SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) — A jury awarded a University of California, Davis graduate more than $33 million after a falling tree limb caused a brain injury, finding the city of Sacramento liable.
“It was a nice spring day and I decided to go for a run in McKinley Park,” Michael Flynn said.
Flynn was running in Sacramento’s McKinley Park in April 2020 when a dead tree limb fell 26 feet and struck him.
“I woke up in the hospital about three days later. I was hit on the head so hard that part of my skull had to be removed,” Flynn said.
Michael Flynn was running when a dead tree limb fell 26 feet and struck him.
Flynn, an MIT graduate, was six months away from completing his Ph.D. at UC Davis. He had planned to work in quantum computing. He was left with a traumatic brain injury.
Attorney describes impact on Flynn’s career
“He’s never going to be able to be employed in the same field in the same way that he would have been had this not happened to him,” attorney Jason Sigel said.
Sigel’s law firm filed a lawsuit against the city of Sacramento on Flynn’s behalf.
“The jury returned a verdict finding the city of Sacramento 100% liable for what happened. They found that that limb had been dead long enough for a city to see it and remove it, had they had a reasonable inspection practice,” Sigel said.
A judge awarded Flynn $33.3 million.
“I’m going to face serious limitations the rest of my life. All the things that I had wanted for myself, or many of them at least, are out of reach,” Flynn said.
Flynn said he will be financially stable but will always wonder what he could have achieved.
“It’s unrealistic to imagine that I’ll be able to achieve what I had hoped to before the accident,” Flynn said.
Flynn said he hopes the city takes new measures to maintain its public parks.
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