Garo
Mardirossian

The Sightline at Pacific Coast Highway

A former service-station mechanic and certified California smog inspector, Garo Mardirossian built a practice in roadway, product, civil-rights, and catastrophic-injury cases on physical evidence, video, records, and measured reconstruction — proof a jury can see, touch, and test for itself.

Before testimony began in Ekbatani v. State of California, Mardirossian brought the jury into an adjoining room. Inside stood a scale model of the Pacific Coast Highway and Diamond Street intersection, reproducing the lanes, the skewed crossing, and a crest in the roadway that governed what a turning driver could see.

Mardirossian lowered himself until his eyes met the miniature pavement. The jurors followed him down. From that height, the crest rose into the line of sight and swallowed the northbound traffic — even a motorcycle headlight disappeared behind it. Roadway geometry stopped being an expert's abstraction and became something twelve people had tested with their own eyes.

Amir "Nick" Ekbatani, a former UCLA offensive lineman, had suffered catastrophic injuries when a taxi turned across his path. Caltrans had maintained an intersection with restricted visibility and a history of complaints, and repeated paving had raised the crest higher still. The jury awarded $35 million and assigned seventy percent of the fault to Caltrans. The resulting payout reached $27.5 million.

From the Service Station to Product Litigation

Mardirossian was born in Aleppo to an Armenian family that lived in Beirut and Cleveland before settling in Los Angeles, where his father operated a service station on Fairfax Boulevard. Mardirossian worked there through high school and college, performing mechanical and body work and earning certification as a California smog inspector.

The station gave him a working vocabulary of engines, frames, tolerances, wear, and force — and a habit that would shape everything after: a failure has a source, and inspection can locate it. In vehicle cases, the component itself could be measured against testing records, engineering testimony, and the forces present in the collision.

He studied economics at UCLA and earned his Juris Doctor from Whittier College School of Law. In 1981, he opened the Law Offices of Garo Mardirossian, a practice that began with immigration, family law, bankruptcy, criminal defense, and injury cases before growing into a docket of defective vehicles, dangerous roadways, catastrophic injury, and civil rights.

The office became Mardirossian Akaragian LLP — a name with its own story. Armen Akaragian joined the firm as a legal assistant in 1999, attended law school at night, became a lawyer, and rose to named partner.

Pannu, Gozukara, and Vehicle Design

In Pannu v. Land Rover, Sukhsagar Pannu suffered catastrophic spinal injuries when a 1998 Land Rover Discovery rolled during a freeway crash. Mardirossian and Akaragian pursued the vehicle's design history through more than fifty depositions and testimony from company personnel in England, building a record on rollover resistance, track width, center of gravity, and roof integrity.

That engineering record let the lawyers test the Discovery against concrete alternatives — a wider track, a lower center of gravity, stronger roof construction — joining the physical vehicle to the manufacturer's own design history and witnesses rather than leaving the defect theory as a contest of conclusions. A retired judge found Land Rover strictly liable and awarded more than $25 million, with $21.654 million apportioned to Pannu. The Court of Appeal affirmed in a published opinion addressing the consumer-expectation and risk-benefit theories of product liability.

In Gozukara v. Ford Motor Co., Mardirossian obtained $5.5 million from Caltrans concerning barrier placement and a $9.4 million settlement from the dealership concerning a reported front-end vibration, bringing the family's recovery to $14.9 million. In Duan v. General Motors, he obtained an order releasing thousands of pages of GM roof-crush testing records from confidentiality before the case settled — while the jury was deliberating. In Saakyan v. Modern Auto, a second jury found Modern Auto negligent and awarded approximately $12.8 million to the two plaintiffs, a judgment the Court of Appeal affirmed. Thiemanee v. Nissan produced a $3.15 million jury verdict on claims involving a defective restraint system and door latch.

Dole and the Sheriff's Department

Mardirossian entered civil-rights litigation through Dole v. County of Los Angeles, which arose from a sheriff's-department response to a family gathering — a response a neighbor happened to record on video.

The recording supplied a sequence independent of the first official account. Mardirossian used it twice over: first to win acquittals while defending the family against criminal charges, then as the spine of a civil record developed through extensive testimony and discovery. The civil case included more than fifty deputy depositions, testimony from Sheriff Sherman Block, and a trial that ran twenty-nine weeks. The jury awarded $15.9 million; the affirmed judgment, interest, and final payment reached $24.85 million.

Kelly Thomas, Frank Mendoza, and Fermin Valenzuela

In the civil action concerning Kelly Thomas's death after an encounter with Fullerton officers, Mardirossian marshaled surveillance footage, department practices, and prior reports. On the eve of trial, Fullerton agreed to pay $4.9 million.

Mendoza v. County of Los Angeles concerned a deputy's mistaken identification during a manhunt. Mardirossian developed the evidence on identification, tactics, training, command, and the deputy's identity, and Los Angeles County paid $14.35 million to the family.

In Valenzuela v. City of Anaheim, Mardirossian and Dale Galipo obtained a $13.2 million federal jury verdict — and the Ninth Circuit upheld the availability of loss-of-life damages under Section 1983, holding that California's contrary restriction was inconsistent with the federal statute's compensatory and deterrent purposes. In Zerby v. City of Long Beach, a federal jury awarded the family $6.5 million, and the Ninth Circuit upheld that verdict as well.

In Doe v. County of Los Angeles, Mardirossian's team used physical testing and three-dimensional models to reconstruct a sheriff's patrol-vehicle collision. Los Angeles County settled the claim for $42.2 million.

The Model in Smith v. MV Transportation

Smith v. MV Transportation arose from a fatal collision between a commercial bus and a bicyclist. Mardirossian's firm built a large courtroom model from measurements and blueprints, showing the driver's available reaction time, a faded and misaligned crosswalk, the bicyclist's position near the curb, and the company's training. The model worked in concert with witness and expert testimony on visibility, timing, roadway markings, and vehicle movement.

After a nine-day trial, the jury awarded $21.6 million and assigned seventy-five percent of the responsibility to MV Transportation.

Published California Decisions

Mardirossian's cases have also left permanent marks on California law. Tansavatdi v. City of Rancho Palos Verdes reached the California Supreme Court after Jonathan Tansavatdi was killed while bicycling through an intersection where a bike lane disappeared; the court held that design immunity did not eliminate a failure-to-warn claim when a public entity knew an approved feature created a dangerous condition.

In Purton v. Marriott International, the Court of Appeal held that an employer could remain responsible where an employee became intoxicated at a company party, arrived home safely, later drove again, and caused a fatal collision — because the intoxication arose within the scope of employment. Lewis v. Ukran followed a $1.65 million bench verdict and placed the burden of proving an appropriate present-value discount on the party seeking to reduce future damages. Srithong v. Total Investment Co. held that Proposition 51 did not displace vicarious liability grounded in a nondelegable duty after hot roofing tar penetrated a restaurant ceiling and injured a patron. And the published Pannu opinion addressed product-liability standards while preserving the judgment against Land Rover.

Firm and Bar Leadership

Mardirossian served as president of the Consumer Attorneys Association of Los Angeles while continuing to try product-liability, catastrophic-injury, roadway, and civil-rights cases. His firm's work has run through accident reconstruction, scale models, vehicle components, blueprints, corporate testing records, police video, training material, expert testimony, appeals, and post-verdict proceedings — the full distance from a mechanic's inspection of a failure to a judgment that holds on review.