$45 Million Judgment for San Mateo Woman Left Quadriplegic When Hauling Truck Ran a Red Light
After trial: No appeal of the judgment was found. The two insurers that declined to defend the driver sued Roth in federal court in 2011 over coverage, and the parties stipulated to dismiss that case with prejudice in 2013.
Won by Mary Alexander & Associates.
In March 2009 a San Mateo County Superior Court judge awarded $45 million to Tricia Roth, a 41-year-old former software developer from San Mateo who was left quadriplegic when a company truck ran a red light and struck her car. She had sued the driver and the South San Francisco hauling company he worked for. The award rested largely on her lost future earnings and on the pain and suffering of a spinal cord injury. Her attorney, Mary E. Alexander, said she planned to pursue the two insurers that had refused to defend the driver.
What happened
On September 11, 2006, Tricia Roth was driving her Volvo through an intersection in San Mateo County when a pickup truck ran a red light and hit the front passenger side of her car at roughly 40 miles per hour. The impact broke her neck. When emergency crews reached her, she could not move. She was 41 years old and, until that morning, had worked as a software developer, including a stint at Microsoft.
The truck was driven by Roman Pantoja, then 72, who was behind the wheel of a vehicle belonging to Division 1 All Service, a small demolition and hauling business in South San Francisco. Roth sued Pantoja and the company. Her injury left her quadriplegic. Her husband, a scientist, became a near full-time caregiver.
Liability turned on more than the red light. The driver's two insurers, Lincoln General Insurance Company and Colony Insurance Company, declined to defend him, taking the position that he was not driving for work at the time of the crash. The court later found he was likely picking up company supplies.
The case was decided by a judge in San Mateo County Superior Court, and the award was reported by the Daily Journal on March 21, 2009. The judge awarded $45 million in damages and compensation. Roth was represented by San Francisco attorney Mary E. Alexander. Because Roth was a working engineer in her early forties, her lost future earnings made up a large share of the total, alongside compensation for the pain and suffering of a catastrophic spinal cord injury.
After the ruling, Alexander said she intended to bring bad faith claims against both insurance companies over their refusal to defend the driver. In March 2011 the two insurers filed their own action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Colony Insurance Company and Lincoln General Insurance Company v. Roth, naming Roth as a defendant. Roth, with Alexander filing a declaration in support, moved to dismiss or stay it, and the case was stayed in July 2011. In March 2013 Judge Samuel Conti signed a stipulated dismissal with prejudice.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Daily Journal, '$45 Million Award For San Mateo Woman Injured in Car Accident', Mar. 21, 2009
- 2.Neff Injury Law, 'California Woman Awarded $45 million Over Car Accident'·Archived copy
- 3.U.S. District Court N.D. Cal., Colony Insurance Co. v. Roth, No. 3:11-cv-01136, docket
- 4.U.S. District Court N.D. Cal., Colony Insurance Co. v. Roth, No. 3:11-cv-01136·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Mary Alexander & Associates
All Mary Alexander & Associates proven verdicts →Mary Alexander & Associates served as co-counsel for seven California counties and three cities in a landmark public-nuisance action that secured a $1.15 billion trial judgment (later reduced on appeal to pre-1951 homes) and ultimately resolved in 2019 for $305 million to fund lead paint abatement across California residences.
Mary Alexander served as lead plaintiffs' counsel representing 13 of the victim families in litigation against the City of Oakland over the December 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire, which killed 36 people, securing a $32.7 million settlement covering 32 families and a survivor.
A Contra Costa County jury returned a $21.4 million verdict against Chevron Corp. in March 2019 for the benzene-exposure deaths of brothers Gary and Randy Eaves, who spent years spraying a benzene-based solvent onto tires at an Arkansas plant without respirators, protective clothing, or safety warnings.
Mary Alexander helped win a $13.3 million jury verdict in Fresno County for Mary Hall, a University of Arizona student left permanently quadriplegic after a Yosemite rental company re-rented a bicycle it knew had defective brakes.
Related car accident verdicts
On December 7, 2021, a Nueces County jury in Corpus Christi returned $1.04 billion in actual damages and $300 billion in exemplary damages, about $301.04 billion in total, against Beer Belly's Sports Bar and its owner for overserving a driver who killed Tamra Kay Kindred, 59, and her 16-year-old granddaughter in a 2017 crash. It was reported as the largest jury verdict ever recorded, and it was built to be symbolic: the bar had closed in 2019, Texas does not require bars to carry liquor liability insurance, and the family and its lawyers said openly that they expected to recover nothing and sought the number as a public statement against drunk driving. John Flood of Flood Trial Lawyers was lead counsel, with Sico, Hoelscher & Harris LLP as co-counsel; Craig Sico delivered the closing argument that asked jurors to decide how loudly their voice would be heard.
An Oakland County jury awarded $896.5 million to a young boy who was struck by a prototype test car during a student field trip at a Continental test track, reported as the largest verdict in Michigan history. The award is pre-appeal: post-trial motions are pending, Continental never made a settlement offer, and the amount could still be reduced.
A Bexar County jury awarded roughly $831 million to Blas Mendez Jr., a longtime Seguin ISD special education behavior specialist left partially paralyzed after his motorcycle hit wreckage left in the road by an 18-year-old drunk driver who had been served at Koozies Icehouse & Grill in New Braunfels. Todd A. Hunter of Hunter Trial Law tried the dram shop case with E. Chevo Pastrano and Ginna G. Pastrano of The Pastrano Law Firm. The award was reported as the largest verdict ever returned by a San Antonio jury, and the bar had already closed by the time it came in, so the family is not expected to collect most, if any, of it.
A Harris County jury awarded Mary Johnson $557 million against Union Pacific for a 2016 Houston train strike that cost her a leg, several fingers, and left her with a brain injury, a figure the trial court later cut and an appeals court reversed for a new trial.