$9.14 Million Verdict for Tucson Teen and Parents After Crosswalk Crash Outside Mountain View High School
After trial: The county said in March 2007 that it would consult its attorneys about an appeal. We found no appeal, reduction or payment record, and could not confirm whether the county paid its share.
Won by Mercaldo Law Firm and Other counsel.
A Pima County jury awarded a Tucson teenager and his parents $9,143,500 in March 2007 after he was struck at 15 in the crosswalk outside Mountain View High School. The jury put 79 percent of the fault on the driver, 20 percent on Pima County, which operates the road, and 1 percent on the teenager. The county's share came to about $1.8 million. The teen suffered life-threatening injuries, including nearly seven weeks in a coma.
What happened
On October 1, 2004, a 15-year-old Mountain View High School student was walking across West Linda Vista Boulevard in the crosswalk in front of the school, on his way to a nearby seminary. A driver, Judith Ealey, then 59, struck him.
His injuries were life-threatening. He spent nearly seven weeks in a coma and then about three months in rehabilitation. He came out of it with lasting impairment to his motor skills and went into special-education classes at Mountain View. Before the crash he had been an accomplished soccer player.
The family sued the driver and Pima County, which operates the road, and the jury was asked to divide responsibility among everyone involved, including the teenager himself. Attorneys Ron Mercaldo and Tony Wiggins represented the family. The case went to a Pima County Superior Court jury in March 2007, more than two years after the crash, and the parents sued alongside their son for their own losses.
The jury deliberated for eight hours over two days. It found the driver 79 percent at fault, Pima County 20 percent at fault, and the teenager 1 percent at fault. The county's 20 percent share amounted to about $1.8 million of the total.
The jury awarded $8,233,500 to the teenager, $640,000 to his mother and $270,000 to his father, for a combined $9,143,500. After the verdict, Mercaldo and Wiggins said the family was glad that at least their son would have some money set aside for when he gets older.
The county administrator said the county would consult with the County Attorney's Office about whether to appeal. The county had already lowered the speed limit near the school from 45 to 25 mph and installed a red-light signal at the crosswalk.
Mercaldo cited the case again in 2011, when he represented the family of a pedestrian struck in another high-speed crosswalk. Pima County agreed to pay $900,000 in that matter, and he referred to the Mountain View jury finding the county 20 percent at fault. The 2011 article describes both locations as crosswalks on roads with speeds of 40 mph or more, and notes that transportation guidelines warn a poorly marked crosswalk can give pedestrians a false sense of security.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Mercaldo Law Firm
All Mercaldo Law Firm proven verdicts →A Pima County jury awarded Sharon King $5.29 million after she lost her arm following shoulder replacement surgery at Oro Valley Hospital, where the operating surgeon mistakenly tied off her axillary artery and the neurovascular bundle supplying the limb.
A Pima County jury awarded Amanda Hoover $4 million, sixteen times what Banner-University Medical Center Tucson had offered to settle, after a laparotomy sponge left in her abdomen during a cesarean section worked its way through the wall of her colon.
A 14-year-old boy riding his bicycle on East Broadway in Tucson was struck and killed on Jan. 12, 2008 by a drunk driver whose lane ended at a road-widening gap the city had left unfinished. His parents sued the driver, the city and a restaurant that had served her. The family settled with the city in 2012 for $2 million and a public naming, after a 2010 jury trial and an appeal.
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.