Steven Richard Jacobsen's Legal Cases (2)

Personal injury

Accidental Lawyer brokers a $3,250,000 award for burn victim

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OUTCOME: $3.25 Million awarded to burn victim

Dublin, California. An 11-year-old girl suffered 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 50% of her body because her landlady refused to provide a gas connection for a water heater as required by law. The pla ... intiff and her family rented one of several trailers located on the Yarra Yarra horse ranch in Dublin. The ranch is owned by the defendant. When the family first rented the trailer, it was connected to all the services â€“ gas, electricity and sewer. When the defendant sold that portion of her ranch to developers for a new housing development, she moved the group of trailers to their present location, hidden behind trees and a large, modern horse barn. The defendant promised the service connections within two weeks, but weeks became months while the tenants lit candles and raw sewage spilled out onto the ground. Finally, one of the tenants pleaded with the defendant to provide the materials, and he connected the sewer lines of most of the trailers to a septic tank. Electricity was eventually brought to the trailers, but no gas lines. The plaintiff's family had hooked a portable gas bottle to their stove for cooking, but they had no furnace and no hot water. In order to bathe, they had to heat a large pot of water on the stove. On November 1, the diminutive plaintiff, who stands less than 5 feet tall, was terribly burned when an entire pot of heated water spilled onto her face, arms and torso. She spent months in the burn unit of Shrinerâ€™s Hospital in Sacramento where she has recently undergone two days of surgery to place skin grafts over the most seriously burned areas. Her doctors say that while her prognosis for survival and eventual recovery is good, she will remain scarred for life. She is expected to stay in the hospital for as long as six months. The defendant continued to demand the rent of $650.00 per month, even while denying to her tenants the services required by law. California Civil Code section 1941.1 requires that every rental unit have heat, hot water, and deadbolt locks. These trailers have none of those essential services. Meanwhile, the plaintiffâ€™s family, along with their neighbors, lived in the trailers, where the windows donâ€™t close, there are gaps in the walls and there are no locks on the doors. All of the tenants must ward off the rats, raccoons and feral cats which have congregated around the trailers. There is still no heat. Dublin police responded after the plaintiffâ€™s accident, but the Dublin Police Department can find no record of any report. A representative of the Alameda County District Attorneyâ€™s Office stated that the office does not prosecute slumlords, as do the neighboring counties of San Francisco and Santa Clara, and in any case, it received no report from the police. The plaintiff is represented by Oakland attorney Steven R. Jacobsen. (NOTE: Steven R. Jacobsen obtained compensation for the plaintiff and her family in the amount of $3,250,000.00.)

Wrongful death

San Jose Jury Awards $1 Million in Wrongful Death Suit

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OUTCOME: Jury awards $1 Million to widow

June 2005 A jury slapped San Jose with a $1 million judgmentâ€”one of the largest in the city's historyâ€”after finding police officers were partly responsible for the 2001 death of a mentally ill m ... an who died as he resisted arrest for a disturbance at a fast-food restaurant. City Attorney Rick Doyle said he was shocked by the amount of damages awarded, calling Wednesday's judgment the highest under his tenure. He said the city will ask the court for a new trial or seek a reduction in damages. "It's a huge number,'' Doyle said. "It's the largest number I've seen since I've been with the office. We believe the size is very excessive.' 'During the trial, the City of San Jose had offered that it "might" be able to pay the widow $25,000 for the death of her husband, but nothing more. Kim Smith, the widow of William Smith, brought the wrongful death suit after her husband died during a scuffle the night of Sept. 25, 2001, that began with a disturbance at a McDonald's restaurant on Tully Road and eventually involved eight officers. Police said officers were dispatched to the restaurant after customers complained about a man yelling and making racial comments and threats. When three officers arrived, they found Smith, 45, outside the restaurant at a nearby bus stop where he shouted at people passing by, police said. They decided to take Smith into custody for observation because of his mental distress. Police said Smith was handcuffed, but continued to kick. They placed him face down on the curb, at which point officers attempted to restrain him as they tried to place a nylon wrap around his legs. The officers noticed he had stopped breathing and called for paramedics, who were unable to revive him. The coroner determined Smith had died of asphyxiation. Kim Smith's attorney, Steven Jacobsen of Oakland, contended the officers ignored their training in handling Smith, who police say weighed more than 300 pounds. He said the police should have rolled Smith on his back or side to make sure he could breathe. "This terrible tragedy raises awareness of the need for better police training in dealing with the mentally ill,'' Jacobsen said. An arrest for mental distress "should not turn into punishment and certainly should not end up in death,'' he said. "The victim in this case was a paranoid schizophrenic, and I believe the police believed they could do whatever they wanted to control him.'' Jacobsen said the verdict raises the visibility of what she called police abuse in San Jose, citing both this case and the 2003 fatal shooting by a San Jose police officer of a 25-year-old Vietnamese mother of two as she waved a vegetable peeler that was mistaken for a cleaver. A grand jury cleared the San Jose patrolman who shot her of any criminal wrongdoing in the case. A civil suit filed by the woman's family is pending. Assistant City Attorney Clifford Greenberg, who defended the city during the 11-day trial of the Smith case in front of Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge John Garibaldi, could not be reached for immediate comment. After two days of deliberations, the jury voted 9-3 to award Kim Smith $1,056,000 in damages for battery and negligence contributing to her husband's death. No appeal was filed by the City of San Jose. Kim Smith was paid the amount of the jury award.

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