Patricia
A. Law

Trial Results Across Medical, Insurance, and Product Cases

Patricia A. Law represents plaintiffs in medical malpractice, wrongful death, catastrophic injury, product liability, and insurance bad-faith matters. Her verdicts span delayed diagnosis, treatment decisions, insurance claim handling, and defective products — different bodies of law, unified by the same method: reconstruct the moment of decision, and show the jury what the defendant knew when it mattered.

Medical Malpractice and Wrongful Death

In Posjena v. Regents of the University of California, Law represented the plaintiff in a failure-to-diagnose case involving malignant melanoma and the death of a mother. The jury returned a $10.6 million medical-malpractice and wrongful-death verdict.

Law also obtained a $3.75 million medical-malpractice verdict in a matter against Kaiser Permanente. In Mundeu v. Kaiser, an informed-consent case involving brain surgery, the jury returned a $3 million verdict for the plaintiff.

Her medical-malpractice results further include a $3.2 million verdict against DaVita and a $3.17 million wrongful-death verdict for the successors of Madelyn Schultz in litigation against two physicians and a hospital operator.

The Drost Liability Finding

Fourteen-year-old Jake Drost arrived for a school physical with a questionnaire disclosing a congenital heart defect, two open-heart surgeries, daily metoprolol, continuing cardiology care, and an implanted defibrillator that had become detached. The chiropractor conducting the examination cleared him for strenuous high-school JROTC activity.

Two months later, Jake collapsed during a one-hundred-yard dash and died from cardiac arrest. Law represented Jake's father, Jeffrey Drost. Experts agreed that California chiropractors may conduct preparticipation examinations but that a chiropractor confronting Jake's cardiac history should not independently clear him for strenuous activity. The jury found the chiropractor negligent.

Law built the trial proof from what the examiner knew before signing the clearance form. The questionnaire recorded the heart defect, the surgeries, the medication, the cardiology care, and the detached defibrillator — every warning was on the page. Expert testimony then distinguished a routine participation screening from the medical judgment required to assess strenuous exercise for a child with that cardiac history.

The liability presentation kept the sequence concrete: the disclosures on the form, the scope of the examination, the clearance for distance running, and the expert evidence about the limits of chiropractic training. The jury's negligence finding followed that preparticipation record, step by step, to its conclusion.

Insurance Bad Faith

In Mnatsakanyan v. CalFarm, Law represented the plaintiff in a dispute over an insurer's failure to pay fire losses. The jury returned a $4.7 million insurance bad-faith verdict.

Insurance bad-faith litigation requires the policy, the claim file, the coverage analysis, the communications, the loss evidence, and the insurer's stated basis for withholding benefits. Law's practice brings all of those records into a single chronology, so that the claim-handling decision can be tested at trial against what the insurer knew and when it knew it.

Product Liability

In Oliver v. Toyo Tire, tire delamination caused a truck to overturn. Law obtained a $1.6 million product-liability verdict for the plaintiff.

She also obtained a $3.5 million settlement in Fraijo v. Equipment Manufacturer, which involved a defective parking brake that disengaged and allowed a scraper to run over its operator. Additional product matters include a $1.8 million settlement involving an automobile manufacturer and a $1.5 million settlement involving a defective fentanyl patch.

These cases required evidence concerning design, manufacture, warnings, testing, product performance, alternative causes, and the sequence connecting the alleged defect to the injury — the engineering behind the harm, presented clearly to a jury.

Building Distinct Trial Records

A medical case begins with symptoms, tests, consultations, and the treatment choices available before an injury. A product case turns to design, manufacture, warnings, testing, performance, and alternative causes. An insurance bad-faith case proceeds through the policy, the claim file, the coverage analysis, the communications, and the stated reason for withholding benefits.

Different records, one discipline. Law connects each record to the decision made, the information then available, the governing standard of care or contractual duty, the alternatives at hand, and the harm that followed. The same chronology that organizes an expert examination also gives a jury a way to test when the decisive information appeared and what the defendant did with it. Her verdicts across three distinct fields of law are the returns on that single, transferable craft.

Practice and Professional Leadership

Law is the founder of Patricia A. Law & Associates in Rancho Cucamonga. She earned her undergraduate degree from the University of California, Riverside, and her law degree from Whittier College School of Law.

Law became the first woman president of the American Board of Trial Advocates' San Bernardino–Riverside chapter — a chapter of an organization whose membership is reserved for experienced trial lawyers, led for the first time by a woman. She has also participated in Riverside County's Women of the Bar Mentor Program, served in the Leo A. Deegan Inn of Court, and lectured through the Consumer Attorneys of California.

Her mentoring and professional teaching pass along the work behind a trial record: preparing an expert examination, deciding which medical disagreement matters, preserving an issue, and continuing to represent a client as a verdict moves into post-trial proceedings. The craft that wins verdicts, taught forward.