Dillon Elkins was a 10-year old boy who got into the back of a pickup truck being driven by a bunch of teenagers after a high school football game and he along with his 10-year old best friend were told by the driver to jump out of the truck if they saw a police officer. And of course, a CHP officer drove by and the driver yelled out, “jump” and Dillon did just that. He jumped out of a pickup truck and hit his head and became a spastic quadriplegic. And so, the case I handled was to sue the driver for negligence for behaving in the manner that he did and ultimately, to recover the damages for Dillon who spent nearly a year in the hospital before he finally went home. And for the rest of his life will be a spastic quadriplegic.

We ended up going to trial in that case in Barstow and we tried the case over several weeks and the jury ultimately came back with a jury verdict of $25 million for Dillon. And we were lucky enough to be able to settle it after that and really change the quality of life for Dillon and his family going forward, which is something that’s rewarding for me as their lawyer.

We’ve done about as many construction site accident cases as anyone. We’ve been doing those sorts of cases for 40-50 years all told if you include my father’s career before he started his own firm. I settled a case for a million dollars about a year ago involving a gentleman who was working on a roof and tripped over a nail that one of the other contractors had left on the roof, and fell off the roof, suffered a spinal cord injury. It was not clear whether the contractor that caused the accident had any insurance so we ended up litigating that case for three or four years.

And we had to issue a subpoena to the company’s insurance broker. It was a long, convoluted process of eventually finding an insurance policy that applied to this accident and we were able to recover the entire insurance policy limits of a million dollars. But it was one of those cases where it would have been easy to give up along the way because the case sort of looked hopeless but we were eventually able to turn it into something.

So, wrongful death cases that we handle can involve any number of problems or issues, but it’s somebody who has lost a loved one or died as a result of the conduct of others. One of the more profound cases that I’ll never forget was a farmworker who was working in the fields that had been sprayed with two different pesticides, and they weren’t supposed to be in the fields, but they didn’t know. They didn’t know that they had been sprayed, and the farm owner, major farm, forced these guys into the field, and they’re picking, and he collapses. And rather than taking him to the clinic down the street, where he would have been treated for organic phosphate poisoning, they dump him into a van, and they drive him hours across the border into Mexico, and dump him off dead at a clinic.

He left a wife and four young children behind. We fought that case for years, but ultimately, we were able to compensate this woman – could never get justice, obviously, for that kind of behavior or conduct, but this woman and her children will be taken care of for the rest of their lives. Wrongful death cases are very difficult cases to handle, because the issues are all unique, but the profound loss is something that you can’t ever overcome.

Booth Law goes above and beyond in representing abused survivors by not just seeing to the needs of their lawsuit but trying to see to the needs of their everyday lives.

Abuse survivors are often suffering from PTSD or other psychological symptoms. They may or may not have access to services. They may or may not realize that they are suffering from depression, anxiety, panic disorders, or things of that nature.

I’m not just there to go to court on their behalf or go to depositions on their behalf. I’m also answering phone calls at 7 PM for someone who can’t stop crying. I’m talking to my clients who need to get into an emergency psychiatric appointment in order to get psychiatric medications.

For the children that we represent—especially, again, the dependent minors or the foster children—these kids often have no adults in their lives who can help them through this horrific set of circumstances that they’ve been through.

Many, many of my kids that I represent are shuffled from home to home to home. I’ll represent them for maybe two or three years, and during that time, they might be in anywhere between seven to ten different foster homes. They have no consistent adult in their life who is helping them navigate just growing up, being a teenager, being a preteen, on top of dealing with the abuse that they’ve suffered from.

So I have personally attended gynecological appointments with teenage girls who have been sexually abused and held their hands during an exam that might be scary for them. I have gone to Target to help one of my teenage clients get some stuff for a new apartment that she was getting—she had no, you know, furniture.

We are helping them get their driver’s licenses. We are helping them open bank accounts. We’re really trying to not just help them with their case but help them learn how to be functioning adults and how to manage everything that they’ve experienced and been through in their lives.