Christine D. Spagnoli

Plaintiffs’ Motor Vehicle Personal Injury, Wrongful Death & Product Liability Litigation

Spagnoli has long been one of the nation’s leading plaintiffs’ attorneys specializing in automobile defect litigation. In September, she achieved a good settlement for a woman seriously injured in an accident because she intentionally omitted an important claim from the complaint.

The client was stopped in traffic in broad daylight on a wide and open road when an 18-wheeler going about 60 miles per hour rear-ended her car. The truck driver had taken his eyes off the road when he dropped either a water bottle, as he told police, or his cell phone, as he told a witness. Scanlon v. C.R. England Inc., CIVDS1918714 (San Bern. Super. Ct., filed June 25, 2019).

The defense wanted to admit liability to avoid any evidence about the cause of the accident going before the jury. But the plaintiff’s team “worked very hard to establish that his conduct was reckless [and] in conscious disregard to get that issue in front of the jury” and so to seek punitive damages, Spagnoli said. Driving while on the phone can be more dangerous than driving drunk, she said.

But she did not include a claim for punitives in the complaint because judges regularly grant motions to strike punitives before discovery can take place.

“So in this case, we went the other way,” Spagnoli said. “We decided to wait and develop the evidence first and then go in and ask to amend for punitives.”

The case settled two days before her motion to amend was set for argument.

Spagnoli also won preliminary approval of a class action in April. The deal will give $40 each to 25,000 California purchasers of allegedly defective child car seats. Stevens v. Britax Child Safety Inc. 2:20-cv-07373 (C.D. Cal., filed Aug. 14, 2020).

She also represents the Maryland family of a 3-year-old who died when his Britax seat failed.

“As far as I know, it’s the first time somebody had been injured or killed because of this problem,” she said.

– Don DeBenedictis