$28 Million Settlement for Teenager Left Quadriplegic After WSDOT Failed to Install Funded Highway Barrier
Washington state paid $28 million to a young woman left quadriplegic after her car struck an unguarded overpass pillar on I-5 near DuPont, where WSDOT had funding and a plan to install a protective barrier but never completed the work.
What happened
In October 2013, Skylar Seward was 15 years old and a passenger in a car traveling southbound on Interstate 5 near DuPont, in Pierce County. The vehicle swerved left, left the roadway, and struck a concrete overpass pillar standing in the freeway median. The collision left her quadriplegic.
The pillar had no concrete barrier, guardrail, or wire fence between it and the travel lanes. What stood in its place was an earthen berm, a compacted mound of dirt. Rather than deflect an errant vehicle, the berm acted as a ramp, directing cars upward and into the pillar. After a fatal crash on Highway 522 in 2003 involving the same type of berm, WSDOT revised its design manual and stopped specifying earthen berms as protective barriers. The state Legislature then funded a six-year statewide replacement program in 2006.
The berm protecting the southbound DuPont pillar was never replaced. The state had replaced the barrier on the northbound side of the same median in 2012, the year before Seward's crash, but left the southbound side untouched. WSDOT had the funding, the engineering plan, and the explicit warning from a prior fatality. The work simply was not done.
Attorneys Keith Kessler and Brad Moore of Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore took the case to the eve of trial. Pierce County Superior Court proceedings were scheduled to begin the Monday after the settlement was announced. Facing trial, Washington state agreed to pay Seward $28 million to fund her lifetime care.
As part of the resolution, WSDOT committed to fixing the 26 earthen berms that remained unprotected across the state between 2019 and 2021. The $28 million figure was reported at the time of settlement as the largest personal injury recovery against the state government for a highway design defect in Washington history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Seattle Times: Washington state to pay $28 million to woman paralyzed in I-5 crash in Pierce County (Oct. 2018)·Archived copy
- 2.FOX 13 Seattle: Washington state to pay $28M settlement to crash survivor (Oct. 2018)·Archived copy
- 3.KOMO News: Wash. state to pay $28 million settlement to I-5 crash survivor (Oct. 2018)·Archived copy
More proven verdicts from Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore
All Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore proven verdicts →A King County jury awarded $123 million to 40 plaintiffs after five international students were killed and dozens injured when a Ride the Ducks amphibious vehicle suffered a catastrophic axle fracture on Seattle's Aurora Bridge in 2015.
A Pierce County jury awarded $44.7 million to an EMT and volunteer firefighter left with permanent injuries after an SUV driver turned left through an uncontrolled intersection and into his path, a verdict Washington courts later upheld in full.
King County paid its largest personal injury settlement on record after a 38-year-old mother of two was mauled by two dogs the county had repeatedly been warned about but failed to remove.
Stritmatter Kessler Koehler Moore secured a $10 million settlement from the City of Seattle on behalf of more than 50 protesters who were struck by blast balls, tear gas, and other crowd-control weapons deployed by Seattle Police Department officers during the May and June 2020 George Floyd demonstrations.
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