Jury Awards Injured Driver, Wife $10.6M in I-15 Crash
The Robinson family legal team has done it again.
Jeoffrey L. Robinson, a partner in the Newport Beach law firm of Robinson, Calcagnie and Robinson, won a $10.6 million verdict against Caltrans for injuries his clients suffered as a result of a crash on the Baker Grade, a stretch of the Interstate 15 leading to Las Vegas. Another lawyer in the firm, Allan F. Davis, also worked on this case.
“The key was the indifference exhibited by the state for the last 15 years where they were well aware of this incredibly high fatality rate,” said Jeoffrey Robinson. “Their failure to do anything to remedy it left the jury with a bad taste in their mouths.”
Jeoffrey Robinson, a former deputy DA in Orange County, is the younger brother of Mark Robinson Jr. They recently were part of legal teams that won multi-billion settlements against General Motors and the tobacco industry. Mark Robinson has become a political kingmaker in recent years because of his hefty donations to Democrats; he represented Gray Davis on the tobacco lawsuit and is the former president of the Consumers Attorneys of California. The brothers’ partner, Kevin Calcagnie, is the editor of Forum, a magazine for trial lawyers.
The case is the result of a Christmas Day accident in 1996 involving a San Diego couple returning from Las Vegas. Yu You was driving a Buick in the fast lane when a car passed on the right, causing her to move onto the shoulder. There the tires hit the side of the road and she lost control, with the car flipping several times.
Her husband, Dr. Paul Lu, was asleep in the passenger seat. Robinson said Lu was wearing a seat belt, but because the seat was reclined, the seat belt didn’t hold in the accident and he was ejected from the car. His back was broken and he is paralyzed from the waist down. His wife suffered a neck injury and two friends also in the car were slightly injured.
The jury awarded $9.2 million in compensatory damages for Lu’s injuries and $1.4 million to his wife in compensatory damages. Robinson and Davis’s fee will be determined at a later date by a judge. Robinson said he doesn’t plan to sue the car manufacturer, Buick.
Happy With Verdict
Although not as big of a case as some they have handled, Jeoffrey Robinson said the firm was gratified by the verdict. He characterized people in the jurors’ pool as having “an admitted racial bias against Asian drivers” and Baker as being “very anti-lawsuit.”
The Baker Grade is a steep 18-mile stretch of interstate on the road between the town of Baker and the Nevada border on the way to Las Vegas. During the eight-week trial, the plaintiffs produced documentation from Caltrans to show the Baker Grade has 12 times the fatal accident rate as similar roads.
A Caltrans official this week said Caltrans is reviewing whether it will appeal the case.
“The fact is that every week, hundreds of thousands of travelers safely travel along it,” said Caltrans spokesman Jim Drago. “There are some drivers who exceed the speed limit. There’s also the issue of fatigue.”
Future Plans Uncertain
Drago said he said he didn’t know if there are any plans to improve that stretch of road. But Robinson said he hopes the verdict will “act as a crowbar” for Caltrans to add a third lane onto portions of the Baker Grade, which has two lanes in each direction.
Robinson is also working on a couple of lawsuits in Orange County. He is suing Southern California Edison on behalf of a subcontractor who was burned over 50% of his body because of an industrial explosion. He is also suing Dollar Rent A Car because he said its office at the John Wayne Airport permitted a female employee to leave work intoxicated; the employee’s car killed a woman who was the mother of eight children. Robinson represents the family of the victim. n
