Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP attorney Deborah Chang is featured as the Attorney of the Month for October 2017 in the latest Downtown-Los Angeles edition of Attorney At Law magazine. In a candid interview with reporter Susan Cushing, Ms. Chang shares details of her nearly 30-year legal career representing both plaintiffs and defendants throughout the country in products liability, personal injury, wrongful death, commercial litigation, professional liability, securities fraud and complex tort cases. Since joining Panish | Shea | Ravipudi LLP in 2008, Ms. Chang has found that being on the plaintiff’s side of the bench has enabled her to do the type of work she was destined for on a daily basis.
“Now I’m not limited to a landmark once-in-a-blue-moon case to truly make a difference,” Ms. Chang says. “With every case or trial or settlement, we have the ability to literally change and improve people’s lives. We give a voice to people who are otherwise unable to be heard.”
In May 2017, Ms. Chang and her team obtained a $32.5 million landmark settlement on behalf of two clients who were catastrophically injured and two clients whose father was killed in two collisions on Loma Vista Drive in Beverly Hills, California. Plaintiff Eric Johnson was seriously injured on May 2, 2014, when his loaded cement truck lost its brakes while driving down Loma Vista Drive, causing him to crash into parked vehicles to stop his runaway descent. Only one week later, on May 9 of that same year, LAPD Detective Ernest Allen, Sr. was killed when a cement truck operated by Plaintiff Brandon Cascio on Loma Vista Drive lost its brakes, ran off the road at a sharp curve, and rolled over on top of Detective Allen’s pickup truck. As a result of his injuries, Mr. Cascio is now in a persistent vegetative coma.
For purposes of trial, the Johnson, Allen, and Cascio cases were consolidated and settled just days before the February 2017 trial was scheduled to begin.
Read the full Attorney At Law article featuring Deborah Chang here.