$11.75 Million Settlement for Family of Cyclist Killed by Distracted Sheriff's Deputy in Calabasas

On the afternoon of December 8, 2013, Milton Olin Jr. was riding his bicycle east in the bike lane on Mulholland Highway in Calabasas. He was 65, an entertainment attorney and a former chief operating officer of the file-sharing company Napster.

A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy, Andrew Wood, was driving the same direction in a patrol car at about 45 mph, headed to a brush fire call at a Calabasas high school baseball field. Authorities said he was typing on the car's mobile computer when the road curved left. The patrol car crossed into the bike lane and struck Olin, who was thrown into the windshield. An off-duty paramedic at the scene determined he had died.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney declined to file criminal charges in August 2014. An internal sheriff's investigation found that Wood had violated department policy, and he was reprimanded. Wood first told investigators that Olin had swerved out of the bike lane, and he denied texting or looking at the computer.

Olin's widow, Louise, and the family sued the county for wrongful death, represented by Bruce Broillet. The family's position was that Wood's attention was on his devices rather than the road. Broillet pointed to phone records indicating that Wood sent a personal text message to his wife about 15 seconds before impact, and to a partly written, unsent message found on the patrol car's computer. Louise Olin put it plainly: 'He may as well have been blindfolded as his attention was on his mobile devices and not on the road.' Wood had said he was stopped at a red light when he sent the text; the family's lawyers disputed that account using second-by-second records.

A civil trial was set to start the following week when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously, on May 29, 2018, to approve an $11.75 million settlement. The vote, taken on the recommendation of the county's attorneys, ended the case without a jury verdict and was among the larger payouts the county had made in a single case.

The day after the vote, Louise Olin and Broillet held a news conference asking the District Attorney to take a fresh look at the criminal case in light of the phone records. The District Attorney's office said it would review any new information. Louise Olin had founded the Milt Olin Foundation in 2014 to work toward ending deaths and injuries caused by distracted driving. The Sheriff's Department, for its part, had since adopted new rules limiting deputies' use of in-car computers, and Wood remained a deputy assigned to court services.