A 45-year-old woman who suffered severe brain injuries after a car accident with a police car in south Los Angeles has been awarded a settlement of $6.9 million in damages by a jury.

Sandra Griffin, a single mother of two, was parked in her car on Imperial Highway in south LA in 2006. A police car that had no sirens or lights turned on swerved to avoid another vehicle, and broadsided Griffin’s car. The car accident left Griffin with severe injures to her brain, besides damaging her hip, skull, lungs and spleen. She spent months in hospital undergoing painful surgeries, and more weeks of rehabilitation therapy, before she was finally allowed to go home.

The Sandra Griffin who arrived at home was a markedly different one from the active woman who looked after her two daughters single handedly, besides caring for her elderly parents. Her brain injuries had resulted in amnesia, and she couldn’t remember a number of things about her family. She was prone to frequent hallucinations, and panic stricken outbursts in which she claimed she was talking to God. The car accident left this woman a shell of her former self, with two kids and her parents still dependant on her.

Since the car accident, Sandra has turned from caregiver to victim herself. She used to drive her kids to school, attend church services regularly and drive her parents to the doctor when they got sick. These days, she spends most of her time in bed, and has to have someone constantly looking over her. The unfairness of it all is heartbreaking, and the jury probably agreed.

The city on its part tried hard to prove that there was no liability for the accident caused by a police car. The trial jurors were shown a video tape captured by an undercover investigator to prove that Sandra’s injuries weren’t all that bad. In the footage, she is seen walking across the street and talking to a neighbor. Obviously, the jury didn’t agree that there was anything sneaky or suspicious about Sandra Griffin’s injuries. To believe that Sandra faked the extent of her injuries, you would have to believe that she pretended for two years, as her sister says, and no sane person in his or her right mind pretends to be have brain injuries, hallucinations and remains bed ridden, just to win compensation. As of now, the city is mulling over whether to appeal, or ask for a new trial.

While the extent of Sandra’s brain injuries may never be fully corrected by medical care, at least her family now has the means to provide more permanent care for her and her kids and parents.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of brain injuries. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

When a new hand-held cell phone ban goes into effect tomorrow across California, it will signal the start of an experiment of sorts on the ability of the ban to reduce car accidents in the state. Road safety experts and high way traffic administrators will be looking to see if the hand-held ban is going to be as effective as Governor Schwarzenegger hopes it will be, at preventing car accidents in California.

The bill bans the use of hand held cell phones to talk or text message while driving. There’s no way of telling yet how this will affect the way injuries in car accidents are treated. The bill clearly calls for a ban on hand-held devices, and there is a fine of $20 on motorists who violate the ban. No one believes that the threat of the fine in itself will stop car accidents. However, the threat of being liable for damages and fatalities in a car accident caused by the use of a hand held cell phone by the driver who causes the accident could be enough motivation for drivers to switch to hands- free.

As we reported a while back, the potential for manslaughter charges being filed in cases where a driver’s use of hand-held device was seen as a contributing factor in the accident is very real. The real difference between then and now, when it comes to cell phone usage and car accidents, is this: in the past, attorneys had to prove that the cell phone usage was a very real factor that contributed to negligence. Now, the judge will have to inform the jury that using a hand-held cell phone in itself constitutes negligence. The repercussions for personal injury cases are still unclear, but all signs indicate that this is going to be a turning point of sorts both for road safety in the state as well as the issue of compensation for victims of car accidents.

The bill has more than its share of detractors who say that hand-held or hands- free makes no difference at all. Cell phone usage while driving inhibits concentration, slows down reflexes, and is overall just bad news for everybody on the streets, they claim. Banning only hand-held devices is a halfhearted measure, they say, that won’t have any long-term benefits.

Be that as it may, there’s no doubt that there’s something to be said for having both your hands free to make quick decisions while driving. That’s simply not possible when you have a hand holding a cell phone glued to your ear and the other on the wheel. On this very blog, we’ve covered car accidents that have occurred because the driver was too busy doing drug deals, conducting business or just plain gossiping on the phone when disaster struck.

At the very least, it’s a daring first step, and we should be proud of being in a state that has become one of the first to show the way.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

The need to be attentive at all times when behind the wheel was brought home in a tragic manner on Tuesday. Two men driving separate vehicles were killed in a car accident in Phelan, when one of the drivers strayed onto the wrong side of the road into the other’s path. Passengers in both cars have been taken to hospital with severe injuries.

