Haight Brown & Bonesteel LLP (Los Angeles, CA) Obtained a Defense Verdict in a Truck v. Pedestrian Crosswalk Case

Congratulations to Haight trial lawyers Patrick McIntyre and Austin Smith for their recent success in a high-stakes jury trial!

A downtown Los Angeles jury returned a total defense verdict in favor of Haight’s client in a case against a trucking company that arose from an accident involving the death of a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

The accident occurred during heavy rainfall in the early morning hours of Valentine’s Day, 2019, in Los Angeles. The sun had not yet risen.  A pedestrian was heading to catch the bus to work from her home. According to a witness, the pedestrian was standing at the corner of the intersection as the Defendant Driver was waiting at a red light to make a right turn. The light turned green and the driver proceeded to make his way into the intersection and cross over the crosswalk. He made his right turn and was almost to the next intersection when a motorist flagged him down, pulling his vehicle in front of the tractor-trailer and stopping. Both gentlemen exited their vehicles in the rain, and the motorist told the Defendant Driver he had seen a woman attempt to cross the street as he was making his right hand turn, and he believed she might be under his truck. The Defendant Driver checked, and located the pedestrian badly injured under the right rear wheels of the trailer.

Plaintiff’s counsel argued that the pedestrian had made initial contact with the front bumper of the tractor-trailer, but could offer no accident reconstruction to explain how she might then have ended up under the right rear tires. The defense was able to show that, due to the nature of the wide right turn the tractor-trailer would have to make to clear that intersection, the only way the pedestrian could have ended up under the right rear wheels of the trailer would have been if she stepped out into the intersection into the path of the rear wheels after the tractor portion of the vehicle had already occupied the crosswalk.

Defense counsel made multiple settlement offers including an offer pursuant to Code of Civil Procedure Section 998 prior to trial, and then made a further settlement offer during trial, which Plaintiff refused to counter.

Plaintiff’s counsel asked the jury to award wrongful death damages in the amount of $20 million, but the jury found that the Defendant Driver was not negligent and awarded zero dollars.