Prop. 51 Might Have Aided Disneyland, Attorney Says

Two months ago, John A. Luetto was busy campaigning against Proposition 51.

Like most of his fellow trial lawyers, Luetto believed that the “deep-pockets” ballot initiative would replace the law’s traditional concern for compensating innocent victims with a new emphasis on dealing with those who cause the injury.

Last week, the Santa Ana attorney won a $600,000 verdict for the mother of a man who died in Disneyland. The jury found that the Anaheim amusement park failed to provide adequate emergency medical care.

Mel C. Yorba, 18, of Riverside, was stabbed through the heart by James O’Driscoll during a Saturday night fight in Tomorrowland in 1981. Orange County jurors found that Disneyland employees were negligent by not summoning paramedics to the park, instead transporting the man by a park-owned van to a nearby hospital.

Luetto says that the Disneyland litigation is an example of the mistake California voters made June 3 in their overwhelming approval of Prop. 51.

Had the initiative been in effect, Luetto said, “the damages might have been the same, but the collectability would not.” Luetto represented Yorba’s mother, Ellen Reynolds, of Riverside.

The initiative limits the amount of non-economic damages that defendants like Disneyland must pay according to their degree of fault. With primary responsibility for the death clearly O’Driscoll’s, Prop. 51 could have protected Disneyland from paying for his share of the damages.

The owner of the amusement park, Walt Disney Co. of Burbank, reported sales last year of $2 billion and assets of $2.9 billion. If Reynolds had been forced to turn to O’Driscoll to collect most of the damages, it would have been a far different story. O’Driscoll was convicted of second-degree murder and is serving 16 years to life in prison. His total assets are about $200, according to papers filed earlier this year in the case.

The initiative modified existing California law in cases involving multiple defendants and claims of non-economic damages, such as pain and suffering. Previously, the total damages assessed by a jury could be collected from any defendant who was able to pay, regardless of how much the defendant was to blame for the injury.

Under Prop. 51, individual defendants can be forced to pay damages only in proportion to their degree of fault.

In future cases like Reynolds’, jurors will have to apportion blame before they assess damages. For instance, the jury would have been first required to decide what percent of fault for which O’Driscoll and Disneyland were responsible in Yorba’s death.

Jury foreman David Scott said that none of the jurors who decided the case believed Disneyland was negligent for failing to protect Yorba against the unlikely possibility that he would be stabbed to death in the park.

‘Profound Effect’

If Prop. 51 had applied, and jurors had found Disneyland 10% responsible for Yorba’s death, Reynolds only would have been able to collect $60,000--or 10% of damages--from the park.

The remaining $540,000 would have come from O’Driscoll--”uncollectable,” as Luetto described it. (O’Driscoll had been named as a defendant, but was eliminated from the case before trial.)

“Prop. 51 has a profound effect on cases like this,” Luetto said. “Their argument would be that if you are going to apportion fault and liability between the two defendants, you have to seriously consider James O’Driscoll.”

The biggest question following passage of Prop. 51 is when the new law becomes effective. If it is found to be retroactive--and lawyers agree that only the state Supreme Court can determine this issue--then all pending cases would be affected.

Others suggest that the intiative covers only lawsuits stemming from incidents after June 3, when it was passed by voters.

At one point, lawyers in the Disneyland case discussed whether the jury should be instructed to apply the initiative. “We discussed whether or not Proposition 51 would apply to this case,” Luetto said. “We all agreed that it probably does in theory, but both sides stipulated there would be no instructions to the jury.”

‘Might Have Been Test Case’

“Nobody yet knows how to apply it, whether it is retroactive, when it takes effect, what cases it will effect,” Luetto added. “We were faced with the possibility that this might have been the test case.”

Richard E. McCain, the attorney for Disneyland, said he felt that the law was “too confused” to push for its application. McCain has declined to say what his next legal move might be. Following the verdict, a Disneyland spokesman said the park is studying its alternatives.

“The reason I’m opposed to (Proposition) 51 is that it deprives injured persons of the opportunity to be fully compensated for their injuries,” Luetto said. “The old rule . . . grew up around the notion that our primary concern is that injured persons be fully compensated. We let the wrongdoers fight it out among themselves,” Luetto said.

Luetto said that the effect of Proposition 51 “will be more litigation, more lawyers, more defendants. And it will ultimately make every case more expensive.”