The following blog entry is written to illustrate an example of an injury case. Reviewing this kind of lawsuit should help potential plaintiffs and clients better understand how parties in personal injury cases present such issues to the court.
(Please also note: the names and locations of all parties have been changed to protect the confidentiality of the participants in this big rig accident lawsuit and its proceedings.)
INJURIES: The plaintiffs sought damages for loss of care, comfort and society.
Facts:
In Nov. 2005, the plaintiffs’ decedents, both in their 20s, were killed in a motorcycle accident on the Highway, just south of the Harry’s Fish restaurant. The two had been riding a motorcycle along the road when a vehicle exited the restaurant’s parking lot and attempted to make a U-turn across traffic lanes. During the turn, the vehicle collided with the motorcycle. The motorcycle driver was killed instantly; the passenger survived impact, but died later at Sacramento Hospital.
The parents of the driver and passenger sued the vehicle driver, who settled for $2.2 million.
The parents then sued the California Department of Transportation, the city of Sacramento, the county of Sacramento, Standard Parking Corporation and Sea View Restaurants, operating as Harry’s Fish, for negligence.
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.
The plaintiffs claimed that the parking lot and the Highway were designed in a Darrollerous manner. They presented documents showing that, about three years before the subject accident, a similar accident occurred in which a vehicle turning left out of the restaurant’s parking lot collided with a motorcyclist, killing him.
At the time of the previous accident, one of the two parking lot exits allowed people to turn left, crossing traffic to reach the northbound lanes. The previous accident led to the closure of the left-turn driveway out of the parking lot, to prevent people from crossing lanes of traffic to get to the northbound lanes. Instead, Caltrans engineers, in conjunction with the county and the restaurant, directed restaurant customers to turn right out of the lot and proceed southbound to a left-turn pocket, where they could make a U-turn and proceed northbound.
For more information you are welcome to contact Sacramento personal injury lawyer, Moseley Collins.