$13.3 Million Verdict for Yosemite Cyclist Paralyzed by Rental Bike with Known Brake Failure
Won by Mary Alexander & Associates.
Mary Alexander helped win a $13.3 million jury verdict in Fresno County for Mary Hall, a University of Arizona student left permanently quadriplegic after a Yosemite rental company re-rented a bicycle it knew had defective brakes.
What happened
Mary Hall rented a bicycle from the Curry Company, the National Park Service concessionaire operating inside Yosemite, planning to ride down from Lower Yosemite Falls. The bike's brakes failed. She slammed head-on into a tree, fracturing her neck and leaving her quadriplegic, requiring mechanical ventilation to breathe.
The rental company had known about the brake problem before Hall ever touched the bike. Earlier that same morning, another woman rented the identical bicycle, returned it, and told staff the brakes had failed and caused her to crash. Curry Company employees did not repair the bicycle and did not pull it from service. They put it back in the rental queue and handed it to Hall without any warning.
Mary Alexander of Mary Alexander & Associates helped win the case in Fresno County. The central theory was straightforward: Curry Company had actual, contemporaneous notice that this specific bicycle was dangerous, and it rented it out anyway. The earlier rider's warning, delivered the same morning to the same staff, left no room for a defense that the defect was hidden or unknown.
The jury returned a $13.3 million verdict, which included $11.17 million in special damages. Alexander has described the Hall case as her most memorable matter, a judgment that reflected both the severity of Hall's permanent injuries and the company's decision to ignore a direct warning from a prior customer.
No post-verdict reduction of the award appears in the public record.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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In March 2009 a San Mateo County Superior Court judge awarded $45 million to Tricia Roth, a 41-year-old former software developer from San Mateo who was left quadriplegic when a company truck ran a red light and struck her car. She had sued the driver and the South San Francisco hauling company he worked for. The award rested largely on her lost future earnings and on the pain and suffering of a spinal cord injury. Her attorney, Mary E. Alexander, said she planned to pursue the two insurers that had refused to defend the driver.
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A Contra Costa County jury returned a $21.4 million verdict against Chevron Corp. in March 2019 for the benzene-exposure deaths of brothers Gary and Randy Eaves, who spent years spraying a benzene-based solvent onto tires at an Arkansas plant without respirators, protective clothing, or safety warnings.
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