Court Cures County's Reefer Madness

Hernandez v. County of Los Angeles, No. B243194 (D2d5 June 6, 2014)

Randy Hernandez got in a traffic accident on the 110. The CHP officer dispatched to investigate the accident While Randy and the other driver were waiting for the Highway Patrol to arrive, an L.A. County sheriff who happened to be driving on the freeway ran Randy over. Randy died. During the wrongful death case brought by Randy’s daughter, the county put in evidence that Randy used medical marijuana. But none of the county’s experts would attest that Randy’s reefer use bore any causal relationship to his getting run over. At closing, however, the county’s lawyer invited the jury to speculate that that it did. The jury verdict attributed 14 percent of the fault to Randy. The court here reverses.