Memorable Personal Injury Cases Attorney in Los Angeles, California
Memorable Personal Injury Case
Memorable Personal Injury Case
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[Music]
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there is a
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public entity um
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that i’m not going to name it’s a very
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large entity
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a utility company and
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the client is the mother of a boy who
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was
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driving a pickup truck and his pickup
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truck veered out
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in the rain and ran into a three
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telephone poles on which sat
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um transformers and
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when the vehicle hit the telephone poles
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the transformers
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fell down and landed on the hood of the
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or rather the the cab of the truck and
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crushed him to death
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and so the thoughts were and the
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statements that i heard were
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boy that person was at the wrong place
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at the wrong time
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he must have been speeding etc and my
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question is why did
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those telephone poles look like they
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exploded why did they crumble
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why did the transformers not stay up
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what happened it took a year
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but we dug and dug and dug and i saw
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documents that said
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these wooden uh telephone poles are
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treated
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every few years i think every 7 or 15
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years they’re treated and there are
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these uh borings that are placed into
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the poles and that stops
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um that stops termites from destroying
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the inside of the poles
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and i had the documents saying who
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treated them
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when it was done the exact date etc
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so it didn’t make sense that these poles
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fell down
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um and killed this boy or rather the
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transformers
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and he wasn’t speeding i mean that was a
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thought that he was speeding and ran
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into these pulse
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and so his mother was just you know
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devastated heartbroken
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and she came to us kind of in a fog
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traumatized and so
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we dug and dug and dug and doug and
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something didn’t make sense and that’s
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those are the cases i love something
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didn’t make sense and so we kept digging
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and i got an expert
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a wood expert from upstate new york and
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he came out and i went with him
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and we inspected the polls and the poles
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are 30 years old
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there were four borings as opposed to 16
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borings in the polls and the poles were
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completely
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hollow they were ready to fall
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it would have been someone else if it
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hadn’t been this boy
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there was no reason for this to happen
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there were lies
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this utility company all the paperwork
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were lies
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the borings never happened and so what
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it did
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was it justified in the mother’s mind i
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mean her son
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there’s no amount of money and there was
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a lot of money that was paid in that
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case but there’s no
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amount of money that can bring her son
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back but she was she felt vindicated
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that she
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she came to us we went after this
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company we figured out what happened it
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wasn’t her son’s fault it shouldn’t have
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happened
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and we were able to give her a little
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bit of peace
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that she actually took this to the end
Los Angeles, CA personal injury attorney Lauren Bullock tells the story of a memorable personal injury case that she handled. She remarks that there is a public entity—a very large utility company—that she chooses not to name. The client is the mother of a boy who was driving a pickup truck. In the rain, his truck veered off and struck three telephone poles that held transformers. When the vehicle hit the poles, the transformers fell and landed on the cab of the truck, crushing him to death.
The initial reactions she heard were typical: “That boy was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” or “He must have been speeding.” But she questioned why the poles seemed to explode, why they crumbled, and why the transformers didn’t stay in place.
It took a year, but she and her team dug through records relentlessly. She discovered documents detailing that the wooden telephone poles were supposed to be treated every several years—seven or fifteen—with borings inserted to prevent termites from destroying the poles from the inside. The documents even listed who treated them and the exact dates of treatment. Nothing about it made sense. These poles shouldn’t have fallen, and the boy hadn’t been speeding.
The mother came to them devastated, heartbroken, and in a kind of fog—traumatized by the loss of her son. But she persisted, driven by the sense that something was wrong. They kept investigating.
Eventually, she brought in a wood expert from upstate New York. Together, they inspected the poles, which were thirty years old. The expert found only four borings instead of the sixteen that should have been there—the poles were hollow and ready to fall. It could have been anyone else—it just happened to be this boy. There was no reason for this tragedy, and the utility company’s records were lies; the borings had never been done.
For the mother, the outcome didn’t bring her son back—no amount of money ever could. But pursuing the truth gave her a measure of vindication. She felt that her son’s death wasn’t his fault, and she could see that the company had been negligent. Through their efforts, she found a small sense of peace in having taken the case to the end and holding the responsible party accountable.
