» 2023

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm, APC obtains affirmance of $100 million judgment in a personal-injury action.

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm, APC were retained by Arash Homampour of the Homampour Law Firm and Matt Biren of the Biren Law Group to defend a $100 million judgment in O’Malley v. Diamond Resorts Management, Inc., Case No. G061459, Fourth Appellate District, Division Three. On November 7, 2023, the Court filed its opinion affirming the judgment in full. In March 2014, Priscilla O’Malley checked into the defendant’s hotel in Dana Point, California. Around 6 p.m. that night she told her husband that she planned to have a glass of wine, watch the sunset, and spend the rest of the night in her room. About 30 minutes later, she suffered a brain aneurysm and collapsed on the floor in her room. Her husband attempted multiple times to reach her by phone that night. At 10:30 p.m., he phoned the hotel’s front desk and asked to have someone sent to the room to check whether Mrs. O’Malley was inside and okay. The desk clerk agreed to send a maintenance man. He failed to enter the room, but told the front-desk clerk that he had gone in and that no one was inside. This false information was then relayed to Mr. O’Malley, who stayed at the couple’s home, hoping that his wife would return his calls. About 5:15 a.m., Mr. O’Malley drove to the hotel and entered the room, finding his wife in a coma on the floor. She survived but sustained a unique brain injury¬—the complete inability to form and store new memories. As a result, she needs constant 24-hour care and supervision. On appeal, the defendant raised a host of arguments to attack the judgment, but the Court of Appeal rejected all of them. View Opinion Read More

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm APC obtains reversal of directed verdict in products-liability action.

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm APC obtains reversal of directed verdict in products-liability action. In Camacho v. JLG Industries, Inc. (2023) 93 Cal.App.5th 809, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth Appellate District, Division 3, reversed the directed verdict in a published opinion. The court held that, in granting the motion, the trial court applied the wrong causation standard, and that the plaintiff’s evidence was sufficient to have the jury decide whether JLG’s scissor lift was defective because it lacked a self-closing gate with an integrated toe board to provide fall protection at the front of the lift. Read More

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm APC obtains an affirmance of a $10,000,000 judgment

Jeffrey Ehrlich and the Ehrlich Law Firm APC obtains an affirmance of a $10,000,000 judgment. In Little v. Singh, et al. No. F083989, the California Court of Appeal for the Fifth Appellate District affirmed a $10,000,000 judgment for the plaintiffs in a personal-injury and loss-of-consortium action, arising from a pickup truck vs. semi-trailer collision in Bakersfield, CA. The court rejected the defendant’s contention that the trial court erred in excluding proffered video-surveillance evidence of the plaintiff on the ground that probative value of the evidence was substantially outweighed by its potential to both mislead the jury and to consume undue amounts of time. Read More

Jeffrey Ehrlich wins important public-immunities case in California Supreme Court.

On February 7, 2023, Jeffrey Ehrlich argued Tansavatdi v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes in the California Supreme Court. The issue in the case was whether the statutory defense of “design immunity,” which barred a claim against a public entity based on a danger created by the roadway design it approved, would necessarily also bar a failure-to-warn claim against the public entity, based on the failure to warn about that danger. On April 27, 2023, the Supreme Court filed its opinion in Tansavatdi v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes (2023) 14 Cal.5th 639, which adopted the position advanced by Ehrlich’s client, that design immunity does not necessarily bar a failure-to-warn claim. The Supreme Court affirmed the Court of Appeal’s reversal of a summary judgment for the City of Rancho Palos Verdes, and remanded the case for trial. View full opinion Read More