Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

A bus accident caused by a truck smashing into it ended up as a multi-vehicle car accident involving seven vehicles. There were no deaths in the crash, but several people were seriously injured, including at least six AC Transit passengers. The bus passengers were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment. AC Transit, is the third-largest public bus system in California, with approximately 227,000 people riding the system a day. It serves 13 cities and nearby unincorporated areas in Alameda and Contra Costa counties. Bus accidents can be particularly dangerous as there are currently no laws in California that govern the use of seat belts in them. There has been talk about requiring seatbelts in buses, but to date, no law has been enacted in the State of California. This means that California bus riders can be subject to serious head and neck injuries as a result of bus accidents, including potentially fatal injuries.

There is a lot of debate over whether or not public buses should have seat belts to protect passengers from injury in the case of an accident. Some argue that seat belts wouldn't necessarily make buses safer in the case of a serious accident or could even increase the number of critical injuries. Experts argue that shoulder harnesses aren't practical in buses as they are currently designed, and that lap belts are likely to cause more head and abdominal injuries because in a collision the wearer is jerked forward from the waist. Others are demanding that city buses have the same safety restraints that must be manufactured in cars and worn by passengers and drivers.

In this particular bus accident, a truck hit the AC bus and propelled it into the wrong lane. This caused the bus to veer into the oncoming lane and smash head on into a minivan. The minivan was then propelled backward at least fifty feet into a parked Ford Expedition, which then hit a parked car in front of it. The AC Transit driver was not harmed in the accident, but two passengers in the truck reportedly suffered serious injuries. Riders in the minivan were lucky because they reportedly were wearing their seats belts, and air bas deployed and filled the majority of the front seat.

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Posted In: BUS ACCIDENT , MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENT , TRUCKING ACCIDENT

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A tractor trailer big rig truck caused a fatal auto accident on a San Bernardino Riverside freeway when it struck a car carrying a mother and child. Their car erupted in flames, and both were burned to death in this tragedy. We sued both the tractor and trailer for negligence and wrongful death as a result the accident, and we settled the case for the policy limits of $1,500,000. While no amount of money is just compensation for the wrongful death of a loved one in a car accident, personal injury lawyers can help surviving family members receive some compensation for their loss that can hopefully help them put the pieces of their lives back together. Our clients were the surviving husband and his two remaining children who live in Fontana, California.

The husband and surviving children would have a wrongful death claim against anyone who was found to be negligent who contributed to the deaths of their mother and sibling. We knew that this would be a difficult wrongful death case because their car was totally destroyed in the fire, which made it impossible to reconstruct the auto accident to determine what caused their car to go out of control in the first place. Our client’s wife got on the 210 freeway in San Bernardino with one of her children to drive five miles to a store just a few off ramps away. For some unknown reason, her car went out of control, crossed the freeway from the number four lane to the center, struck the center divider, came all the way back across the freeway and was struck broadside on the passenger side by a tractor trailer in the number four lane. The car then erupted in flames from the impact, and they were killed in the fire. The husband was a California Highway Patrol officer who was called to the fiery scene and arrived there with his other children. Fortunately they were kept away from the wreckage which was still on fire.

Many times we have cases where the original negligence or accident did not cause the ultimate death or damages. In this case, clearly, if the tractor trailer had not impacted the car at a high rate of speed, the car would have continued across the freeway, not caught on fire, and ended up on the side of the freeway. We sued the tractor trailer for negligence in not seeing the car initially lose control as it started sliding from the number four lane to the center divider and to slow up or to pull over when the car started to slide back across the freeway. Our accident reconstruction expert determined that the tractor trailer had seven seconds to see the car and to react, which was enough time to have taken evasive action. The expert for the tractor trailer indicated they would have had four seconds from the time the car hit the center divider, which would still have been enough time to substantially slow or turn to the shoulder. In these type of cases, we always hire a number of experts who help reconstruct the accident. Many times we spend over $100,000 for experts to help explain what happened, why and how it could have been avoided.

The tractor only had a policy of $750,000. Many accident attorneys don't realize in tractor trailer cases that the trailer also may have their own policy that covers the claim, and in some cases even the owner of the load can be liable. Although $1,500,000 is not enough to compensate the family for the negligence of the tractor trailer and the wrongful death of the wife, mother and child, the defendant driver/owner did not have any other assets. The two surviving children will have their portion of the settlement put in a structured settlement to pay for their college when they get older, and it will accumulate sufficient funds for them to buy a house or start their own business when they get older.