The car accident involved a Chevrolet pickup and a Scion. The driver of the Scion, 18-year-old Paul Saravia, was eastbound on Phelan Road, while the Chevrolet was coming in the other direction. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the Scion crossed the yellow line and drifted over into westbound traffic causing the car accident. The driver of the Chevrolet, 50-year-old Pascual Salazar, was killed, and so was Paul. The impact was so strong, it almost wiped out the front of the Scion. The passenger in the Chevy, an unidentified 17-year-old, has been airlifted to Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, and has been listed as being under critical condition. Salazar’s passenger suffered severe head injuries and a broken femur, and has been admitted to Loma Linda University Medical Center.

Paul had just graduated, and was all set to go to college. There was no indication of alcohol or drugs playing a part in this car accident, and all four of the people affected were wearing seat bells. Paul was on his way back from Six Flags Magic Mountain with his friend when the accident occurred. If anything, this car accident brings home the dangers of inattention on the road for even a second.

We don’t know yet what caused Paul’s car to go off course and right into the Chevy. Any number of reasons could have caused the crash. A conversation on the cell phone, drowsiness, any kind of distraction on the road can be lethal when you’re on the freeway.

Now, there’s a young man who has been killed in the prime of his life. It’s easy to feel omnipotent when you’re 18 and on the road in a fast car. Accidents like this remind us of how much at risk we are on the street. We feel for the Salazar family too. They have lost a member of the family, with another in serious condition. There’s no indication that Salazar broke any traffic rules, or was negligent in any way, and yet, he paid with his life. With more and more people taking to the roads this summer, being acutely attentive on the road is more important than ever.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

As a new hand-held cell phone-driving ban looms, lawmakers and auto safety experts aren’t counting on the $20 fine for a violation to cause any dramatic decrease in car accidents, but another more potent provision in the law may have that effect. A person who violates the car-cell phone ban could actually find himself embroiled in a civil lawsuit, or even face a jail term as a result if it leads to a car accident.

While most lawyers agree that a felony charge is probably not a possibility, there could definitely be manslaughter charges brought in. Other lawmakers are predicting that extraordinary circumstances where fatalities are caused in a car accident, and it can be proven conclusively that the cell phone use of the driver was the cause of the car accident, then felony charges are not exactly improbable at all. With these provisions, California, already a state with an aggressive track record when it comes to prosecuting even sober drivers in accidents, prepares to explore unfamiliar ground in liability.

There is enough to hope that the new law will do its part to promote safe driving, and reduce the number of injuries and fatalities that are caused by cell phone wielding motorists. Juries have been increasingly aggressive in awarding large settlements in car accidents where the driver was using a hand-held cell-phone. In 2003, a jury in Palmdale returned a $7.3 million verdict to a person who was injured in a car accident where the other driver was talking on his cell phone. There is an increasing sense that public perception in California at present is firmly against combining cell phones with driving. In fact, the combination of the two seems to evoking almost as much disgust in people as the mix of alcohol and cars.

The new law will also make it easier for people who have been injured in car accidents from a cell-phone use violation to claim compensation for the negligence of the other person. Whereas in the past, plaintiff’s attorneys had to prove that there was negligence in the use of cell phone, now, with this new law, judges will have no choice but to inform the jury that the cell phone use of the driver constitutes negligence, thereby qualifying for compensation. The impact on the fair treatment of car accident victims and justice for them is huge. For too long, victims have struggled to prove negligence, and drivers have gotten away with appalling behavior on the road, with little regard to other motorists’ safety.

When the law finally comes into force, motorists who prefer to have a cell phone glued to their ear will find themselves slapped with a $20 fee, a fine that can be expected to be higher in some counties. While some have argued that cell phone use–regardless of whether it is hand-held or hands-free – is a major safety issue, and that all cell phone use during driving should be banned, this law is still a first solid step towards enhanced road safety.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

A woman who was severely injured in a four vehicle car accident in San Jose is still on life support, police say. The accident that occurred on Camden Avenue also killed a mother and her son.

50-year-old Carrie Anderson lies on life support at Valley Medical Center in San Jose, California where plans are to harvest her organs. The woman, who was one of the occupants of the cars involved in the accident, has been declared brain dead.

