Statement Regarding a Recent Mission Local Article

A Mission Local article released May 3rd, 2023 referenced several personal injury lawsuits involving the City and County of San Francisco, including one settlement involving a cyclist, Alexis Krup, whom our firm recently represented. The article leveraged the quote, “each case is kind of its own little universe”, from Golden Gate University Law Professor Kathleen Morris to underscore that settlements are decided with consideration to the specific circumstances and consequences of any given injury lawsuit. The article made references to Krup’s work as a biomedical research scientist, which indeed was a unique consideration for the defense and our team when negotiating the terms of her settlement.

Scientific advances today result from the coordinated efforts of highly skilled experts diligently working on complex research questions at a rapid pace. Scientists such as Krup and other affiliates of the many world-renowned biomedical research institutes we have here in the Bay Area are working at competitive rates and often in collaborative efforts to resolve fundamental unknown aspects of biology relating to human health.

Thus, when a scientist is injured during a cycling collision on her way to lab, her research productivity gets stalled with consequences extending to an entire field. Krup’s colleagues, mentors, and community attest to her resilience, universally-applied work ethic, creativity, and resourcefulness as hallmarks of her character and identity as a scientist. These attributes coupled with her sense of responsibility to her work point to the value such a scientist brings to her field.

Additionally, the Mission Local article speculated about the collision victim’s medical prognosis and future. While the motivations for publishing this commentary is unknown, their inclusion in a discussion around personal injury settlements highlights that in addition to whatever private challenges victims face following a cycling collision, they may also be forced to contend with insidious social stigmas unfairly undermining their abilities and their dignity.

While cycling collisions occur in a manner of seconds, injured cyclists often contend with the effects of the collision for the rest of their lives in visible and invisible ways. The burden of these issues can be traumatic and costly, but there are solutions. By focusing expenditures proactively to improve safe cycling infrastructure, we as a society are hopefully investing in safer public spaces for all citizens cycling on city streets, which in turn will lead to overall health and happiness in a more peaceful and healthy environment for everyone.

We hope that the attention on this case will turn to focus less on the particular cyclist who happened to be involved in this particular collision, and on a more productive discussion of issues such as the impact this case, and other similar cases, may have had in encouraging efforts to make cycling on Valencia in particular less dangerous, and on improving conditions for cyclists in the city of San Francisco as a whole.