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Posted In: CAR ACCIDENT , MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENT , MOTORCYCLE ACCIDENT , TRUCKING ACCIDENT , WRONGFUL DEATH

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In Los Angeles we drive our cars everyday and count on our air bags to keep us safe from harm in the event of a serious car accident. Unfortunately, sometimes airbags fail to deploy, which can cause severe damage such as spinal cord injuries and head or brain injuries resulting in paralysis or death. When side torso and head air bags fail to deploy in a serious auto accident, riders may survive, but can be left totally paralyzed as quadriplegics and unable to function. In many of these accidents, had the air bags properly deployed, drivers and passengers might have been injured, but most likely would not have suffered full paralysis or death. We believe that when automobile manufacturers fail to implement correctly functioning airbags in cars, they should be subject to product liability and negligence under the full extent of the law.

Quadriplegics and paraplegics often live a normal life expectancy, but they will always be confined to a bed or mobile electric wheel chair. When people cannot feed, bathe, dress themselves or take care of their own hygiene, it means that they will need to pay for care for the rest of their lives. Their loss of income, personal care and medical expenses can run into the many millions of dollars. This is often a tragedy that could have been avoided had the airbags properly deployed. Accident and product liability attorneys can help clients get compensation for their injuries and help give them the funds they will need for managed care for the rest of their lives.

We at the Law Offices of Greenberg & Rudman LLP fight for our clients and we spend our own money to hire all of the necessary experts to prove a case. We take a case on a contingency basis, which means that if we don’t win or settle the case, we don’t get paid- not for our time and not for the actual costs and expenses of the case. As personal injury attorneys working on contingency, we put up our own time and money on behalf of injured clients because we believe in our clients, we believe in the civil jury system, and we believe justice will prevail.

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Posted In: BRAIN & SPINAL CORD INJURY , CAR ACCIDENT , MOTOR VEHICLE ACCIDENT , PRODUCT LIABILITY , WRONGFUL DEATH

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A man was electrocuted to death in North Hollywood, California by a defective product he had bought at a thrift shop in Los Angeles. His wife called our firm, and we took on her case as a wrongful death with both product liability for the faulty device as well as premises liability because the rented home they lived in had faulty electrical wiring. We sued the landlord and the manufacturer and settled the case with both defendants on behalf of his wife for substantial six figures.

It was tragic that a hobby would lead to the wrongful death of our client’s husband. In these situations, clients need to hire strong personal injury lawyers to fight their case. While there was nothing we could do to bring our client’s husband back, we were determined to bring to justice those responsible for this tragedy and to help our client with her financial difficulties since her husband had died. This is what happened: the couple used to buy items at the thrift shop and they would resell them at swap meets. Our clients took home the contents to sort out what they had purchased. One item looked like an old food warmer, but they weren’t sure what it was. It was a metal device with a cord and tray on top. The cord had two prongs on the end, but it was old and at one time it may even have had a third prong. In order to find out what the metal device was, they decided to plug it in and see what happened. The husband put the device on the floor of his living room, plugged the device into a wall socket, and bent over to pick it up to see how it worked.

The home they were renting was a very old house in a relatively low income neighborhood. It was obvious that the house wiring had been fixed and repaired many times, and there weren’t even any face plate on the wall sockets. When the husband bent over to pick up the metal device, he placed one hand on each side. Tragically he was unaware that there was an electrical short in the device, and by grabbing both sides at the same time, he became part of an electrical circuit. The electricity was stuck in a circuit passing through the device, and through the husband, whereby he couldn’t let go. He was immediately electrocuted, and eventually he fell to the ground and the device fell out of his hands. He was dead by the time the paramedics arrived.

Our firm hired experts on electrical wiring in the home as well as electrical device manufacturing to determine what happened and why. It turned out the device was actually a jewelry cleaner that was manufactured over thirty years ago. Because the plug did not have the third prong, he plugged in the cord upside down. If the wall socket had been wired properly, it wouldn’t have made any difference which way he plugged it in. But because of both errors, he was electrocuted and died. We held the manufacturer responsible for product liability and the landlord responsible for premises liability. We settled the case and were able to obtain a substantial six figure settlement for our client.

Posted by Greenberg & Rudman | Permalink | Email This Post

Posted In: PREMISES LIABILITY , PRODUCT LIABILITY , WRONGFUL DEATH

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