(EDITOR’S NOTE: Former Monterey Park Mayor, G. Monty Manibog is regular columnist offering legal tips and perspectives in high profile legal cases and event.)
ON January 6, 2007 Ken Ahn was riding his motorcycle along West Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles on his was home, as he has done over many years, when his motorcycle struck a large pothole/sinkhole in his lane of travel, propelling his body like a missile head on into an oncoming vehicle. Ahn sustained severe head and bodily injuries, including fractures to his upper extremities and severe brain injuries. He was rushed to an emergency hospital where he immediately underwent a lengthy craniotomy (brain surgery).
In a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and the Departmenet of Water and Power, and arrayed against a battery of LA city attorneys who denied the city’s liability for the accident, Ahn’s attorneys were able to show that the pothole was formed and from the subsidence/water erosion due to an LA DWP water main that had repeatedly leaked in the weeks and months prior to the accident and that the DWP employees, during said period of time, repeatedly and negligently “patched” the faulty water main (all of the patches failed), instead of replacing that failing sections of the water main.
Plaintiff’s attorney maintained that LA/DWP received active notice, twice, that the water main was once again leaking in the days before the accident but made no attempt to repair the leak or erect barriers or warnings before the accident occurred.
The lawsuit was filed on December 12, 2008 and finalized in Superior court recently in favor of Plaintiff Ahn in the amount of $5,650,000, which is believed to be one of the largest amounts on record ever awarded against the LA/DWP.
The moral of this real life accident case (largely handled by trial attorney Darren A. Manibog, partner in the law firm of Manibog & Manibog) is to take every possible precaution when riding your motorcycle on public streets and highways, travel at moderate speeds, use a helmet and be extra observant of road conditions and other motorists. Drivers and passengers of automobiles have the extra protection of being within an enclosed vehicle which minimizes their injuries whereas motorcyclists have no such protection against heavy impact and, according to statistics, are more prone to sustaining more serious injuries and death.
Whether you sustain injuries in a vehicular or motorcycle accident which results in injuries or death, you should always contact a personal injury attorney specialist right away because a negligent party causing the accident would be liable for monetary damages. Any delay in reaching an attorney or at least filing a claim could later cloud the liability issue and weaken your case.
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Manibog & Manibog, LLP is an all service law firm particularly handling catastrophic personal injuries and wrongful death cases from vehicular, motorist, and aircraft accidents, business disputes, wills and probate, medical and legal malpractices and bankruptcy, and immigration.
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