CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 17, 2007 | Maura Dolan and Ari B. Bloomekatz, Times Staff Writers
Recreation providers in California may be held liable for gross negligence regardless of the wording on liability waivers signed by participants or their parents, the California Supreme Court ruled 6-1 Monday. The state high court decision permits the parents of a developmentally disabled girl who drowned at a summer camp run by the city of Santa Barbara to sue even though her mother had signed an agreement assuming "full responsibility for risk of bodily injury, death or property damage."
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 18, 2010 | By Maria L. LaGanga and Maura Dolan
Reporting from Orinda, Calif., and East Palo Alto, Calif. -- Residents of a densely packed neighborhood in East Palo Alto, Calif., awoke to explosions and fire Wednesday when a small plane carrying employees of an electric car company crashed in dense fog, killing all three aboard and spewing debris over several homes. The twin-engine Cessna 310 hit 60-foot-high transmission lines, and its fuselage was found tangled in wires. The victims, who were not immediately identified, were employees of Tesla Motors Inc., a San Carlos, Calif.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 18, 2000 | H.G. REZA, TIMES STAFF WRITER
Three people were killed and two injured Sunday when a driver suspected of being under the influence of alcohol drove a 1993 Ford Explorer off a freeway offramp and into a tree in San Juan Capistrano, authorities said. California Highway Patrol investigators said three passengers, two men and one woman, died instantly, and the driver and a fourth passenger were taken to Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo in critical condition.
NATIONAL
May 29, 2008 | Jenny Jarvie, Times Staff Writer
For the first time in more than half a century, the Odell residence is quiet. There are no squeaks and pops from the electric motor that powered an "iron lung" pumping air in and out of Dianne Odell's body. A thunderstorm knocked out the power to her home Wednesday, shutting off the massive metal machine that had helped her breathe for nearly 60 years. It was about 3 a.m. when the electricity went out at Odell's home in Jackson, a small Tennessee town about 90 miles northeast of Memphis.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 3, 2005 | Claire Luna, Times Staff Writer
The family of a man who was killed in 2003 when a wheel assembly fell off a locomotive on Disneyland's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and caused it to crash settled a lawsuit Friday against the Walt Disney Co. for an undisclosed sum. While the settlement's terms are confidential, Marcelo Torres' parents said they were giving $500,000 of it to Brooks College in Long Beach to provide scholarships to aspiring animators. Their 22-year-old son was a graphic artist.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
July 27, 2007 | Tami Abdollah and Stuart Silverstein, Times Staff Writers
Three workers were killed and three others were badly hurt Thursday afternoon in an explosion on the edge of Kern County's Mojave airport during the test of a propellant system for a pioneering private spaceship. The blast occurred at a private test site run by Scaled Composites, a company founded by high-profile aviation entrepreneur Burt Rutan. In June 2004, the firm became the first business to launch a reusable manned rocket into space, a craft known as SpaceShip One.