Drunk Driver Who Struck a Houston Family Twice and Fled Gets a Gross-Negligence Verdict
Won by Smith & Hassler.
A Harris County jury found Dawn Barrientes negligent and grossly negligent after she struck a Houston family of four on I-45 twice, then drove away, awarding $41,993.71 to the Malave family.
What happened
On the evening of March 8, 2012, David Malave was driving north on Interstate 45 near the Little York exit in Houston. His wife Anne sat beside him. Their six-year-old son David Jr. and their seven-week-old daughter Emma were in the back seat.
Dawn Barrientes was also on I-45 that night, driving drunk. Traveling at an excessive speed and changing lanes erratically, she tried to pass the Malaves from the left, lost control, and hit the right side of their car. She hit them a second time, causing David Malave to lose control and strike a lane divider head-on. Then Barrientes left the scene. Police caught up with her in Bridgestone; she later pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated.
All four family members were taken by ambulance to the emergency room. Anne sustained a non-displaced fracture of the distal radius of her dominant right hand, a fractured nose, a temporomandibular-joint injury, and loosened teeth. She required external fixation for the wrist fracture and dental treatment. David underwent about two months of physical therapy for his injuries. Both parents continued to experience pain well after the crash. David Jr., who was six at the time, developed a lasting fear of cars.
Attorney Daragh Carter of Smith and Hassler represented all four plaintiffs, filing claims of negligence and gross negligence against Barrientes. The gross-negligence theory rested on Barrientes driving drunk at high speed, striking the family vehicle twice, and fleeing rather than stopping to render aid.
The jury found Barrientes both negligent and grossly negligent. It awarded the Malave family $41,993.71. No reduction on appeal has been identified in available records.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
More proven verdicts from Smith & Hassler
All Smith & Hassler proven verdicts →A Harris County jury returned a $115,234 verdict for plaintiff Krystal Buford after attorney Daragh Carter of Smith and Hassler tried a multi-defendant motor vehicle case through trial in March 2024.
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.