The car accident took place on Monday at 1 pm. San Jose resident Craig Amato and his mother were in a 2004 Kia northbound on Camden Avenue. At Curter Avenue, Amato ran a red light and sideswiped a BMW. After this, the Kia went right on ahead, running another red light and slamming into a Mazda. It then proceeded to broadside an Audi station wagon belonging to Anderson, before finally ending its destructive rampage at the median of the San Jose expressway.

81-year-old Ruth died at the scene of the crash, while 61-year-old Craig apparently muttered to emergency workers that he suffered from a medical condition. He later died in a hospital from injuries sustained in the car accident. Authorities have not confirmed if he had a medical condition at the time of the crash.

The destruction that the crash has left behind is intense. Although there have been no severe injuries reported from occupants of the other vehicles, there has been plenty of property damage. Anderson, who worked as a private assistant to San José philanthropist Stave Kirsch, is lying in a brain dead and comatose state. It’s tragic that this woman, who clearly had many productive years ahead of her, had her life cut short, and so suddenly, when all she was doing was following the rules. Craig Amato, whatever his condition, ran through two red lights and then proceeded to hit a number of cars on his route. That there were no more casualties or severe injuries in the car accident is a matter of luck for all concerned, and not due to any lack of trying on this gentleman’s part.

Such reckless behavior is inexcusable. Amato has not only managed to cause the death of his aged mother, but has also effectively shut the door for Anderson. As a law-abiding citizen who was following all the rules of the road, she didn’t deserve to be in the position.

If Amato did have a medical condition which lead to this tragedy, then he likely should not have been driving in the first place. Such an individual endangers not only his own life, but also the lives of other drivers and passengers when he plays lord and master of the road, taking unnecessary chances in his claimed condition. There is no excuse for a 61-year-old man to be running red lights. When we witness such behavior from our senior citizens, how are we supposed to send a message of safe driving to young drivers?

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

A car accident, possibly caused by street racing, has killed one person and injured three others in Santee. The crash occurred at the intersection of Mast Boulevard and Halberns Boulevard.

The two cars, witnesses say, were involved in a street race at the intersection, which has long been known as a magnet for street racing. One was a Dodge Neon and the other is suspected to be a silver Mitsubishi Eclipse. Cars frequently race here at all times of the days, sometimes even ending up in people’s houses from the speed. In this case, the two drivers were allegedly racing at 11 am on westbound Mast Boulevard, when one of the cars hit a median and crashed into a pickup truck going in the opposite direction. The driver of the car was killed, while his two passengers were injured. The driver of the pickup has been reported to be in stable condition, and has been treated for his injuries at a local hospital.

Neighbors who live near the scene of the car accident complain that nothing is being done about the increasing amount of street racing in the area. Kids aren’t safe outside anymore, they complain, and it’s normal to have cars jumping off curbs and onto sidewalks.

In this case, the person dead and his passengers who were injured were teenagers. The diver died at the scene and his passengers were flown to Sharp Memorial Hospital for treatment.

Police are currently on the lookout for the other vehicle that was involved in the street racing car accident – the Mitsubishi Eclipse. That driver sped off after the car accident.

Meanwhile, families of the teenager who died and those who have been injured have a difficult time ahead of them. The impact of the crash, police say, was severe and the driver died before emergency crew could arrive at the scene.

Street racing is dangerous, not just for the persons involved, but also for the safety of others on the road. In this car accident, the driver of the pickup truck, who was an unfortunate victim of the follies of a teenager high on adrenaline, was left with no severe injuries to report. But it could have easily been a fatal situation. For people to be driving at such speeds and so recklessly on a busy road can have terrible consequences, and it’s worrying that the police have not shown any interest in tackling this problem.

The Reeves Law Group is a law firm with offices throughout California dedicated exclusively to the representation of personal injury victims, including victims of car accidents. Please visit our website at trlglaw.com. If you desire a free consultation on a personal injury matter, please call us at (800) 644-8000 or email us.

You could look at Danny Espinoza and feel a trifle sorry for him. The man is paralyzed from his neck down, and can’t eat, sit up, or do any of the things we take for granted without help. All he does all day is lie in bed, being fed and cared for by his caregiver and his mother. Until you realize that this man killed a woman taking part in what was most probably a street race.

Danny is waiting to be sentenced in a vehicular manslaughter case arising from his accident two years ago that killed 69-year-old Dorothy Anne Walter, and left the 25-year-old engineer paralyzed, due to a spinal cord injury.

