Jury Finds Sacramento Fully Liable, Awards $33.3 Million to Jogger Injured by Falling Tree Limb
Sacramento is a city in Sacramento County, California. A jury has found the city of Sacramento fully liable for a 2020 accident in which a falling tree limb struck a jogger in McKinley Park, and a judge has awarded the man $33.3 million, KCRA reported on October 16.
Michael Flynn was running in McKinley Park in April 2020 when a dead limb fell about 26 feet and struck him on the head. Flynn said he woke up in a hospital roughly three days later; the impact was so severe that part of his skull had to be removed. An MIT graduate, Flynn was about six months from completing his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis, and had planned to work in quantum computing. The accident left him with a traumatic brain injury.
His attorney, Jason Sigel, said jurors found the city 100 percent liable, concluding that the limb had been dead long enough that a reasonable inspection program would have spotted and removed it. Sigel said Flynn will never be able to work in his field the way he would have before the injury.
Flynn said the award will leave him financially stable, and that he hopes the city adopts new measures to maintain the trees in its public parks.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：萨克拉门托麦金利公园。图片来源：Pena645，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 4.0。Photo: McKinley Park in Sacramento. Image: Pena645, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
