$11.7 Million Verdict for Family of Man Killed on Gravel-Covered Road in Contra Costa County Resurfacing
Won by GJEL Accident Attorneys.
A jury awarded $11.7 million to the family of William Tindall, killed on Marsh Creek Road while stopping to help another motorist during a county road resurfacing project that had already claimed a life five days earlier.
What happened
In August 2008, William Tindall pulled over on Marsh Creek Road in Contra Costa County to assist a driver whose vehicle had run off a curve covered with freshly laid gravel. As he stepped out of his car to help, another vehicle lost control at the same spot and struck him. He died from his injuries.
The hazard that killed him was not new. Just five days before his death, a woman had been killed at the same construction zone when her car skidded off the road and hit a tree. Evidence at trial showed that during three separate county resurfacing projects on that stretch of road going back to 1994, fifteen serious accidents had occurred.
The Tindall family sued Contra Costa County, arguing that the county had created a dangerous condition of public property and had actual notice of it. Luke Ellis and Kristin Lucey of Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis, Larsen and Lucey represented the plaintiffs through trial.
The jury agreed. On September 7, 2011, it returned a verdict of $11,700,796. The award included $1.5 million in economic damages and $10.2 million for the loss of love, care, and companionship suffered by Tindall's widow and daughter.
The verdict was reported as the largest wrongful death verdict ever returned in Contra Costa County and the largest verdict of any kind against the county at that time. The case also resulted in changes to the county's road resurfacing practices.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from GJEL Accident Attorneys
All GJEL Accident Attorneys proven verdicts →Gillin, Jacobson, Ellis and Larsen recovered $111.7 million for 186 patients who underwent medically unjustified cardiac procedures at Tenet Healthcare's Redding Medical Center, the largest single-firm share of a $395 million mass settlement.
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.