L.A. Partly at Fault in 1983 Auto Crash, Jury Decides

The city of Los Angeles has been found partly at fault in a 1983 accident in which a speeding car careened out of control on Paseo del Mar in San Pedro, severely injuring an artist who was sketching a nearby carnival scene.

A Los Angeles Superior Court jury Wednesday awarded $2 million to the victim, 52-year-old Shirley Kay Batt of Rancho Palos Verdes. She suffered severe and permanent brain damage when the out-of-control car slammed into her vehicle, which was legally parked on the side of the road.

In addition, the jury ordered the city to pay $750,000 to Batt’s husband, Richard, an aerospace engineer who has cared for his wife since the crash. Said their lawyer, Bruce Broillet: “This has totally devastated his life.”

The accident stemmed from an illegal drag race between two San Pedro youths. In finding the city only partly at fault, the jury acknowledged that the rest of the blame lay with the youths, one of whom was killed when his car rolled over and hit Mrs. Batts’ station wagon.

In issuing its verdict Wednesday, the jury determined that city officials had received repeated complaints about the speeding problem on Paseo del Mar and failed to take action to slow traffic along the road, which curves past elegant houses and majestic palm trees along San Pedro’s coastline.

“What this verdict means is that where the city knows, or has reason to know, of dangerous conditions on our roadways, they better do something about it so that innocent users of the roadway don’t get hurt,” Broillet said.

Assistant City Atty. Michael Fox, however, maintained that the city cannot be responsible for how people drive on its roads and thus was not at fault. He said an appeal is likely.

‘A Terrible Tragedy’

The two lawyers gave the following account of what Fox described as “a terrible tragedy”:

Mrs. Batt, at the time a 46-year-old art student at California State University, Long Beach, was parked on the north side of Paseo del Mar, where she was sketching a carnival that had been set up in nearby Angels Gate Park.

Not far away, on the corner of 25th Street and Western Avenue, two youths driving Chevrolet Camaros got into an argument about their cars. Before long, they were racing one another down the hill.

The cars, driven by a USC freshman and a San Pedro High School student, sped down Western Avenue and rounded the curve onto Paseo del Mar, where they traveled at speeds of 80 m.p.h. and possibly up to 100 m.p.h.

At some point, the high school student’s car spun out of control, rolled over and slid across the road into Mrs. Batt’s car. The driver, Gary Kordich, 17, died in the accident. According to the lawyers, the other driver was later tried as a juvenile and convicted, but they were unable to confirm the charge because of the difficulty in obtaining Juvenile Court records.

According to Broillet and Fox, testimony during the trial showed that residents have complained for years about speeding along Paseo del Mar, where the speed limit is 35 m.p.h. One Los Angeles police officer who testified called the speeding “a constant problem,” according to Fox.

In addition, in an interview Thursday, the Los Angeles police officer who is in charge of traffic complaints for the area said that he routinely tickets speeders along that stretch of roadway.

“Due to the fact that it’s a nice wide street right at the cliff’s edge, people have a tendency to speed,” said Officer Phil Dudley. However, Dudley said the strip is not known as a drag-racing spot. “People don’t get together someplace else and say, ‘Hey, let’s go down to Paseo del Mar and race,’ ” he said.

During the trial, Broillet, along with a traffic engineer who testified as an expert witness for the plaintiff, contended that the city could have made engineering improvements to the road--such as replacing the second eastbound lane with a median strip and turning lanes--that would have prevented the drag race and the accident.

Ironically, city transportation engineers said Thursday that such improvements are currently on the drawing boards. But they said their plans are unrelated to the court case and, while they would make the road safer, would do little to prevent accidents like the one that killed Kordich and injured Mrs. Batt.

“I really don’t think they would have had any effect on this case,” said David Royer, a city traffic engineer who also testified in the Batt case. “This wasn’t a case where he slightly went into the median area. He was totally out of control and across the road and slammed into a car that was parked clear on the other side of the road. You cannot design any road or urban street for a driver to be able to safely drive at 80 miles per hour.”

In the city’s defense, Fox argued during the trial that Paseo del Mar was safe at the time of the November, 1983, accident. He said that as long as a road is in good condition and is properly maintained the city should not be held accountable for the way people drive on it.

Although he termed the crash “a terrible tragedy,” he said the jury’s verdict, if taken to its logical conclusion, could expose the city to lawsuits every time a speeder gets into an accident.

“The city believes that it’s not the city’s fault, that the city should not be held accountable for this kind of conduct, even under the circumstances that were shown in this case,” he said.