The mother of Mary Bernstein has settled her California wrongful death lawsuit with PG & E for $5 Million. Bernstein and her boyfriend Robert Conway suffered fatal injuries in 2006 when their vehicle was involved in a California truck crush with a PG & E employee.
John Mayfield, who has diabetes, blacked out on the road while driving the PG & E utility truck. He apparently did not test his blood sugar level before driving that day. Mayfield has pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter for his role in causing the catastrophic collision and was sentenced to three years in prison.
Mary's mother, Lisa Bernstein, says she wanted to hold PG & E accountable for the tragic California motor vehicle crash. She has said that the utility company should have known that Mayfield had been involved in two car crashes outside of work and that he had to be hospitalized two times because he didn't manage his diabetes properly.
Rather than a confidential settlement, the resolution to the case is being recorded as a judgment. This means that any accident victims in the future will be able to look into the case and its outcome. The California wrongful death settlement amount also brings up the value of a single colleges student's life from $2 million to $5 million.
Earlier this month, another California truck accident case involving another diabetic was resolved. This time, the defendant was Verizon Communications.
Verizon employee Mark Zelandar was involved in a fatal Southern California car crash last September when he fell into a "twilight" state and drove the wrong way on the highway for at least five minutes. He crashed head-on into Jose Vega's minivan. Vega, 49, sustained fatal injuries.
A judge ordered Verizon to pay Vega's family $7 million. While Verizon and Selandar had argued that the truck driver had suffered a medical emergency, the plaintiffs' attorneys noted that Verizon should have known about its employee's history of hypoglycemic attacks, which fell into the hundreds if not thousands. Selander had even told his supervisors that he suffered from uncontrolled type 1 diabetes. According to the plaintiffs, even though evidence showed that Selander was not fit to work with any dangerous machinery, Verizon still let him drive the large pickup on public highways and assigned him to work the graveyard shift, which he did alone. The plaintiffs also contend that Selandar was familiar about what to do when the signs of hypoglycemia started to arise and he shouldn't have endangered others.
Wrong-Way Driver Victim's Family Awarded $7 Million, Independent.com, July 1, 2010
PG&E to pay bereaved mother $5 million in wrongful death lawsuit, MercuryNews, July 6, 2010
Related Web Resources:
Blog: Driving with diabetes, MayoClinic
