Drunk Driver Is Cleared of Negligence : Jury in Civil Suit Felt Fatal Crash Was Unavoidable, Lawyer Says

A man convicted of drunk driving in an accident that left a Romanian refugee dead was found to have acted without negligence Thursday by a jury hearing a civil suit filed by the victim’s parents.

An Orange County jury Thursday voted 10 to 2 to exonerate Richard D. Stodola of Buena Park. The lawyer for the parents of the dead man, Mircea Morlocan, 26, had asked for $1 million in damages.

Jurors felt Stodola’s intoxication did not cause the accident, according to Lafe S. Parkin, Stodola’s attorney. Parkin said Stodola could not avoid hitting Morlocan, who, he contended, made a sudden lane change directly into Stodola’s path.

Jurors Decline Interviews

“The three jurors I talked to expressed disapproval of drinking and driving, but they concluded that this accident happened in such a way that nobody could have avoided it,” Parkin said.

“They were sorry for the parents losing their son, they were sorry the accident happened, but they didn’t think my client was responsible,” Parkin said.

Jurors, who heard the case before Superior Court Judge Richard N. Parslow Jr., declined requests for interviews.

Witness agreed that Morlocan’s car was stopped or nearly stopped on a green light at a Magnolia Avenue intersection near the Riverside Freeway in Fullerton on the night of Nov. 28, 1984.

Stodola testified that he saw the green light but not the car. Stodola’s pickup ran up and on top of Morlocan’s auto, crushing him.

Two separate tests on blood taken from Stodola about 90 minutes after the collision showed an alcohol content of .19, almost double the legal standard for intoxication.

While Stodola said in a sworn statement earlier this year that he was intoxicated at the time of the crash, last week in court he testified that he didn’t remember “being greatly impaired.”

Differing Conclusions

Last year, Stodola was convicted of misdemeanor drunk driving in a separate criminal case and sentenced to six months in jail. But in the criminal trial in connection with the death of Morlocan, he was found not guilty of the more serious charges of manslaughter and felony drunk driving.

In the civil trial, both sides presented accident reconstruction experts who came to differing conclusions about the cause of the accident. Two eyewitnesses also offered conflicting accounts of the crash, one testifying that Morlocan suddenly changed lanes and the other that he did not.

Parkin summarized his case by arguing to jurors that “the best race car driver in the world could not have avoided this accident.”

But the Morlocans’ attorney, Raymond J. Baddour, cautioned jurors that it would be “easy to blame a dead man who’s not here to speak for himself.”

The parents, Alexander Morlocan, 62, and his wife, Anastasia, 59, fled Romania in 1977. They had been persecuted by the government for their Reformed Seventh-day Adventist beliefs, according to Baddour. Alexander Morlocan was a judge and prosecutor in his native land, according to Baddour.

Mother Weeps After Verdict

The couple and their son lived together in West Los Angeles. Mircea Morlocan learned English and provided financial and emotional support for his parents, both of whom are disabled and retired. The father speaks halting English. The mother, who attended court each day dressed in a long black dress and a black shawl, speaks only Romanian.

After she left the courtroom, Anastasia Morlocan burst into tears.

“She broke out into weeping and wailing,” Parkin said. “I took him (Stodola) back into the courtroom because I didn’t want a confrontation. I asked the bailiff to take him down the judges’ (private) elevator to avoid any confrontation.”

Baddour said an appeal is unlikely. But he added that the Morlocans are “very hurt and disappointed. . . . They were very, very hurt.”