An $11.8 Million Riverside Verdict for a Truck Crash Brain Injury

On a July morning in 2015, Oscar Esparza was driving his Mitsubishi Eclipse on the 91 freeway in Riverside County. Cristal rode in the front passenger seat, and her two young children sat in back. Traffic bunched up where the 91 feeds onto the northbound Interstate 15. A car ahead, driven by Dr. Jong-Tae Jinn, braked hard and came to a stop. Esparza stopped behind it, leaving about four feet of room.

Behind them, Juan Serafio was driving a two-axle Freightliner commercial truck for Win Distribution, Inc. He had driven trucks professionally for roughly 30 years. He did not slow in time. A passenger in another car saw the truck come up on the stopped traffic "at a large rate of speed" and testified that it "didn't slow down at all." The truck struck the Eclipse from behind in what one witness called a "huge collision."

The impact crushed the rear seats forward and pushed the front seats back. Esparza's head hit a seat belt retractor, rebounded, and struck the steering wheel. He lost consciousness. He came to about 15 to 20 minutes later, confused and dizzy, with slurred speech. He spent six days in the hospital with a cervical spine injury and a mild complicated traumatic brain injury. Cristal suffered a spinal disc injury, and the children had cuts, scrapes, and bruises.

The Dominguez Firm tried the case in Riverside County Superior Court before Judge L. Jackson Lucky IV. The first trial ended in a mistrial. At the retrial, Olivier Taillieu led the plaintiffs' team with Judd R. Allen, under firm founder Juan Dominguez. They kept the jury on the truck driver's speed and following distance. Serafio believed three truck lengths gave him enough room to react, yet he hit stopped traffic without braking hard enough to matter. The defense pointed to Dr. Jinn's abrupt stop as a competing cause.

The jury returned a verdict of $11,779,154.77. It found Win Distribution and Serafio negligent and rejected the defense theory that Dr. Jinn's stop caused the crash, deciding that the doctor's conduct was not a substantial factor in the harm. Esparza took the bulk of the award, including about $4.66 million in economic damages and $5.3 million for pain and suffering. Cristal received $1 million, and the two children shared $85,000. Dr. Jinn had settled before trial, so the court later applied a $47,000 credit against Esparza's economic damages for his share of that settlement.

Win Distribution appealed, arguing that the trial court let in improper evidence and wrongly awarded costs from both trials. On October 25, 2021, the Fourth District Court of Appeal rejected each argument and affirmed the judgment, including the full costs award.