Roadside Pedestrian Struck by Nissan Delivery Driver Wins $46 Million Verdict
Won by Robinson Calcagnie, Inc..
On September 10, 2013, Faustino Torres Solorio was standing at the tailgate of a truck that had run out of gas and pulled onto the shoulder in San Bernardino County when a car driven by Gunnar Ayala, a parts delivery driver for Nissan of Fontana, struck him. Ayala was cited for an unsafe turning movement, and the officer at the scene concluded Solorio did nothing to cause the crash. He suffered multiple broken bones, deep lacerations, a lacerated spleen and an above-the-knee amputation of his left leg. The dealerships argued Ayala was an independent contractor, or at least outside the course and scope of his job at the moment of the crash. A San Bernardino County Superior Court jury found otherwise and awarded Solorio $46 million on August 9, 2016. No appeal has surfaced in the years since.
What happened
On September 10, 2013, Faustino Torres Solorio was riding in a truck driven by a coworker, Franco Javier Perez, on a road in San Bernardino County when the truck ran out of gas. Perez pulled it legally onto the shoulder, and Solorio got out to retrieve a gas can from the truck bed. While he stood at the tailgate, a car driven by Gunnar Ayala struck him as Ayala turned onto the street. Ayala was cited for an unsafe turning movement and his license was suspended, and the officer who investigated concluded that Solorio did not cause or contribute to the collision in any way.
The impact left Solorio with multiple broken bones, deep lacerations and a lacerated spleen. His left leg was damaged so severely that surgeons amputated it above the knee. The jury's later award for future medical care reflected the ongoing treatment that injury and the rest of his injuries would require.
Ayala worked as a parts delivery driver for Nissan of Fontana, Inc., which operated dealerships known as Nissan of San Bernardino and Metro Nissan of Redlands, and he moved parts between the stores in his father's personal vehicle. His father, Louie Ayala Jr., had set up L.A.G.D.J. Courier Services to handle those deliveries. On the day of the crash Ayala had worked his shift and left the San Bernardino dealership to fill up for the next day. Solorio sued the dealerships along with both Ayalas. The dealerships answered that Ayala was an independent contractor, or at least outside the course and scope of his job when he hit Solorio. Solorio argued that the vehicle use exception to the going and coming rule applied, because the job required Ayala to supply the car he used on his route, so the dealerships answered for his negligence.
The case, captioned Faustino Torres Solorio v. Nissan of Fontana, Inc., went to trial before Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr. in San Bernardino County Superior Court. On August 9, 2016, the jury found that Ayala was an agent or employee of the Nissan defendants and was acting within the scope of that relationship when he harmed Solorio, and it awarded Solorio $46 million: $2 million for future medical expenses, $6 million for past pain, suffering, physical impairment and loss of enjoyment of life, and $38 million for the same categories going forward. Of the total, $44 million was noneconomic damages, with the remaining $2 million set aside for future medical care.
Robinson Calcagnie represented Solorio at trial. No appeal of the verdict has surfaced in the years since it was returned, and no public record shows what the dealerships or their insurers ultimately paid.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Law360, Aug. 11, 2016, staff article by Brandon Lowrey: reports the $46 million California jury award to the man who lost a leg after being struck by an auto-parts delivery driver, quotes the injured man's attorney, and indexes the article under Law Firms: Robinson Calcagnie
- 2.LexisNexis Jury Verdicts & Settlements, Sept. 2016 (2016 Jury Verdicts LEXIS 6666): case caption, venue (California Superior Court for San Bernardino County), Judge Wilfred J. Schneider Jr., verdict date (Aug. 9, 2016), damages breakdown ($2M future medical, $6M past pain, suffering, physical impairment and loss of enjoyment, $38M for the same going forward), the injuries, the citation issued to Ayala, the course-and-scope dispute and the jury's agency finding
More proven verdicts from Robinson Calcagnie, Inc.
All Robinson Calcagnie, Inc. proven verdicts →On July 9, 1999, a Los Angeles County jury found General Motors liable for the fuel tank design of a 1979 Chevrolet Malibu that caught fire after a drunk driver rear-ended the car on Christmas Eve 1993, severely burning Patricia Anderson, her four children and family friend Jo Tigner. The jury awarded $107.6 million in compensatory damages and $4.8 billion in punitive damages, at the time the largest personal injury award in the country. Superior Court Judge Ernest G. Williams later cut the punitive award to $1.09 billion, leaving the compensatory award intact for a total of about $1.2 billion, while backing the jury's finding that General Motors had positioned the tank to protect profit rather than passengers. General Motors said it would appeal the reduced judgment. No appellate decision in the case was ever published, and what General Motors ultimately paid was never made public.
On December 12, 2025, a Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded Deborah Schultz and her husband Albert $22 million after finding that decades of using Johnson's Baby Powder caused her ovarian cancer. The jury found Johnson & Johnson liable for negligence, failure to warn and concealing asbestos risk in its talc products, but declined to award punitive damages. The verdict came in the first bellwether trial of California's coordinated talc litigation, which also awarded a second plaintiff, Monica Kent, $18 million in a case tried alongside the Schultzes'. Dan Robinson of Robinson Calcagnie tried the case for the plaintiffs with Andy Birchfield of Beasley Allen; Johnson & Johnson has said it will appeal.
Gerald Barnett, a retired FBI agent from South Carolina, took Vioxx starting in 1999 for chronic neck and back pain and suffered a heart attack in September 2002 at age 58, followed by quintuple bypass surgery. His case was chosen as the second bellwether trial in the federal Vioxx multidistrict litigation, and on August 17, 2006 a New Orleans jury found Merck had negligently failed to warn his doctors of the drug's risks and had concealed information about those risks, awarding him $50 million in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages. The trial judge found the compensatory award excessive and ordered a new trial unless Barnett accepted a reduced award; Barnett accepted a remittitur of $1.6 million on June 20, 2007, and judgment was entered in that amount on June 28, 2007. Merck reported that it appealed that judgment, and no decision resolving the appeal has been published.
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