Orange County Jury Awards $38.6 Million to Man Who Suffered Severe TBI After Falling From a Hotel Balcony With a Code-Deficient Railing

In the early morning hours of November 16, 2008, James Von Normann, a 25-year-old salesman, was found unresponsive in the parking lot of the Newport Channel Inn in Newport Beach, California. Paramedics arrived to find him with a Glasgow Coma Scale score of nine. He was transported to Western Medical Center in Santa Ana, where physicians diagnosed a skull fracture and severe traumatic brain injury. A blood draw taken at the hospital showed a blood alcohol content of .267, more than three times the legal limit for driving.

When Von Normann came out of his coma three weeks later, he had no memory of what had happened. There were no eyewitnesses to the incident. What the physical evidence did show was significant: abrasions on his shins and bruising on his ankles consistent, according to a biomechanical expert, with having scraped those points of contact over a railing. Other medical experts testified that his skull fractures matched a fall from elevation rather than a ground-level trip. The theory developed by plaintiff's counsel was that Von Normann had toppled over the second-floor balcony railing outside his room and fallen to the parking lot below.

At the center of the case was a building-code violation. California code required balcony railings to be at least 42 inches high. The Newport Channel Inn's railing measured eight inches shorter than that minimum, a defect that plaintiff's team argued made a foreseeable fall substantially more likely. The hotel disputed that Von Normann had fallen from the balcony at all, and the defense pointed to his extreme intoxication as the cause of whatever befell him.

The case was tried in Orange County Superior Court before the Honorable Charles Margines. Von Normann was represented by Carpenter, Zuckerman & Rowley, LLP, with Nicholas C. Rowley trying the case. The jury concluded the hotel was 85 percent at fault and Von Normann 15 percent at fault. On the gross verdict of $38,628,127, the comparative-fault reduction brought the net recovery to approximately $32,833,908. The judgment was fully satisfied by May 2014. No appellate opinion modifying the award has been reported.

The verdict was ranked among the top 50 jury verdicts in California for 2012 and was covered by the Los Angeles Daily Journal at the time.