Los Angeles Injury Lawyer Blog

We settled an on the job accident case in Los Angeles, California for $1.85 million where our client first was electrocuted and then fell from a utility pole, paralyzing him from the waist down while trimming trees for work. Workers can suffer serious injuries at work, but often these are only workers compensation cases, which limits the amount of money you can collect from an employer. This was the case for our client. We as his accident lawyer could not sue his employer, but there was another party who was at fault in this accident. Our client was electrocuted on electric lines while he was trimming trees. As a result of being electrocuted, he fell to the ground and suffered a severe spinal cord injury when he broke his back landing on a fence below. Our client was only eighteen years old and was left a paraplegic as a result of the fall. We hired experts and were able to determine that the utility companies had been negligent in their placement of the electric lines on the pole and that without their negligence, the work accident would not have happened.

The details of the case are as follows. Our client was working for a tree trimming company to trim branches in a back yard that were growing into the lines on a utility pole. The utility pole had telephone lines, cable lines and electric lines that were carried on the pole. The more dangerous electric lines are placed higher up the pole, and the cable and telephone lines are placed lower on the pole. Rules and regulations stipulate how far apart these lines are to be separated on a utility pole.

Our client had climbed up the utility pole in order to reach the branches that were growing in the lines on the pole. His legs were touching the cable and telephone lines when he accidentally reached up and touched the electric wire above his head. Because his legs were touching the cable and telephone wires, this created a circuit which caused him to not be able to let go of the electric wire. His fellow workers on the ground saw that he was being electrocuted and could not let go, so they pulled on a rope that was hanging from his belt to try to pull him free. By pulling on the rope our client was set free of the circuit, but he fell to the ground and broke his back when he landed on the fence below. As a result of the fall, he was paralyzed from the waist down. But if his fellow workers had not pulled on his rope, our client would have been electrocuted to death.

We could not sue his employer, as this was only a workers compensation case as it applied to his employer. But experts determined that the utility companies had not followed proper procedures when they placed the various lines on the pole. They negligently placed the wires too close to each other on the utility pole, and if they had placed the lines at the proper distance apart, our client would not have been able to reach the electric wire, and the accident would not have happened. We settled this case for $1,850,000.00.