Woman Crippled in Car Crash Awarded $6.5 Million by Jury

A high school girl whose hopes for college basketball stardom ended abruptly in a 1979 car wreck that left her a quadriplegic was awarded $6.5 million in damages Wednesday by a jury that blamed the automobile maker for the accident.

“I am ready to start my life now,” said Marchell Leekins, now 23, after jurors returned their verdict to Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr.

“Before this was all over with, I felt like I couldn’t,” she said.

The jury’s verdict, which awarded $6.2 million to Leekins and $300,000 to her parents, was against American Honda Motor Co., based in Gardena.

Leekins, who lives in Santa Maria with her parents, was a passenger in the rear seat of a 1978 Honda Civic carrying five Cabrillo High School basketball players home from a Memorial Day pickup game when the car swerved suddenly and rolled over, killing the driver.

Leekins suffered injuries to her upper spine. Three other passengers in the car were uninjured.

Attorney Gary Paul, who represented Leekins and her parents, Louise and William Leekins, said the car with its five occupants was northbound on a divided four-lane Santa Barbara County highway between Lompoc and Santa Maria when another car pulled in front of the Honda, causing the sudden maneuver.

In the five-week trial of the case, he successfully argued that tests showed that the car model, when carrying a load and equipped with standard tires fitting a wheel 12-inches in diameter, could not handle the sudden emergency maneuver but instead went out of control.

“Our tests showed that by putting on 13-inch tires, the car would handle OK going through the same maneuver,” Paul said. The same model car was sold in Japan with 13-inch tires and sold as a sports model, the attorney said.

The defense attempted to show that the driver of the car had been drinking and that the vehicle was traveling at excessive speed.

“They were playing tag with another car and just going too damn fast,” said attorney John J. Costanzo, who represented Honda. “But in this day and age of product liability, if something happens and it gets to a jury, there it goes.”

Calling the jury’s award “a sympathy verdict,” Costanzo said, “Naturally you can’t help feeling sorry for a 17-year-old quadriplegic girl.” He said he will move for a new trial, the first step in the appeal process.

Leekins said after the verdict that she intends to resume studies at Allan Hancock Junior College in Santa Maria.