Woman Awarded Millions for Fall
A jury awarded a Santa Clarita restaurant owner who suffered brain injuries during a fall two years ago $6.6 million in her negligence lawsuit against a retail center landlord who allegedly failed to repair a hole in a parking lot.
The Superior Court jury in Chatsworth voted unanimously Monday to penalize Pacific Palisades-based UDO Partners II, which owned the property on Bouquet Canyon Road that had housed the L’Italiano restaurant for 14 years.
In June 2001, Karen Grassi, 44, and her husband, Fernando Grassi, 49, had gone to the back of the establishment to check the water softener after complaints of spots on the wineglasses.
As Karen Grassi walked back to her car about 9:30 p.m., she stepped into a pothole in the asphalt, her attorneys said.
She struck the right side of her face, fracturing the area around her right eye and suffering frontal lobe brain injuries, said attorney Thomas Patrick Beck.
“The frontal lobe injury affected her executive functions, things like multitasking, organizing, memory,” Beck said.
Even after nine surgeries, Karen Grassi, who had been the manager of the restaurant, never recovered her ability to run the day-to-day operations without supervision, Beck said.
The jury award included $1.25 million for Fernando Grassi, who had been the chef, for lost income.
The lawsuit charged that the defendants had been aware of the bad state of the parking lot and had failed to make repairs, even though they had collected money from the tenants to do so.
An attorney for UDO Partners called the verdict punitive.
“We believe the award was excessive, and we will be making post-trial motions to challenge the amount of the verdict,” said Michael Branconier, who noted that $4 million of the verdict was for pain and suffering.
According to the suit, Grassi “has been devastated emotionally by her disfiguring facial injuries, the effect on her vision and her brain injury.... Her relationships with her children and husband have been substantially harmed by her physical and emotional injuries.”
Last October, the Grassis’ lease to the restaurant property was allowed to run out after a disagreement between the couple and the landlord over terms for a new lease.
Since then, the Grassis, parents of 15- and 13-year-old girls, have run a catering business out of their home.
“She still tries to work, but everything she does has to be supervised,” said attorney Gregory Vanni, who represented the Grassis along with Beck.
The attorneys said her injuries, for example, had caused her to write checks for larger sums than intended.
“Everything she does has to be watched over,” Vanni said.
