Interstate 5 is one of the most traversed highways in California — an artery connecting the state from north to south. A delivery van barreled down the route in February of 2020, its driver speeding and distracted. Lanes began to converge as the freeway transitioned from rural highway to urban thoroughfare. Despite the bottleneck and rapidly slowing traffic, the delivery driver’s speed continued unabated. Up ahead, a caravan of three families was making its way to Lake Tahoe for a group getaway. A married couple with two of their young daughters brought up the rear. They slowed with the traffic while the van behind them, oblivious to the changing conditions, hurtled ahead. The van plowed into the family’s sedan at 75 miles per hour. Bones cracked amidst the shattered glass and scraping metal. When the dust settled, the family was irreparably changed. In addition to a litany of severe injuries, the father in the driver’s seat died at the scene.
Mortally wounded, the father in the driver’s seat languished in pain for a whole half hour before succumbing to the damage to his head and body. The widowed mother of five in the front passenger seat had over half a dozen fractures. She needed a shoulder replacement and was left unable to speak. The elder daughter in the back seat, a 10-year-old, suffered close to 20 fractures and fought for her life through a 10-day coma.
Attorney Angel Carrazco of Carrazco Law was starting a trial in downtown Los Angeles when he received a call from a colleague asking him to join a trip to Sacramento to visit the hospitalized family. They headed to UC Davis Medical Center, where Angel met the survivors for the first time. Angel, along with Joseph Low of The Law Firm of Joseph H. Low IV and Daniel Rodriguez of Rodriguez & Associates, learned more about the extent of each passenger’s injuries and knew this was a fight worth taking on.
The pandemic created many obstacles with the case. For one, Angel couldn’t enter the hospital. Consequently, communication with his clients was a challenge. Instead, Angel communicated through the surrounding family. The pandemic also made it difficult for the Plaintiffs to receive the treatment they needed. Angel was unable to find doctors near the family’s home in Ukiah, making the path to treatment even more treacherous.
Angel first secured experts to collect the vehicle for inspection. He brought on Dr. Bennet Omalu, the premier expert on what it’s like to die, to assist in building the case. Omalu became the first of several brain injury specialists who were retained to support the family’s claim.
Angel, Joseph, and Daniel conducted focus groups in Los Angeles and Sacramento. After building a complex legal strategy, there was still the need to visually show the injuries. Angel understood the value of the case and needed a way to compellingly communicate it to a jury, leading him and his team to seek out DK Global. Together with the attorneys and the experts, DK Global created four animations — one for each person in the car — to recreate their experiences and injuries the day of the collision.
Beginning with the eldest daughter in the rear passenger-side seat, the video documented her whiplash at the moment of impact. It showed her coup contrecoup injury where her brain bounced within her skull, causing damage to multiple regions. Next, the animation depicted fractures to her right eye, face, and forehead, along with multiple hematomas and deep lacerations. Then, the video transitioned to her broken ribs and the spinous process factures along her thoracic vertebrae. The animation continued, revealing a pulmonary contusion, fractured left humerus, abrasions, femur and knee fractures, and injuries to her ankle. Finally, the presentation explained the severity of her traumatic brain injury, juxtaposing brain scans with a character depiction, followed by a list of brain deficits that connected her cognitive symptoms with her damaged regions.
The next video showed the youngest daughter, a toddler, strapped in her car seat. After her own coup contrecoup injury, the animation revealed injuries to her left eye and the left side of her face. Then, the presentation transitioned to imagery of her damaged brain regions and brain deficits.
The third video showed the mother in the front passenger seat. She also endured a coup contrecoup injury, as well as vertebral fractures. A 3D depiction of her skeleton revealed a comminuted fracture to the top of her humerus, as well as pneumothraces in both lungs, broken ribs, a hematoma behind her sternum, and a laceration to her spleen. Her animation similarly depicted her injured brain regions and resulting deficits.
Finally, the fourth animation depicted the deceased husband and father. Combining photo and 3D animation, his presentation started with a reconstruction of the accident, showing how the delivery van slammed into the family car at full force. It portrayed how the entire family lay unconscious and buckled into their car seas. Then, the camera zoomed in to the father’s injuries, beginning with gruesome scalp lacerations, followed by expansive hemorrhages along he back of his skull. A massive hemorrhage came into view along the back of the husband’s brain, illustrating the severity of his head injuries. Then, the camera drifted downward to hemorrhaging in his abdomen, contusions along his ribcage, blood in his chest cavity, a full-thickness fracture of his T3 vertebra, and spinal cord damage. Last, the animation showed how the father slowly succumbed to the blunt force trauma over 24 minutes.
Trial loomed and the Defense was refusing to budge. In preparation, Angel and Joseph each rented homes in the Sacramento area and moved there from Southern California in November 2023. Immediately, they were inundated with a barrage of motions from the Defense, but they kept fighting. The trial began the following March and was slated to last seven weeks, until April. In the third week of trial, the Defense realized they were on the losing end. They approached Angel and Joseph to resolve the case before closing arguments. After four years of litigation, a move up north, 70 experts, three law firms, 14 focus groups, and three weeks of trial, Angel, Joseph, and Daniel settled with the Defense for a confidential amount — in the nine figures.
Angel Carrazco is a senior trial attorney and the founder of Carrazco Law. Angel specializes in workers’ compensation, personal injury, civil rights, and brain injury-related cases. He serves on the board of Serve-The-People.com and graduated from Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyers College in 2014.
Daniel Rodriguez of Rodriguez & Associates was the inaugural recipient of the Gerry Spence Trial Warrior of the Year award and has been selected to the California Super Lawyers list every year since 2009. He is also a two-time winner of Best Lawyer in Bakersfield by Best of Bakersfield Reader’s Choice Awards. Rodriguez was additionally an invited member of the National Trial Lawyers: Top 100.
Joseph Low of The Law Firm of Joseph H. Low IV helped develop the curriculum at the Gerry Spence’s Trial Lawyer’s College. Low, a former United State marine, was ranked in the National Law Journal’s Top 100 Verdicts of 2019 and is a member of the American Board of Trial Advocates. He also received the Lewis F. Powell Jr. Medallion for Excellence in Trial Advocacy.
