An extremely talented young doctor, raised in Chico, California, had just started her first year of residency at U.C. Davis Medical Center in Sacramento. One day, while jogging along Freeport Boulevard in Sacramento, she was struck by a vehicle while she was in a crosswalk.
She was badly injured, including serious head trauma, potentially ending her career as a doctor. We showed that the cause of this tragedy could be traced to the fact that the crosswalk was in the second half of an “s” curve—creating dangerously poor visibility for both drivers and pedestrians.
The city recognized the danger and planned to install a pedestrian signal light. But the city of Sacramento did nothing.
The jury found that the circumstances created a serious danger and that the city could have avoided it by simply closing the crosswalk until the signal was installed.
The jury awarded our client just over $18 million, the largest ever for a case of this kind in California.
