Taylor Ernst 

Taylor Ernst’s first traumatic injury case landed on his desk when he was still a fairly new lawyer. He could tell right away that something was off about the client. “He was really difficult as a client. He wouldn’t talk straight. He’d kind of meander around, and his words were confused,” Ernst said.

So Ernst turned to the head of the law firm, his father. He said he believed the client was truly injured, but he didn’t know how to obtain supporting evidence. His father told him, “If you believe the client, the evidence is there. You just have to go find it.”

He interviewed everyone in the man’s life, including “the people who saw him at the grocery store.” They all reported that the man had changed dramatically following his injury. The case was soon settled.

Since then, Ernst has settled and tried many cases for clients who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, making him one of the top TBI lawyers in the country, according to articles written about him. In fact, he regularly lectures on the topic to other lawyers, and he consults with them individually, usually for free.

“I feel like it’s my duty to help other lawyers figure out how to try those cases through the resources that I’ve built,” he said.

A good example of his approach to finding evidence is a brain injury case he was trying just as pandemic lockdowns started. Ernst said a common defense argument is that the allegedly injured plaintiff is “only in it for the money.” He countered that with a witness who testified that his client, a single mother of four, had refused spousal support or other help. The jury awarded her about $1.7 million. Flick v. Reyes, 17CV03850 (Sta. Barb. Super. Ct., filed Aug. 25, 2017).

Most recently, he brought in a $5.65 million jury verdict for a man hit in the eye by a high-pressure water stream. By the time of trial three years later, the blindness in that eye had improved, but he had by then developed cognitive impairment and other TBI symptoms.

Ernst said he won the case by getting the defense experts to concede that if the plaintiff was truthful, he would need lifelong care. Rodriguez v. City of Santa Maria, 19CV04142 (Sta. Barb. Super. Ct., filed July 31, 2019).

Ernst said about 90% of his cases these days involve TBI claims. But he handles others, too. In April, he and co-counsel achieved a $63 million verdict for a man who had unknowingly built his home over a former oil company sump pit, lived there two years and only developed cancer 27 years later. “At the time of the verdict, he was in remission,” Ernst said. Wright v. Union Oil Co. of California, 21CV00925, (Sta. Barb. Super. Ct., filed March 8, 2021).

— Don DeBenedictis