Barr & Mudford Wins a $1M Settlement for Driver Involved in Livestock Accident

We got a call from a man who encountered a cow on a rural highway. He wanted to know who had the right-of-way, the driver or the cow.

In fact some parts of California are Open Range because of the amount of grazing land in California. If you are in an accident involving livestock the jury cannot presume negligence on the part of the rancher—or the cow.

We encounter these kinds of cases regularly, including this one. The driver, our client, was travelling at 55 miles an hour when he hit a black cow on a rural road on a moonless night. An investigation showed this was not open range, the cow should not have been on the road, and our client received a settlement of $1,000,000 dollars.