Nikta Yazdi, Esq.

Commercial Vehicle Accident

Our client, a 50-year-old working man, was driving on the freeway when he was rear-ended by a commercial asphalt grinder weighing roughly 80,000 pounds, operated by a construction company employee on the job. The crash left him with herniated discs and tears in his neck and lower back. After chiropractic care, physical therapy, and multiple rounds of spinal injections failed, doctors recommended spine surgery, and he ultimately turned to a spinal cord stimulator to manage his pain.

Nikta Yazdi ran point on the case, and it was anything but a simple rear-end collision. The defense disputed liability, argued the visible damage to his SUV showed only a minor impact, and relied on workers’ compensation records they said showed serious back pain five months before the crash. They also raised that he had two prior car accidents. The defense’s medical expert went so far as to call him a liar.

Nikta met every one of those arguments head-on. She defended her client and his wife at their depositions (which took three sessions because she would not give the defense an inch), took the defendant's deposition and locked in on key biomechanical facts, obtained sanctions against the defense, and drafted a motion to exclude expert testimony about his prior medical records.

The physician who had treated our client’s earlier work injury conceded that those records were ambiguous and that the prior incident involved no spine injury. The team showed that the defense expert’s timeline rested on a misreading of the medical record, and the defense ultimately withdrew its own accident reconstruction expert. The case demanded extensive expert discovery, with six plaintiff experts against seven for the defense and depositions of every physician who had treated him since 2021.

The case settled for $3,000,000.

For Nikta, this case was about a man’s credibility. Our client was honest from day one about his past aches and pains. He was a working-class man with a working-class back who had never lived with chronic pain until the day he was rear-ended. When the defense tried to paint him as a liar, Nikta made it her mission to prove otherwise. Seeing a hardworking, honest client finally receive the justice he deserved is exactly why she does this work.

Distracted Driving Accident

Nikta Yazdi represented a brother and sister who were rear-ended in stop-and-go freeway traffic by a delivery driver who admitted he was following just three feet behind them while looking down for his phone. The brother, a high-achieving law student, was diagnosed with a concussion that day, and six neurologists later confirmed a brain injury supported by objective testing and imaging. His sister suffered a lower back disc herniation.

Liability was clear, but the defense tried to minimize our clients’ injuries. The defense blamed later minor bumps to his head and a possible autoimmune condition, pointed to his continued success in school and work, and offered just $325,000 for both siblings.

Nikta showed that a first concussion leaves a person more vulnerable to repeat injury, and the defense's own experts conceded that both siblings were injured in the crash.

This case meant a great deal to Nikta because her client's greatest strength, his mind, was the very thing injured. She made sure the defense understood that a brain injury does not have to be visible to be life-changing. The case resolved for $1,000,000.

Slip-and-Fall Accident

This client is one of Nikta Yazdi's favorites, and it is easy to see why. A 29-year-old office manager who had just launched her own dessert business, she was shopping at a grocery store when she slipped on plastic wrap trailing behind an employee's pallet jack. The fall was caught on video, and the employee admitted he had ignored training designed to protect customers.

With no prior back or knee problems, our client went through years of therapy and injections before undergoing back surgery at 33. The store accepted liability before the lawsuit, then reversed course and withheld its training materials and its umbrella policy until Nikta's team moved to compel.

Our client’s surgery came nearly three years after the fall, and she later returned to work, facts the defense could use to minimize her harm, but Nikta made sure the other side saw what she saw: a determined young entrepreneur who kept building her business through the pain, even as her injuries forced her to step away from her job.

Nikta and her team settled the case for $750,000.