According to the San Francisco Gate, A Sacramento jury has returned a verdict against the City of Sacramento in a lawsuit alleging traumatic brain injury and other severe injuries. Cathy Liu was beginning her residency at UC Davis when she went out on a morning jog and was hit by a car. Liu was a top honor student in her medical school graduating class at Emory University. The accident on Freeport Boulevard in Sacramento resulted in a traumatic brain injury and left Liu paralyzed on the left side, suffering from aphasia, and her ability to speak was severely restricted by the brain trauma. Unfortunately, Liu had to abandon her dreams of pursuing a medical career at any level due to her traumatic injury.
Nearly four years later, a jury trial ended the long ordeal in which the City of Sacramento was held primarily responsible for the accident. The jury determined the city was at fault because it knew the intersection was dangerous for many years. The city received $7.4 million from the state to fix the intersection’s defect. The jury awarded the victim over $18 million in damages, but a pretrial agreement capped the damaged at $6 million. A prominent city official revealed during testimony that the city knew of the intersection’s dangers before Liu’s accident.
The plaintiff’s team built a case around the issue of visibility along the Freeport Boulevard and its “S” curve as the roadway slides around a complex at Fourth Avenue. The plaintiff argued that the city knew the crosswalk was dangerous and did nothing to address the safety issue.