Toyota Lawyer Drives Into Attorney, Loses $625K Case, Must Pay Her $125K Legal Bill + $5K for Appeal
It appears that attorney Granville Webster Burns simply didn’t see a fellow California lawyer when he drove into her as she was crossing a street on foot in Manhattan Beach.
Burns, who works as an assistant general counsel for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. and was driving a company-owned SUV, told a police officer that his vision was obscured by sunlight, reports the Metropolitan News-Enterprise.
But a similar lack of clarity concerning his litigation strategy has offered an expensive lesson on attorney ethics:
The pedestrian, lawyer Ann Grant, sued Burns and Toyota, winning an award of nearly $625,000, after a jury found Burns’ defense—that Grant didn’t use due care when crossing the street—wasn’t a sufficient contributing cause to the accident to hold her liable. But she also sought—and won—attorney’s fees and costs, arguing that Burns’ failure to timely admit liability for the accident forced the case into an otherwise-unnecessary trial.
Burns and Toyota appealed the attorney’s fee award, and were ordered to pay another $5,000 in attorney’s fees to Grant, on top of the $125,000 awarded by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge, for filing a frivolous appeal, the article recounts.
“No reasonable attorney would believe that this appeal has any conceivable merit,” Presiding Justice Roger Boren wrote in the California Court of Appeal’s opinion.
