15 minutes to go: following orders, the manager of a Downtown San Francisco high-rise fumbled through the final steps for a property-wide power shutdown. Old and wearing on in years, the office building’s owners had gone out of their way to avoid installing modern safeguards. The temp security guard at the front of the building watched for intruders. Was he supposed to keep tenants from entering? No one told him one way or the other. The lobby door opened. A tenant in his early 80s walked in, exchanging a quick hello with the uninformed guard before stepping into the elevator. The senior — an insurance agent — stopped at the fourth floor for a brief 15-minute visit to his office. The man strolled back to the elevator just as the property manager flipped the power switch off. Everything went dark. Total blackness. He couldn’t see his hand in front of his face.
Panicked, the man felt his way down the office hallway until he found a staircase. Its age and safety features matched the rest of the building. A single handrail provided the only support as the 80-something man felt his way down solid, sharp-edged marble slabs. Then, the worst-case scenario happened: the man missed a step. Gravity and terror simultaneously took control. The elderly insurance agent tumbled down the flight of marble stairs. In the pitch blackness, he had no way of bracing or stopping himself as his back and neck slammed the steps over and over again.
The man was sent to the emergency room, where he received a battery of X-rays. However, doctors failed to catch the injury to the C1 disc in his spine and the damaged ligament that secured said disc. The man was sent home with a bottle of pain medicine. Later that evening, he fell again. Ultimately, the senior needed cervical fusion surgery.
The insurance agent knew he needed legal help. He remembered that one of his clients, Ken Valinoti of Valinoti, Specter & Dito, LLP, was a trial attorney. Thus, Ken became involved with the case only days after the fall. Ken sensed an improper handling of the shutdown from the get-go. He hired an investigator who took depositions from past and present employees in the building. The depositions uncovered incompetence on the part of the building owner and management personnel, as well as a failure to alert tenants of the shutdown. More egregiously, though, the investigator found that the building’s owners had, in fact, installed backup battery-operated electrical systems on some of the floors — but only for those occupied by high-paying tenants. The fourth-floor tenants weren’t valuable enough.
The Defense argued that the man should not have been in the building with the shutdown in place — however improper it was. They also deflected blame, questioning why the man didn’t use the flashlight on his phone to make his way downstairs in the pitch blackness. The Defense also said that they were not liable for his injuries, insisting that they stemmed from the subsequent fall at home. Finally, they said that Ken’s client had returned to work following the accident.
Ken hired a variety of experts for this case, including a human factors expert, an orthopedic surgeon, property manager experts, an electrical engineer, and civil engineers. Experts testified that when a power shutdown is conducted, you don’t let people in the building, let alone let them go up to their offices; once you let the person up there, you owe the responsibility to make sure they get down safely, which is where the property manager breached their duty. As much as the testimony worked in Ken’s favor, the origin of the man’s injuries was still to be proved. Ken needed to prove that they stemmed from the building fall and were more severe than the Defense made them out to be. A lightbulb went off in Ken’s head once he came across a DK Global animation and thought he had found the missing piece to the puzzle.
Ken went all in. He turned his case strategy to damages and the intrusive surgery, intending to put the orthopedic surgeon on the stand. He then planned for the surgeon to take the stand and go through the animation while pointing out the ER diagnostic studies showing where the ligament was damaged. No longer bothered by the lingering aspect of comparative fault, Ken was ready to try the case with DK Global by his side.
DK Global’s demonstrative showed the marble staircase surrounded by marble walls. It then proceeded to show the man’s points of impact after his fall, accompanied by overlaid photos of the cuts he sustained on his arm. The animation showed the exact point of injury to his brain before honing in on the damage to his neck and chest. X-rays of damage to the ribcage and neck were shown, followed by a step-by-step animation of the surgery. Six holes were drilled into his cervical vertebrae. Surgeons then twisted screws into the openings that were bracketed together. The animation concluded with x-rays of the screws in place, followed by the scarring that occurred on his neck.
The two parties agreed to mediation, which took place within a month of trial. The Defense severely lowballed Ken after the day-long process, offering a measly $50,000. They never anticipated having to increase their initial offer. However, once Ken introduced the animation, everything changed. The mediator noticed an immediate shift in tone from the Defense attorneys. They began increasing their offers. Settlement discussions continued. Ultimately, the initial $50,000 that the Defense offered grew into a confidential seven-figure settlement that would help the elderly insurance agent continue his healing.
Ken Valinoti is a transactional and litigation attorney with Valinoti, Specter & Dito, LLP. Ken has over 30 years of experience in real estate, commercial transactional work, and civil litigation matters. He has substantial trial and arbitration experience in State and Federal Courts, and is a member of the San Francisco Bar Association.
