Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP / Getty Images
SANTA MONICA (CNS) - A Lyft Inc. driver is seeking dismissal of all claims against him in a lawsuit brought by a passenger who alleges that she jumped out of a car window moments before her unconscious driver crashed into a parked vehicle, saying he suffered a diabetic emergency just before the crash and cannot be liable.
Lal Finci's Santa Monica Superior Court lawsuit alleges negligence on the part of driver Christian Denis Cooper. Lyft also was originally sued, but was dropped by the plaintiff as a defendant in February 2024.
On Tuesday, Cooper's lawyers filed court papers with Judge Mark A. Young in advance of an April 29 hearing in which they will urge him to grant their motion to eliminate the driver as a defendant, saying he could not have breached any obligation regarding Finci's safety while he was incapacitated.
The lawyers also contend that Finci caused her own injuries when she jumped from Cooper's car.
"He was transporting her as a passenger under the Lyft ride-share platform when, for the first time in his life, he suffered a medical emergency due to acute hypoglycemia," Cooper's lawyers said of their Type 1 diabetes client in their court papers.
Finci was responsible for her own injuries, according to Cooper's attorneys' court papers.
"She became hysterical and thought she was being kidnapped, so she rolled down her window, hung her body out the window and dropped to the asphalt while the car was moving and suffered physical injuries," Cooper's attorneys state in their court papers.
Finci left before the police arrived, called a friend to get her and later went to a nearby police station to report what happened, telling them she was kidnapped by someone who may have been a "psychopath," Cooper's attorneys further state in their pleadings.
"The sole alleged nature of his negligence was his failure to deliver her safely to her destination," Cooper's attorneys further state in their pleadings.
According to Finci's complaint, she had summoned a Lyft ride in the early afternoon of July 16, 2021, to travel from Santa Monica to Rodeo Drive. Cooper told Finci that his spouse had cancer and that he needed to stop to buy some things from a 7-Eleven store on Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, the suit filed in July 2023 states.
The driver returned 15 to 20 minutes later and asked Finci, "Are you ready for the ride?" according to the suit.
But the driver did not immediately leave until after Finci asked him if he was feeling all right and able to drive, the suit states. However, he drove unsafely and one passerby driver yelled at him, the suit states.
According to Cooper's lawyers' court papers, the driver bought some Red Bull drinks at the 7-Eleven to alleviate his low blood-sugar sensations and remembers nothing after that until he saw police and emergency workers tending to him.
The Cooper attorneys further state that according to Finci, when Cooper returned from the store his face was "very scary and creepy" and that after he began driving erratically along Wilshire Boulevard, sometimes on the sidewalk, he ignored her demands to stop and let her out.
The suit states that a few moments later, Finci saw that the driver's eyes were shut, so she reached over and tried to awaken him after he appeared to be unconscious.
"He momentarily woke up and then passed out again," the suit states.
Finci thought the car might crash soon and so she tried to open the back door of the car, but because it was locked, she rolled down the window and jumped out, the suit states.
Moments after Finci's hit and rolled on the ground, she heard a loud crash from the driver's car crashing into a parked vehicle a few hundred feet ahead of her, the suit states.
Finci suffered severe physical and emotional harm, according to her suit.
