Road Rage Chase That Killed Torrance Teen Ends in $61.7 Million Jury Verdict
After trial: Reduced and on appeal. The trial court cut the non-economic award by 20 percent, entering an amended judgment of $47,410,000 plus costs and interest on April 26, 2024.
Won by Taylor & Ring, LLP.
A Los Angeles County jury awarded the parents of a 16-year-old baseball player $61,768,000 after finding that Darryl Hicks and Tung Ming, two drivers who chased each other at 80 to 85 mph through Torrance, ran a red light and struck the family's minivan, killing the boy and seriously injuring his father. The December 2023 verdict split fault 95 percent to Ming and 5 percent to Hicks and included punitive damages against both men. Both drivers had already been convicted of felony vehicular manslaughter. The trial court later cut the jury's non-economic damages award 20 percent and entered an amended judgment against Ming of $47,410,000 in April 2024, which Ming has appealed.
What happened
On the night of March 7, 2017, Darryl Leander Hicks Jr. made an illegal U-turn on Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance and struck the Mercedes-Benz driven by Tung Ming. Hicks drove off in his Audi. Ming went after him, and the two cars ran north on Crenshaw at 80 to 85 mph. Both drivers failed to stop for the red light at Crest Road and hit the Toyota Sienna minivan driven by Jesse Esphorst Sr., who was turning left from southbound Crenshaw onto eastbound Crest on a green light with his 16-year-old son in the van. The teenager, a high school baseball player heading home from a game, died of his injuries at a hospital that night. His father was seriously injured.
Hicks was convicted of vehicular manslaughter, reckless driving, felony hit-and-run and a misdemeanor hit-and-run count, and was sentenced to 11 years in state prison. Ming was convicted of vehicular manslaughter and reckless driving and was sentenced to two years and eight months. In March 2022 the California Court of Appeal upheld both convictions, though it ordered Hicks resentenced because of a change in state law limiting upper-term sentences.
Julie Esphorst and her husband sued both drivers in Los Angeles County Superior Court at the Inglewood courthouse. A separate claim against the county, over a 911 operator who kept Ming on the chase instead of calling it off, had already settled in April 2022. Robert Clayton of Taylor & Ring tried the civil case for the family alongside Lawrence Marks of Mardirossian Akaragian LLP, and the docket in the family's related action lists John Taylor among plaintiffs' counsel of record.
In December 2023 the jury returned a verdict of $61,768,000. It awarded Julie Esphorst $23,250,000 for the wrongful death of her son and awarded her husband $36,500,000 for his own injuries and on the wrongful death claim combined. The jury also assessed $2,000,000 in punitive damages against Ming and $18,000 against Hicks, and divided fault 95 percent to Ming and 5 percent to Hicks.
The trial court entered judgment against Ming on January 26, 2024, for $58,762,500 plus costs and interest. Post-trial, the judge cut the jury's non-economic damages award 20 percent, and on April 26, 2024 entered an amended judgment against Ming for $47,410,000 plus costs and interest. Ming filed a notice of appeal on May 3, 2024, and an undertaking was filed the following week to keep the judgment from being enforced while the appeal is pending. The remaining share of the verdict tied to Hicks' 5 percent fault stands separately against Hicks.
By December 2024, Ming's attorney told the court she had lost contact with her client and asked to be relieved as his counsel; the court granted the request. No published Court of Appeal decision in the civil case has surfaced since Ming's notice of appeal was filed.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.MyNewsLA (City News Service), Dec. 12, 2023·Archived copy
- 2.MyNewsLA (City News Service), Mar. 18, 2022, reporting the Court of Appeal decision in the criminal case·Archived copy
- 3.CBS News Los Angeles, Apr. 4, 2018·Archived copy
- 4.Los Angeles Superior Court, Esphorst v. Hicks, Case No. BC700634, tentative ruling dated Jan. 21, 2025·Archived copy
- 5.UniCourt docket, Esphorst family action against Tung Ming (Los Angeles Superior Court, Inglewood, related to BC700634)
- 6.Legal Reader, Jan. 5, 2024, carrying Taylor & Ring's press release verbatim·Archived copy
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