$10 Million Settlement for Family of Anesthesiologist Killed in Kakaako HPD Pursuit
The City and County of Honolulu agreed in October 2021 to pay $10 million to settle a wrongful-death claim brought by the family of cardiothoracic anesthesiologist William Travis Lau, who was struck and killed on a Kakaako sidewalk when a drunk driver fleeing an HPD high-speed pursuit veered off Ala Moana Boulevard in January 2019.
What happened
On the night of January 28, 2019, Honolulu Police Officer Sheldon Watts began pursuing Alins Sumang in a Ford F-150 pickup down Ala Moana Boulevard. The chase accelerated past 60 miles per hour on a commercial corridor running through the Kakaako neighborhood. Sumang had an open alcohol container in the vehicle. At the intersection of Kamakee Street, he veered off the roadway and drove into a group of pedestrians waiting at the corner. Three people died. Four others were injured.
William Travis Lau, 35, was one of the three fatalities. A cardiothoracic anesthesiologist at Pacific Anesthesiology Services, Lau had recently finished a hospital shift when the crash occurred. He is survived by his widow, Melissa-Iris Lau, and his parents, William and Esther Lau. The other two pedestrians killed were Reino Ikeda, 47, a visitor from Japan, and Casimir Pokornoy, 26, from Pennsylvania.
In March 2021, Sumang pleaded guilty in circuit court to three counts of manslaughter and four counts of second-degree assault. A judge sentenced him to 30 years in prison, with the three manslaughter terms running concurrently. His criminal case resolved separately from the civil claims brought by the victims' families.
In December 2020, the Lau family filed a civil complaint against Sumang, Officer Watts, and the City and County of Honolulu. The lawsuit alleged that the defendants created an unreasonable risk of danger. The central question was the decision to conduct a high-speed chase at more than 60 mph on a city boulevard, at night, in a district with heavy pedestrian foot traffic. The case put HPD's pursuit policies under direct scrutiny.
L. Richard Fried Jr. of Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina and Fairbanks represented the Lau family. On October 6, 2021, the Honolulu City Council voted to approve a $10 million settlement. The city agreed to pay $3 million directly; its insurance carrier funded the remainder. After the vote, Melissa-Iris Lau addressed reporters: "This is not providing any closure. This just basically tells us that the state is willing to accept accountability."
Other families who lost loved ones in the same crash filed separate civil claims against the city. A second settlement for a different victim's family was approved by the council in the months that followed. No reduction of the Lau family's $10 million recovery has been reported.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Honolulu Civil Beat: Honolulu to pay $10M to family of man killed by driver fleeing police (Oct. 5, 2021)·Archived copy
- 2.Honolulu Star-Advertiser: Family of doctor killed in Kakaako crash awarded $10M (Oct. 8, 2021)·Archived copy
- 3.Hawaii News Now: Family of pedestrian killed by driver fleeing police to get $10M (Oct. 7, 2021)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina & Fairbanks
All Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina & Fairbanks proven verdicts →After a Chevron-USA tank-farm explosion at Honolulu Harbor burned two Shell Oil employees who later died of their injuries, a Hawaii Circuit Court jury awarded their families a combined $27.7 million in January 1983, then the largest civil verdict in state history.
A federal bench trial awarded $24.7 million to a Navy family after Tripler Army Medical Center physicians failed to administer IV antibiotics for roughly 48 hours following a post-delivery infection, leaving the patient with permanent kidney failure.
A federal judge awarded $16.5 million to the family of a newborn who suffered permanent brain damage after an Army pediatrician at Tripler Army Medical Center administered carbon dioxide instead of oxygen for 42 minutes following his birth. It was the largest single personal-injury judgment for an individual in Hawaii history at the time.
In August 2007, U.S. District Judge David Ezra found Tripler Army Medical Center negligent in monitoring a hospitalized infant whose breathing failed in May 2004, leaving him with severe, permanent brain damage. After a nonjury trial under the Federal Tort Claims Act, the court entered judgment of more than $9.4 million for the boy and his parents. Attorney L. Richard Fried, Jr. represented the family.
Related wrongful death verdicts
In December 2011, a Fayette County, Texas jury awarded the family of an 8-year-old Splendora boy $150.37 billion after he was doused with gasoline and set on fire by a 13-year-old neighbor in 1998, two weeks after the same neighbor sexually assaulted him. The boy survived third-degree burns over 99 percent of his body for nearly 13 years before dying in April 2011 of a skin cancer linked to his injuries. The defendant, Don Wilburn Collins, never appeared to answer the civil suit, and the jury awarded $370 million in actual damages plus roughly $150 billion in punitive damages, the largest civil verdict in U.S. history. Attorney Craig Sico, who represented the family, said from the outset that the judgment was not collectible and was intended to pressure prosecutors into reopening the long-dormant criminal case. Prosecutors did reopen the case, and Collins was later convicted of capital murder in a separate criminal proceeding.
A Pensacola jury awarded Cynthia Robinson $23.6 billion in punitive damages against R.J. Reynolds over the 1996 lung cancer death of her 36-year-old husband, the largest single-plaintiff award of Florida's Engle tobacco litigation, but the trial judge called the number constitutionally excessive, an appeals court ordered a full retrial over improper closing arguments, and a second jury returned a complete defense verdict in 2019, so the estate ultimately collected nothing.
Frantz Law Group, representing roughly 5,000 victims, helped negotiate a $13.5 billion PG&E bankruptcy settlement covering tens of thousands of survivors and families from the 2015 Butte, 2017 North Bay, and 2018 Camp wildfires.