A jury on Thursday awarded nearly $50 million to a man who remains comatose nearly a year after being struck by a Los Angeles city sanitation truck while crossing an Encino street.<\/p>\n
The Van Nuys Superior Court panel deliberated for less than a day before awarding Kamran Hakimi about $48.8 million, including $35,000,000 for his past and future pain and suffering. The city agreed before trial that the truck driver\u2019s negligence was the sole cause of the crash, but disputed the nature and extent of the damages suffered by the injured pedestrian as well as his potential life expectancy.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Hakimi\u2019s life, and the lives of his family, are forever changed due to the negligence of a city of Los Angeles employee,\u201d said plaintiff\u2019s attorney Rahul Ravipudi. \u201cThis verdict upholds the dignity of the life Mr. Hakimi enjoyed before this tragedy and we are grateful to the jury who carefully considered all the evidence and provided Mr. Hakimi with the means necessary to get the higher level of care he so desperately needs.\u201d<\/p>\n
The City Attorney\u2019s Office rejected all demands and offered no settlement money in a case in which a sanitation truck driver made an unsafe right turn and ran over the father of five in the crosswalk at Ventura Boulevard and Hayvenhurst Avenue crossing on a green light, said another plaintiff\u2019s attorney, Brian Panish.<\/p>\n
A truck handlebar hit the front of Mr. Hakimi\u2019s head and the force of the collision caused his body to propel through the air and land with his head hitting the asphalt, the suit filed last Oct. 17 alleged.<\/p>\n
Although Hakimi was initially responsive after being hit, including giving bystanders a thumbs up, he was transported to a local hospital with catastrophic injuries and diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, acute subdural hematoma and cerebral edema, according to the suit.<\/p>\n
He underwent numerous procedures to treat intracranial hypertension, but he went into a vegetative state not long after the accident, the suit stated.<\/p>\n
Hakimi\u2019s attorney told jurors that Hakimi\u2019s life expectancy would be lengthened with improved care in a neurogenesis care facility, but that he would continue to have significant pain and suffering.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A jury on Thursday awarded nearly $50 million to a man who remains comatose nearly a year after…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":71707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,356,2961,224,5337,50,5292,52],"class_list":{"0":"post-71706","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-courts","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-public-safety","16":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114872326217613282","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}