length back of the crosswalk. Defendant hit his brakes and made a hard right, jumping the curb at the corner and ramming into a fire hydrant. As he turned right to avoid her, the left front of his car struck the left side of her body, knocking her off her bicycle and causing her to fall onto her right eye and chin (below the helmet), right wrist and elbow and right knee.
The direct impact from the car lacerated her left knee and crushed her left foot and heel. Plaintiff sustained cervical and lumbar strain injury; a deep cut in her left knee requiring stitches and leaving a scar; bruises to the face, right elbow, both inner thighs and right knee; a medial collateral ligament strain of the right knee; and a crush injury to her left foot with permanent numbness in the toes and swelling of the dorsum requiring her to wear a left shoe 2 sizes larger than the right.
Defendant disputed liability and would not acknowledge hitting plaintiff with his car. His attorney suggested plaintiff may have tipped over out of fear or from steering evasively. We established that plaintiff's bruise pattern and the damage to her bike (including bent front spokes, bent seat post, gouge in the left pedal shaft and bent left pedal) were most consistent with direct impact to her left side from defendant's car. Although plaintiff had no wage loss, she did incur increased operating expenses for her building because she could no longer do the painting, plumbing or gardening. Furthermore, the left foot crush and knee injuries substantially reduced plaintiff's ability to continue cycling, hiking and playing golf or tennis.