PLACENTIA : Crash Victim’s Kin Awarded $1.3 Million

An Orange County Superior Court jury on Monday awarded $1.34 million to the family of a Placentia man who died after his car crashed into a tractor-trailer that had arbitrarily stopped in the middle lane of the Orange Freeway almost three years ago.

After deliberating for three days, the jury decided that the truck’s driver, Mustafa Yaman, caused the accident that claimed the life of 52-year-old Warren Botha, a former mechanical engineer.

Wylie A. Aitken, a Santa Ana lawyer who represented Botha’s wife, Gillian, and her three children in a negligence lawsuit, said the family was pleased with the jury’s verdict.

“They feel vindicated that this long fight is over,” Aitken said. “When a father of three children gets up and goes to work and never returns, it feels good to know that it was not his fault for the pain this family has been through.”

Aitken said the fatal crash occurred about 5:30 a.m. on July 24, 1991, on the northbound Orange Freeway in Diamond Bar. Botha was taking the same route he had driven for 15 years to his work at Brown & Root Braun, an engineering firm in Alhambra.

After Botha crashed into Yaman’s big rig that had stopped down an incline, another truck rammed into Botha’s vehicle moments later. Botha died from the injuries suffered in the two crashes, according to testimony during the three-week trial before Judge Robert J. Polis.

Several eyewitnesses, including an off-duty Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, testified that Yaman failed to switch on his hazard lights or set out any warning devices even though he had stopped in the middle lane.

Yaman owned the big rig, but at the time of the incident, he was hauling two trailers of tomatoes for B & P Bulk, a Bakersfield company that specializes in transporting agricultural produce. The jury also found that B & P Bulk was negligent in the accident.

Aitken contended that the Bakersfield firm should have known that Yaman had been cited for reckless driving and was involved in two previous accidents with the same truck a few months before the fatal crash.

Yaman, 39, who testified at the trial, has since moved to New Jersey, where he is a bartender on a cruise ship, Aitken said.

His lawyer, John Barber, declined to comment on the verdict.