City bus drivers have a duty to responsibly share the road with others. They need to maintain awareness of potential traffic hazards, especially those who are vulnerable or have right-of-way, like pedestrians or motorcyclists. However, one bus driver’s heedlessness resulted in tragedy. While en route to the Los Angeles International Airport bus terminal, the driver of an articulated city bus made a left turn at a permissive green light when he didn’t have the right of way. Traveling in the opposite direction, a young motorcyclist in his 20s did not have time to stop for the bus. As a result, he crashed into the side of the bus, his motorcycle bursting into flames from the impact.
The young biker suffered catastrophic injuries, including facial fractures, broken legs, and multiple brain bleeds. His sinus cavity was crushed, and one of his eyes was so severely smashed it came out of the socket.
Brian Breiter and Chance Pardon, trial attorneys at the Law Offices of Brian Breiter, LLP, were contacted by the victim’s father while he remained comatose in the hospital. Brian and Chance knew the case was complex and would likely require extensive litigation. The duo first had to disarm the Defense’s liability theory: they were sure the Defense would argue that the young man was at fault because he was traveling over the speed limit. To poke holes in the Defense’s theory, the duo focused on the fact that the bus driver should not have turned left.
Miraculously, the young man made a remarkable recovery over the months following the crash. Brian and Chance understood that they would need compelling visuals to convey the complexities of the surgical procedures he endured. They wanted a potential jury to see a demonstrative of the severity of injuries their client suffered.
The attorneys then hired DK Global to help tell the victim’s story and what the accident had taken away from him — his personality, his ability he had to sustain meaningful relationships, and indeed his future. To complete the story, Brian needed DK Global to produce animations that showed exactly what the victim had suffered and the agonizing, hours-long surgeries he endured.
DK Global used medical scans and 3D images of the young man’s body to show each injury that he sustained from the accident. The animation opened by displaying the injuries to the Plaintiff’s face and head. A red glow highlighted the laceration to his right brow, followed by an aerial view of his right eye bulged from the socket, known as proptosis. The visuals then showed the hematoma behind the right eye along with his orbital and nasal fractures. The demonstrative continued with animations of the various fractures the Plaintiff sustained — right frontal bone and sinus wall fractures, fractures to his teeth, elbow, knee, femurs, and sternum. The video then shifted focus to the young man’s TBI, with renderings of his brain, slice by slice, displaying the multiple contusions and hemorrhages he suffered.
The presentation concluded with a list of symptoms and conditions the Plaintiff endured. The animation noted that patients with frontal lobe damage experienced an array of impaired mental and cognitive functioning. Such deficits included: anxiety, depression, uncontrolled anger, emotional distress, suicidal thoughts, and mental illnesses. The animations further provided a bird’s eye view of the operations, and showed hardware moving in and out of the young man’s body to illustrate how surgeons repaired his broken bones.
When the surgeons who testified saw the animation DK Global produced, they were astonished by the level of accuracy the demonstrative displayed surrounding the victim’s extensive damages. The visuals were so compelling that Brian and Chance were able to earn their client a $9,000,000 settlement, including $7,000,000 for personal injury and $2,000,000 for workers’ compensation.
Brian Breiter of the Law Offices of Brian Breiter, LLP focuses on cases involving personal injury, wrongful death, auto accidents, motorcycle crashes, and trucking accidents in California and Florida. He is a civil trial lawyer who has been in practice since 1995. Brian is a former adjunct professor at Pepperdine Law School, where he taught Improvisational Mediation. He continues to use his acting and storytelling abilities in the courtroom.
Chance Pardon is a lawyer at the Law Offices of Brian Breiter, LLP, and dedicates his work to helping those in need. He is a lead member of the firm’s litigation and trial teams and has taken dozens of cases to trial, with more than $19M in verdicts. He was a finalist for the prestigious 2020 Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles Rising Star award.
