A settlement has been reached between a Lyft Inc. driver and a passenger who sued him alleging that she jumped out of his car window trying to protect herself moments before her unconscious driver crashed into a parked vehicle in 2021.
The driver, Christian Denis Cooper, contended he suffered a diabetic emergency just before hitting the other car and therefore could not be held liable to plaintiff Lal Finci. Lyft was also originally sued, but was dropped by the plaintiff as a defendant in February 2024.
On Thursday, Finci’s attorney filed court papers with Santa Monica Superior Court Judge Mark A. Young informing him that an “unconditional” accord was reached Dec. 26. No terms were divulged.
In an April 29 ruling in which he denied Cooper’s motion to dismiss the case, the judge said that the driver “apparently had some level of consciousness while he drove erratically, ignored plaintiff’s pleas to leave and gave plaintiff a `scary’ and `creepy’ face, all before losing consciousness.”
The judge also noted that Finci tried to awaken Cooper without success, so she took off her seatbelt, rolled down a window, hung out her body and slowly dropped to the pavement, where she was injured. Finci later went to a nearby police station and reported she was kidnapped by someone who might have been a “psychopath,” the judge further wrote.
Cooper’s lawyers contended that Finci caused her own injuries when she jumped from Cooper’s car.
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, in Beverly Hills. 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 stated.