{"id":497890,"date":"2026-10-16T08:54:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T08:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/497890\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T08:54:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T08:54:10","slug":"jury-finds-city-of-sacramento-liable-after-uc-davis-graduate-suffered-brain-injury-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/497890\/","title":{"rendered":"Jury finds city of Sacramento liable after UC Davis graduate suffered brain injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) \u2014 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.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt was a nice spring day and I decided to go for a run in McKinley Park,\u201d Michael Flynn said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Flynn was running in Sacramento\u2019s McKinley Park in April 2020 when a dead tree limb fell 26 feet and struck him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI 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,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure-img img-fluid mx-auto d-block\" fetchpriority=\"low\" loading=\"lazy\" alt=\"Michael Flynn was running when a dead tree limb fell 26 feet and struck him.\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792140850_446_VDCA73RPGNC6VOJJ5HLAKWWGOM.jpg\" width=\"980\" height=\"551\" \/>Michael Flynn was running when a dead tree limb fell 26 feet and struck him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">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.<\/p>\n<p>Attorney describes impact on Flynn\u2019s career<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cHe\u2019s 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,\u201d attorney Jason Sigel said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Sigel\u2019s law firm filed a lawsuit against the city of Sacramento on Flynn\u2019s behalf. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe 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,\u201d Sigel said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">A judge awarded Flynn $33.3 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cI\u2019m 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,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Flynn said he will be financially stable but will always wonder what he could have achieved.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cIt\u2019s unrealistic to imagine that I\u2019ll be able to achieve what I had hoped to before the accident,\u201d Flynn said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Flynn said he hopes the city takes new measures to maintain its public parks.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KCRA via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SACRAMENTO, Calif. (KCRA) \u2014 A jury awarded a University of California, Davis graduate more than $33 million after&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":497891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[193326,193323,193325,121,123,122,193322,193324],"class_list":["post-497890","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-city-of-sacramento-liable","tag-mckinley-park-injury","tag-michael-flynn-lawsuit","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-sacramento-tree-limb-lawsuit","tag-uc-davis-graduate-brain-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=497890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/497891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}