Family of Man Crushed at Raceway to Get $1.3 Million

A young widow and her daughter negotiated the last agreement Friday in a series of lawsuit settlements worth $1.3 million involving the death of her husband at the Orange County International Raceway in East Irvine four years ago.

Stephen Crosby, 27, a motocross enthusiast, was crushed to death by an earthmoving tractor he was driving May 5, 1983, as he tried to clear a dirt mound in preparation for an upcoming race.

Crosby was an independent contractor who also worked at the race track as a promoter, announcer and groundskeeper. His widow, Mary Beth Crosby, and her 6-year-old daughter Erin of Santa Ana, had sued the track’s owners; KEC, a Corona-based construction company that they claimed created the dirt mound, and Massey-Ferguson, manufacturer of the tractor Crosby was driving.

KEC and Massey-Ferguson settled with the plaintiffs in recent months. The settlement with the race track owners’ insurance companies came while the two sides were waiting to find a courtroom to go to trial.

“She is elated with the settlement,” said the woman’s attorney, Ned P. Reilly, who said she did not want to be interviewed. “Primarily, she was just glad she would not have to relive her husband’s death all over again through a trial. It’s been so hard on her, she was reluctant to even sue.”

Reilly said Crosby helped develop the track while going to law school, then abandoned plans for a law career because he wanted to devote full time to motocross racing.

“He really got into it,” Reilly said. “I think one reason we were able to win such a good settlement was because he was so popular that a lot of people came forward to help us with our case.”

Part of Crosby’s contract with the race track owners called for him to prepare the track each week for racing, Reilly said. He used the secondhand Massey-Ferguson equipment, obtained by the track, which Reilly called a skip loader, to rip up the dirt track and smooth it out for the next race.

The defendants claimed in the lawsuit that Crosby was killed through his own negligence in handling the equipment. But the widow and her daughter argued that the dirt mound was created by the KEC company during installation of a pipeline. KEC denied creating the mound.

The Crosbys also said Massey-Ferguson was negligent because the equipment had no safety belt and no roll bar which they claimed could have kept it from falling over onto him. The race track owners, they asserted, were responsible for keeping the equipment in safe condition.

The track, nestled between the Santa Ana Freeway and the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, closed six months after Crosby’s death when the owners decided to move their operation to Arizona, Reilly said.

Reilly said the woman and her daughter settled with KEC for $150,000 and with Massey-Ferguson for $250,000.

Although the race track no longer exists, Reilly said, insurance carriers for the track agreed to pay the widow and her daughter $200,000 now, plus $1,750 per month for the next 19 years, plus $150,000 to the daughter on her 18th birthday, and another $150,000 in the year 2007.

Reilly said the settlement with the race track was somewhat surprising because both sides had hired numerous experts to testify and he had expected a bitter trial.

Attorneys for the race track were not available Friday.