San Clemente Personal Injury Attorneys

Our Track Record

With over 100 years of combined experience, the attorneys at Aitken * Aitken * Cohn have had a tremendous amount of success in securing favorable awards and settlements for our clients. Some of our recent successes include:

• A $4,200,000 settlement for the family of a man killed in a head-on collision between a passenger train and a freight train in 2008. The collision was the worst in U.S. commuter rail history, with 24 people dead due to the negligence of a train engineer who had been reading and sending up to 180 text messages a day while on the job. The court found that the engineer was texting when he went through a stop signal twenty-two seconds before the crash occurred. In addition to the $4.2 million settlement, our legal team also obtained a $975,000 settlement for the adult son of another rider who died in the crash.
• A $3,200,000 settlement for the family of a man and his 12-year-old daughter, both of who were killed when an out-of-control tractor-trailer careened through an intersection and hit several vehicles, signs, and stores. The driver of the tractor-trailer knew that his brakes were overheating, but continued driving despite a warning that he was going to wind up in a high-traffic area with an improperly maintained vehicle.
• A $2,100,000 settlement for a five-year-old child who lost sight in his eye when he opened an improperly locked maintenance gate that had improperly designed hinges that snapped back as though spring-loaded, causing a metal protrusion that was part of the lock to penetrate his eye. The child was forced to endure five months of intense medical treatment and more than ten surgeries.
• Three full days of mediation over the course of several months led to a confidential settlement for the family of a 14-month-old girl who suffered a permanent, traumatic brain injury after hospital nursing staff failed to monitor a shunt that had been used to drain fluid from her brain and skull, which caused a build-up of intracranial fluid in her head.
• A $2,675,000 settlement for the widow and young daughter of an off-duty California police officer who was struck and killed in an intersection by an inattentive driver.
• A $2,575,000 settlement in a medical malpractice case that involved a fall in a hospital.
• A $1,290,000 settlement and waiver of a worker’s compensation lien of over $110,000 for a glazier foreman who was injured when a 16-foot long 2×4 piece of wood, which served as a guardrail on the 20th floor of the building he was working on, broke free, fell, and struck him in the back of his helmeted head. The man was knocked unconscious for a brief time and also suffered a fractured spine in the accident.
• A $1,000,000 settlement for a client who suffered a fractured skull, a traumatic brain injury, and a broken nose when, while working at a construction site, he was struck in the head by a large piece of debris that was thrown from an upper level of the apartment building.
• A substantial verdict for a man who fell at a theme park and suffered symptoms that appeared to be the result of a spinal injury. He was taken to the hospital, where he underwent a CT. Medical professionals misread the CT as negative, and thus removed spinal precautions, such as a neck brace and backboard, which caused a shift of a spinal fracture and resulted in permanent spinal injury and paralysis.