Deborah S. Chang

A 50-year-old roadway defect proved to be a smoking gun in a wrongful death case that netted Chang's clients a $32.5 million settlement.

The stretch of road in question, Loma Vista Drive in Beverly Hills, was built on a grade over 13 percent, dangerously steep for the 60,000-pound cement trucks that frequently drove down it. According to Chang, the truck drivers were forced to brake repeatedly for a mile, occasionally causing air brakes to overheat and fade, unable to safely make the sharp turn at the bottom of the hill.

The road was the site of three accidents over two months in 2014, including the fatal crushing of a Los Angeles police officer. Chang joined the trial team after a judge consolidated the three cases. Allen et al. v. City of Beverly Hills, BC568207 (L.A. Super. Ct. filed June 12, 2014).

In the February trial, Chang zeroed in on a decades-old report by Los Angeles' head traffic engineer that confirmed the road's design posed a threat to drivers and recommended widening and flattening the curve. The city never implemented the engineer's design.

Chang is pursuing another institutional neglect in a case against UCLA, which allegedly failed to protect a pre-med student whose throat was slashed by a schizophrenic classmate. Rosen v. The Regents of the University of California v. Superior Court, SC108504 (L.A. Super. Ct, filed June 22, 2010).

During trial the UC legal counsel argued it did not have a duty to protect students from third-party harm. According to Chang, the university raised tuitions to fund threat assessment groups after the fatal shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007. She said the school failed to act after receiving previous reports the student was hearing voices and was kicked out of the dorms for making threats.

"There's always a history, there's always red flags, there's always something there," Chang said. Her firm prevailed in a motion for summary judgment filed by the defendants and the case will be heard by the California Supreme Court later this year.

— Eli Wolfe