DC Jury Awards More Than $13.5 Million After a Speeding Fire Engine Killed a Father of Six

Shortly before noon on March 9, 2018, DeAngelo Green was driving back to work. He was 32, and he had started about six weeks earlier as a maintenance technician for So Others Might Eat. It was payday, and he had left at lunchtime to cash his check. Heading north on Saratoga Avenue, he stopped for the red light at Rhode Island Avenue NE, then moved into the intersection when his light turned green.

A DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services engine from Company 26 was coming west on Rhode Island, dispatched to an apartment building fire. The engine weighed roughly 37,000 pounds and carried another 3,000 pounds of water. Its driver reached about 54 miles an hour on a street posted at 30, braked as he neared 12th Street, and went through the red light without stopping. The engine was still traveling about 40 miles an hour when it hit Green's car, pushing it across the intersection, onto the sidewalk and into a masonry wall. Green was killed instantly. He left his widow, T'Anita Coles-Green, and six children, all of them minors at the time.

Under DC Code Section 2-412, the District is liable for an emergency vehicle on an emergency run only for gross negligence, a far higher bar than ordinary carelessness. The estate built its case on the speed and the red light. The driver had been taught that department policy was to stop completely at a red light and never to exceed the posted limit by more than 10 miles an hour.

Much of the pretrial fight was about a toxicology report from the autopsy that showed PCP in Green's blood. The District wanted to argue that Green was impaired and therefore at fault for his own death. Judge Anthony Epstein struck the District's toxicology expert, finding the District had not shown the opinion rested on sufficient facts or reliable methods, and pointing to testimony that blood levels of PCP alone do not correlate with impairment. Judge Yvonne Williams later kept the report itself out, reading it as not showing that PCP was affecting Green on the day of the crash and holding it inadmissible hearsay. The family's lawyers said afterward that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner had destroyed the blood sample the test relied on.

The first trial, in June 2023, did not go the family's way. That jury found the firefighter grossly negligent but also found Green contributorily negligent, which under the instructions it was given barred any recovery. Judge Williams granted the estate's motion for a new trial, holding she should not have told the jury that ordinary contributory negligence could defeat a claim against a defendant who acted recklessly. She entered judgment as a matter of law for the estate on liability and ordered a new trial on damages alone.

That second trial ran in February 2024 before a new jury. Three categories of loss were at issue: Green's expected earnings, the household services he provided, and his parental guidance. Both sides called economists on the first two. Coles-Green, one of the children, and Green's brother testified about the third, describing homework help, cooking lessons, handyman skills and the advice he gave about school and about choosing friends. The District's Wrongful Death Act does not allow recovery for grief or pain and suffering, so the noneconomic claim was framed as each child's lost lifetime of a father's care, education, training and guidance. On February 22, 2024, the jury returned seven separately specified awards to the widow and the six children, totaling $13,574,680.95, and nothing to the estate for its own benefit. The court entered judgment on April 3, 2024 and denied the District's motion for remittitur or a new trial on August 30, 2024.

William P. Lightfoot of Lightfoot Law, PLLC and Allyson Kitchel of Kitchel Law, PLLC tried the case for the estate, and Alfred F. Belcuore came in on the post-trial motions and argued the appeal. Lightfoot told WTOP that the fire department 'cannot have their trucks driving recklessly down the street, running red lights,' and that the verdict was 'to pay the children for the loss of parental guidance, as a result of the death of their father.'