Court Voids $2.1-Million Judgment in Road Fatality

A $2.1-million jury verdict against the state of California and one driver in a case involving the safety of Pacific Coast Highway was reversed Tuesday by a state Court of Appeal because jurors were not told how to evaluate a series of accidents recited as evidence of poor highway design.

Tuesday’s 26-page opinion, written by 2nd District Court of Appeal Justice Elwood Lui, with concurrence of Justices Joan Dempsey Klein and George Danielson, said that Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jack T. Ryburn should have instructed the jury to consider the causes of the previous accidents instead of the mere number.

On Aug. 1, 1983, jurors unanimously awarded Virginia Hillman, a Pasadena schoolteacher, and her sons, Michael, now 13, and Steven, 19, $730,000 for the wrongful death of their husband and father, stockbroker Donald Hillman, 38, in a three-car accident in 1977.

The verdict also included $250,000 to the mother for her personal injuries and emotional distress and $1,125,000 to Michael for his personal injuries, including severe brain injury.

The state was ordered to pay 75% of the total damages, or $1,578,750, for its negligence in designing and maintaining the highway. The balance was assessed against Robert McGill, 36, driver of the car that crashed into the Hillman vehicle.

Thomas Girardi, the Hillmans’ attorney, argued that the highway was unsafe because it lacked a median barrier, had narrow lanes (10 feet wide instead of 12) and allowed left turns in either direction from the median lane.

Defense lawyers tried to shield the state from liability by claiming “design immunity,” which protects public entities and employees from suits over injuries on public property where designs have been approved according to established government standards.

But Judge Ryburn agreed with Girardi that an increase in accidents at the scene of the Hillman crash (16 in the prior year) vitiated any such design immunity.

Tuesday’s appellate opinion upheld that ruling. But the justices said Ryburn should have cautioned jurors, as state lawyers had asked: “The occurrence of other accidents is not evidence of a dangerous condition of public property unless it is established that the accident was caused by the condition of the property and not merely the negligence of the driver.”

Omitting that instruction, the justices said, could have prejudiced the jurors in their decision against the state, so the case should be retried.

The accident occurred Aug. 4, 1977, as the Hillmans drove toward the beach. McGill’s northbound vehicle rear-ended the one in front of it, forcing that car across the center line into the Hillmans’ southbound car.

The three-car crash took place about 300 feet north of the tunnel that separates Pacific Coast Highway from the Santa Monica Freeway in Santa Monica.