On the evening of March 5, 2006, Danny, a Bakersfield resident, celebrated his birthday with his parents, and then left for home. He was in his Ford Mustang, and was stopped at a red light. Waiting at the traffic signal was a Porsche and a Corvette. Although the police haven’t been able to piece together the exact chain of events, this much is clear. When the light tuned green, the three cars, including Danny’s Mustang, revved up their speed, and sped off down the road. The police suspect and the prosecution claims, that this was the beginning of a street race. Danny’s car reached 90 mph. Coming up in the opposite direction was Walters. As they approached, Danny lost control of his car and hit a tree. He then careened across the lanes and hit Walter’s car. The damage to her car was so extensive; she had to be extricated by paramedic personnel using the Jaws of Life. She was taken to a hospital, where she died about an hour later.

As for Danny, he ended up in his wrecked car with the seat belt wound tightly around his neck. His heart stopped, and he spent the next month in a hospital, oblivious to the world around him in a deep coma. When he emerged from the coma a month later, he remembered nothing of the accident and nothing of at least 4 months prior to the accident. He was diagnosed as quadriplegic because of his severe spinal cord injuries, and now relies on round the clock care for his needs. He uses special blow and suck devices to use his computer mouse, play World of Warcraft games and chat on forums.

This is where you begin to stop feeling sorry for Espinoza.

Dorothy Walters can’t go chatting on online forums. She can’t play World of Warcraft, even if she wanted to. She can’t chat with her family, can’t hug them, can’t hold them, will never be able to say goodbye to them the way everybody does, and all this because Danny Espinoza took it on himself to use his car as a weapon, and the street as his battleground. We can’t feel sorry for every person who gets injured in an accident that they cause themselves by their stupidity. That’s like saying a homicidal maniac can go on a shooting rampage, then shoot himself in the foot and expect sympathy and special treatment.

The prosecution and Walter’s family has been vocal about seeking the full six-year sentence for Danny. We hope they get their wish.

If you have been injured in a car accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

Some things you just can’t make up. A 41-year-old man can expect to be arrested when he gets released from hospital following a crash in which he tried to drive himself and his girlfriend’s two sons down a 65-foot embankment.

Rolando Maldonado told police that the accident was just that - an accident. But the police suspected a different version of events. The man had apparently just had a fight with his girlfriend in which she threatened to leave him. Things cooled off a moment later, and he announced he was going out to the store and the boys wanted to accompany him. The mother did not have anything to suspect. But when there was no sign of Maldonado and her boys after a while, she became nervous and called him to ask when he was coming home. Upon this, the man apparently told her he wasn’t coming back, and neither were the boys.

Maldonado has presumably seen too many movies. After his conversation with the girlfriend, he went right ahead and drove his Ford Explorer off a cliff on Santiago Canyon Road in Silverado, California. Luckily the two boys – one 7 years old and the other barely 20 months old – were not seriously injured.

After the crash, Maldonado climbed out on the road and flagged down a vehicle for help. He claimed that he had pulled his Explorer over, and then when the vehicle got overheated, it slipped into gear and toppled off the cliff.

The police have found holes in his story. There is a guardrail that exists between the road and the depths. It would have been hard for this to have been an accident. From the girlfriend’s account of the conversation she had with the man a few minutes before he committed the cowardly act, it was Maldonado’s intention to kill or hurt the boys, and to kill himself.

There are no words to describe Maldonado. That he wanted to kill himself was clear. But to use kids in some sort of sick revenge game is beyond pathetic. The boys have been reunited with their mother, and Maldonado is being treated for his injuries.

We hope the children’s mother considers a civil lawsuit against him for compensation for her kids’ injuries, and their emotional trauma. She can expect heavy medical bills for the treatment, and why should she be the one to pay for his love of drama? With a settlement dangling over his head, Maldonando will think twice before he plays jilted lover again.

If you have been injured in an auto accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

In any other situation, a man causing the deaths of three people would have been labeled a serial killer. Instead, Robert Whitney, a man whose current death toll stands at three confirmed deaths – and one death of a 12-year-old boy in a boating accident in 1985 in which he was found not guilty - is yet to stand trial. The parents of one of his victims have no way of closing this painful chapter in their lives, because the system and its loopholes seem to be dragging the case against Whitney.

To recap the timeline of events, Whitney, in 2001, caused the death of a pedestrian while driving with a controlled substance in his blood. He fled from that scene. He pleaded guilty, and received a maximum eight year sentence, and got his driving privileges revoked for life.

