L.A. Urged to Settle Suit Over Crash for $325,000

A Los Angeles City Council committee Tuesday recommended that the city pay $325,000 to a woman whose mother was fatally injured in a car crash with a garbage truck in the San Fernando Valley.

The truck was operated by a city worker who was mistakenly issued a driver’s license after suffering blackouts.

The Finance and Revenue Committee voted to advise the full council to settle a suit filed by Micheline Savard, 25. Her mother, Shirley, died in a July 9, 1983, accident on the Glenoaks Boulevard off-ramp of the Simi Valley Freeway.

Shirley Savard, 40, of Sylmar was a passenger in the car when it was struck by the truck driven by Lonzie Lee Douglas, who had blacked out, Assistant City Atty. Michael K. Fox said.

License Suspended

Douglas’ driver’s license had been suspended the previous April because he had no insurance and suffered from alcohol-withdrawal seizures, Fox said. However, the following May, he was mistakenly issued a new license.

“Exactly how this occurred is largely a matter of speculation,” Fox said. “But it is believed that DMV issued a license upon proof of insurance and somehow overlooked the medical suspension,” he said of the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Sanitation supervisors were aware of the April suspension, Fox said, but “apparently assumed that, since Douglas had been issued a license, he was found fit by DMV.”

Douglas was charged with vehicular manslaughter based upon “gross negligence in driving with a seizure disorder,” Fox said. He pleaded no contest and served eight months in jail. He no longer drives but works for the city as a loader on a two-man garbage truck, Fox said.

$350,000 Award

The driver of the struck car, Kerry Maddeaux, also sued the city. On Feb. 10, he was awarded $350,000 by a Superior Court jury. Fox called the award “grossly extravagant” and has asked for a new trial. Maddeaux’s physical injuries were not serious, Fox said.

But attorneys for Maddeaux, who now lives in North Carolina, claimed he suffered severe emotional trauma after witnessing the death of Savard, his fiancee.

Fox said that Savard was negligent for failing to wear a seat belt, which he claimed contributed to her death.

However, in recommending the settlement, Fox said in a report to the committee: “Liability appeared certain. And, even allowing for a reduction of damages for failure of the decedent to use a seat belt, awards substantially in excess of the settlement figure are not uncommon. The award to Mr. Maddeaux seems empirical proof of the emotional potential of this case.”

City Computer System

Ironically, at the time of the accident, the city was installing a computer system to enable it to find out from the DMV whether any of its 30,000 employees who use vehicles in their jobs had had their licenses suspended, Fox said.

The DMV was originally a defendant in the suit. But it was dismissed from the action because of statutory immunities. Fox said those immunities meant, in effect, that the “issuance of a license is no guarantee that a person is fit to drive.”

Larry Grassini, whose law firm represented Maddeaux and Savard, said that, despite the DMV’s erroneous issuance of a license to Douglas, the city was aware of the driver’s blackout problem.