Facts

Plaintiff was Reza Nazari, a self-employed car salesman in his 40s. In the evening of Feb. 18, 2005, he was walking from his rented apartment room in a house on 83rd Street in Los Angeles to his mother's rented room on the same premises. He had to walk outside through the backyard to get to her room. The backyard was dark and plaintiff slipped on coping of an empty and unfenced swimming pool, falling six to eight feet into the pool.

PLAINTIFF'S CONTENTIONS:
The plaintiff sued the owners and landlords, defendants Hoshand Soleimani-Nejad and Khadighe Khosravi, alleging negligent maintenance of the property. The plaintiff claimed the empty swimming pool presented a dangerous condition that was not open and obvious given the poor lighting around the pool. He claimed the dangerous condition was also caused by the coping along the side of the pool that was in a state of disrepair and the general dilapidated state of the pool, which was not filled with water or fenced.

The plaintiff presented testimony of two witnesses, his mother and an associate that was with him at the time of the fall. The witnesses stated that the plaintiff fell into the pool because he stepped on the loose coping.

DEFENDANTS' CONTENTIONS:
The defendants denied liability. They asserted that plaintiff staged the fall and the circumstances surrounding the fall were suspect. They noted that the plaintiff is a Persian refugee from Iran who gained political asylum in the United States and that the plaintiff's mother and associate disappeared to Iran after being deposed.

The defense also cited plaintiff's injury history, a period of the plaintiff's life when he was homeless, and past drug trafficking arrests as suspect attributes of plaintiff's character.

The defendants further argued that the piece of coping, or tile, that the plaintiff claimed caused him to fall weighed over 50 pounds and was 2 feet long, 5 inches thick, and interlocked with other tiles. Thus, it was unlikely that the coping would have come loose when plaintiff stepped on it. There were no scratches or dents on the soft plaster floor of the pool where the coping allegedly landed. The defense argued that the plaintiff's associate had lifted the coping and placed it at the bottom of the pool to stage the accident. However, the defendants did concede that there were code violations present when the fall occurred.

Specials in Evidence

$57,000.

Injuries

The plaintiff was taken to a hospital via an ambulance and was diagnosed with a concussion, carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands and injuries to his back and neck. The plaintiff claimed he was rendered unconscious by the fall and regained consciousness while at the hospital. However, results of a Glasgow Coma Scale test indicated that the plaintiff was only in a dazed and confused state when he arrived at the hospital. Shortly after the accident, the plaintiff began to have symptoms of disc herniation in the lumbar and cervical area. These injuries may require a cervical diskectomony. At the time of the fall, the plaintiff was recovering from carpal tunnel syndrome on his non-dominant hand. That injury was from a previous unrelated accident. However, after the fall, the plaintiff had symptoms in both hands. The plaintiff's counsel argued that this new instance of carpal tunnel syndrome, which now included both hands, should be treated as a new injury and not as an escalation of a prior injury. But the defense argued that 50 percent of people with carpal tunnel syndrome in one hand eventually develop it in the other hand. The plaintiff's counsel asserted that the statistics offered by the defense were slanted by the number of people who developed carpal tunnel syndrome through engaging in the same repetitive motion, and not through traumatic inducement. The plaintiff alleged the fall induced an isolated, bilateral carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands including his dominant hand.

Result

The parties settled the case for $137,500 during a mandatory settlement mediation. Defendants further agreed to cover the mediation costs and $350 for plaintiff's additional medical costs.