Strangely enough, the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles insists that they were not made aware of Whitney’s driving suspension. In fact, upon his parole in 2005, Whitney went ahead and applied for a commercial driving license and received it. On July 6, 2006, the inevitable happened. As Whitney was driving a semi-tractor trailer on Interstate 70 near the Indiana-Illinois border, he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a guardrail. The trailer was now left with a section of its body blocking the east bound lanes. In the sequence of events that followed, another truck driver slammed into one of the cars that had stopped on the highway on account of Whitney’s truck. The driver of the truck, 56-year-old Dale Headley, was killed. Also killed was one of the occupants of the car that was stopped in the lane – 15-year-old Janelle Durk.

This was a man who had his driver license revoked for life, and he had actually gone ahead and not only got himself a new license, but caused another fatal accident, this time killing two people in a single instant. The Delaware County clerk’s office has been unable to explain how the file regarding Whitney’s driving privilege suspension took five years to reach the Bureau of Motor Vehicles. In fact, it was only after the second accident that killed Janelle occurred that officials realized that his suspension notice had not yet been passed to the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

It’s easy to understand the anguish that Janelle’s parents feel. This was a man who by law should not have been behind a wheel. Obviously, there was some amount of negligence or tardiness at the Delaware County clerk’s office, and because of this negligence, Janelle and Dale Headley had to pay with their lives.

Delaware County can soon expect to be recounting where the fault lay. The Durks are considering the possibility of filing a lawsuit against the County. Meanwhile, Janelle’s mother, Sherry, says that the case is moving ahead at a painstaking pace. Two years after the accident that killed her daughter, she’s still waiting for a toxicology report on Whitney.

Meanwhile Whitney, a person with a history of drug abuse and with at least three deaths to his credit, is slipping through the cracks even as we write this. He was put back in prison after the crash, and only finished that first sentence this week. He has been released from custody. The charges filed against him in Janelle’s case include reckless homicide and aggravated driving. It would be a shame if he were left to slip through the cracks in our system again.

If you have been injured or a loved one has been killed in a car accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury lawyer. Contact an attorney at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.

It was a deadly weekend in Ventura County. A total of three separate accidents claimed 6 lives beginning from Friday night though Saturday morning. The weekend began on Friday night with an accident at the intersection of Highway 101 and Highway 23. Two men, who had reportedly been involved in a hit-and-run accident, fled the scene and tried to enter highway 23 at a high speed. The driver seemed to have lost control of the car. It veered off the road and rolled over. The two men identified as 30-year-old Patricio Juarez and 23-year-old Braulio Perez succumbed to their injuries.

Then on Saturday morning, a single car accident on Highway 101, south of Central Avenue in Camarillo, claimed the life of the driver of the car. 47-year-old David Linblad was killed when his car veered into the emergency lane and hit the guardrail. The car reportedly flipped over and fell into a ditch. Later on Saturday morning, a fiery crash involving two vehicles killed a total of three people. This accident happened on Highway 118 in Simi Valley. A wrong-way driver apparently crashed into a pickup truck. The impact was strong enough for the occupants of the pickup truck and the wrong-way driver to be killed instantly. The two vehicles burst into flames after the accident. The bodies were hard to identify, police said. An identification tag found in the vehicle of the wrong way driver revealed him to be 21-year-old Narek Gayanyan.

It was a weekend that was on par with the rest of the week as far as traffic accidents were concerned. Two senior citizens were killed in two separate accidents that occurred in Ventura County just 35 minutes within each other on Tuesday.

84-year-old Hewell Watlington was killed, when the car driven by Doris Watlington, drifted across the lanes on Highway 101 and went down an embankment and hit a tree. In another accident, an 82-year-old woman, Gloria Gernaro, was killed, again on Highway 101, south of Peasant Valley Road, when she accelerated and went into the path of a motor home.

This week serves as a vivid reminder of the dangers we face every time we get into a car. While Highway 101 was particularly deadly this week, any trip down any street could prove tragic. Reckless, wrong-way, distracted, and drunk drivers can find a way to crash into even the best of drivers, and at high speeds it doesn’t take much to cause serious injuries, or even death.

If you or a loved-one have been injured or killed in an auto accident, you need the help of an experienced California personal injury attorney. Contact a lawyer at The Reeves Law Group for a free consultation.