A woman who suffered a traumatic brain injury when a large piece of iron came crashing through her car windshield was awarded $11.5 million last week in a personal injury lawsuit.
The woman has no memory of the September 2010 accident, nor does she remember anything from the month before it and six weeks afterward. She continues to experience seizures and other problems from the injury, causing her to lose her driver's license and her job as a special assignment teacher with Fresno Unified School District. She also suffers from short-term memory loss and severe headaches. For these reasons, her attorney has said that while the $11.5 million verdict is the largest he's seen in his nearly 40 years of practicing law, every penny is warranted in her case.
The woman was driving alone on Highway 99 through Bakersfield on Sept. 17, 2010. She was following a tractor-trailer owned by Lion Raisins that was stacked with empty wooden raisin bins held together by cables. The cables wrapped around large iron corner pieces that were about 4 feet long. When the truck's load shifted, one of the iron corners flew off the truck, crashed through the woman's car windshield and into her "right skull and brain," her attorney explained. The car came to rest against the highway median divider after she lost control of it.
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