Plaintiff in Big Blue Bus Case Seeks $12 Million

By Jorge Casuso

March 10 -- In closing arguments Thursday, attorneys for an elderly man who lost his arm after he was allegedly run over by a Big Blue Bus asked a jury to award nearly $12 million to the plaintiff and an unspecified amount to his wife.

Browne Greene, the high-powered attorney representing Haroun Mehdipour, 81, in his civil suit against the City, said the plaintiff and Parvin, his wife of 61 years, would lose out on “the experience, confidence, the things age can bring to you.

“They deserved a longer life, the sunset years,” said Greene, whose firm won the highest product liability verdict in history in 1999. “He did not deserve to become the burden he’s become.”

During the nearly four hours of closing arguments, the attorneys for both sides focused on varying accounts of the accident that took place on the corner of Barrington Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard on May 5, 2004, as well as the compensation the plaintiff deserves.

Greene argued that the Blue Bus driver was negligent for failing to check his right rearview mirror, which would have reflected the image of an elderly man pounding on the side of the bus as it pulled away from the curb.

“The last thing you do is look right,” said Greene, quoting the municipal bus company’s training guidelines. Mehdipour was “almost up to the door when all this happened.” If someone chases the bus, “the operator must stop,” Greene quoted the company rules.

But Lance Gams, the lead attorney representing the City in the two-week trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, said the driver had already pulled away from the stop and never saw the elderly man Greene claimed was chasing the bus.

“I don’t believe the driver saw Mr. Mehdipour doing the things they’re suggesting he did,” Gams said. “There would have been passengers yelling… calling 911.”

Instead of the driver, who never realized he may have been involved in an accident, it was Mehdipour who was negligent, Gams argued.

“The person who made the decision to chase after the bus was Mr. Mehdipour,” Gams told the jury. “After he (the driver) started moving away, that’s when he started running after the bus.

“He fell into the street, the bus was already moving, and it appears his arm was run over,” Gams said. “The person that had the last chance to prevent this accident was Mr. Mehdipour.”

In his rebuttal to the defense’s closing arguments, Greene noted that in a civil trial, unlike a criminal case, the defendant does not need to “know Mr. Mehdipour was chasing him." The negligence stems from his failure to follow the rules, he said.

During closing arguments, Gams also questioned the testimony presented in a case he said centered on evidence so sketchy and conflicting it resembled a “jigsaw puzzle.” (see story)

There is evidence “that an accident occurred at just a couple of minutes before 10… but also that it could not have occurred until 10:20,” Gams said.

When interviewed in the hospital, Mehdipour told police he has been run over by a car, not a bus. Then, Gams said, “there was evidence he was getting off a bus” and “evidence he was getting on a bus.”

Witnesses testified they saw “a man lying on the ground” and a “bus that hadn’t even moved from the curb,” Gams said. “We’re not very close to knowing what exactly happened that day… We don’t know what happened… We really don’t know.”

Gams also questioned the credibility of the plaintiff's key eyewitness, saying he provided four separate, and sometimes conflicting, accounts of the incident.

In testimony given a year and a half after the accident, witness Carlos Hernandez Ramirez, Gams said, "included facts not only that he didn't recall before, but that were contrary to what he had testified."

Greene countered that it is clear from the evidence -- the large bus tire sitting in the courtroom and the extent of the plaintiff’s injuries -- that it was a 29,000-pound vehicle that rolled over Mehdipour’s arm. The fall, he argued, “was caused by the bus’ movement.”

The City’s position has been based on “an attitude of denial. Denial, denial, denial,” Greene said. “After two weeks, they’re having to admit the obvious” -- that it was a bus, and not the “car, truck, motorcycle” the defense used as “excuses” during the trial.

“Are we going to believe their experts?” Greene asked the jury. It is “illusions they want us to look at.”

But most of Greene’s final arguments focused on the pain and suffering he said Mehdipour endured after “his arm was degloved” and amputated -- “the pain in the morning, pain in the afternoon, pain at night, pain that wakes you up at night.

“Imagine being told that you are going to lose your arm,” said Greene, whose firm is representing plaintiffs in a suit against the City for the farmer's market tragedy that left ten dead and more than 60 injured nearly three years ago. “He had to confront (that), and he did it in his silent, almost noble way.

“You saw very little of the reality this man has gone through and his family has gone through,” he told the jury. “He had two arms that could get him out of bed, dress, brush his teeth… two arms that we need for everything.

Two arms, Greene added, that “protect us, wave goodbye at the airport, express love, express tenderness. If we fall, they help pick us up.”

Imagine taking out an ad in the Los Angeles Times offering money for someone’s arm, Greene told the jury. What would the price be?

Browne, who bears a striking resemblance to the late author Samuel Beckett, asked the jury to award $2.615 million in economic damage to cover past and future medical costs.

He also asked the jury to award $2 million for the pain and suffering Mehdipour has had to endure after losing his arm and suffering brain damage as a result of the accident. In addition, Greene asked the jury to award another $7 million for the seven years an 81-year-old is expected to live.

In his short rebuttal of the City’s closing arguments, Greene noted that age should not be a factor in the verdict and praised the wisdom and talent of the final years of life. Michelangelo finished the Sistine Chapel when he was 75, Greene said, and Benjamin Franklin invented eyeglasses at 78.

“Are we going to deny the wisdom of age and the comforts of age?” he concluded.

Gams questioned "the millions" he predicted Greene would ask the jury to award, arguing that the estimated medical costs were too high and that Mehdipour, who suffers from diabetes, may not live another seven years.

"He will ask for millions and millions of dollars," Gams said. "A million dollars is still a lot of money."