Los Angeles Daily Journal

Verdicts and Settlements - Allan Davis

Allan F. Davis loves poring over maps, studying designs and crunching numbers. You'd think he missed his calling as an engineer, architect or accountant.

Actually it was as a microbiologist. Davis had earned his bachelor's degree in microbiology at the University of Wyoming in 1976, when he decided to go for a master's and a doctorate in virology. Some close friends suggested law instead. With a degree in microbiology, environmental law or patent law seemed a natural.

"I was hoping to do that but I didn't do either," recalled Davis, 45, a partner in the firm of Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson of Newport Beach.

Davis did go to law school, earning his degree from the University of Wyoming in 1982. and went to work for an oil company. But the oil and gas business was on a recessional skid. So when his cousin, Robert Pederzani, an Orange County attorney, suggested he try Southern California, he jumped at the chance.

And that's when he found his true calling—roadways.

With their inherent speeds and. in many cases, inadequate designs, they were calling for someone to make a case of them. And he did.

His first assignment after joining the Newport Beach firm in 1988 was to examine the merits of a case in which a car veered out of control from an entrance ramp onto a Los Angeles freeway, plowing into the rear end of a truck and causing it to jackknife. The truck driver was killed, leaving a wife and two children.

"It was a situation where many lawyers looked at it but rejected it" before the truck driver's family came to the firm, said Davis. "They wanted a young associate to run around and do the leg work. It was surprising the things I found because of that effort."

After examining hundreds of documents and dozens of aerial photos, Davis found that part of the entrance had been protected by a 12-foot guard rail but that it was removed because too many vehicles had crashed into it. If it had been there, it could have prevented the car from going out of control and entering the freeway, he argued.

As a result, the state of California settled with the family for $1 million.

"Eighty percent of these cases are settled," Davis said. "The story line from CalTrans is "We won't settle! So, you have to have a very strong theory, a combination of things. You have to have all of that come together. Like a conductor in an orchestra, you have to have everybody in harmony."

"He sees leads that other attorneys might not" said Jeff Pop, a sole practitioner from Beverly Hills, who worked with Davis 11 years ago to win the largest civil award in Riverside history at the time—$1.8 million.

"He goes digging. He brings the fruit to bear to the tale if there's fruit there."

Attorney Stewart Mims also had a case, which is still pending, with Davis. "When I brought the matter to him, he was right on top of the legal issues, more so than other people I talked to," said Mims, a partner in MacArthur Uribe Hicks and Mims of Los Angeles. "He has tremendous instincts, a doggedness that's rare and a very personable demeanor that serves him very well."

In the case of Lu v. State of California, which he handled with Robinson, Davis listed more than 1,000 exhibits, enough to turn any head.

"It took two full-time people working 16- to 18-hour days. We were just storming on that thing," Davis said. The result was a unanimous verdict on negligence, resulting in a $10.6 million award.

"They've never shied from difficult cases," said Pederzani. "There's a phenomenal amount of cost—getting experts involved, doing mock trials, discoveries. I would assume before they even stepped into the courtroom in a case like that they would have put up a couple of hundred thousand of their own money.

"You have to have confidence in your ability to do that."

Davis has been handling cases like that, most of them focusing on how CalTrans designs and maintains its roads, for 14 years. For the last seven years, it's been his mainstay. He estimates 60 percent to 70 percent of all his work involves dangerous roads.

He did have a chance to put his science background to work before joining Robinson, Calcagnie & Robinson as an associate of Thomas Hahn in Newport Beach, a former partner of Robinson & Robinson. In 1985, Davis represented several children who developed severe reactions as a result of contaminated DPT vaccine used to protect against diphtheria, pertussis and tetanus. Most of the cases were settled.

"That one fell right into my field of microbiology," he said.