Death in Sewage Backup to Cost City $1 Million : Keyword: Small children of asthmatic woman who died while cleaning up mess that had surged into her bathroom because of a blocked line are to benefit from settlement.

The San Diego City Council has agreed to pay $1 million to settle a wrongful-death claim filed by the family of an asthmatic woman who stopped breathing after repair work on a city sewage line caused a fountain of sewage to surge into her bathroom.

In a resolution approved in closed session in August, the council authorized the city manager to pay $430,000 in cash to Jenna and Megan Bolton, ages 5 and 7, whose mother, Carol, died of respiratory failure on Oct. 11, 1989.

The remaining $570,000 will go to purchase an annuity that will pay the two girls about $4 million over several years, said C. Bradley Hallen, the attorney for the Bolton family. The City Council is scheduled to formally approve the agreement Monday.

“No amount of money can replace the loss of a loved one, so there is no particular joy in the settlement of a case like this,” said Hallen, who had been preparing to take the suit to trial Oct. 25. “Everybody is relieved to know that these little girls will be economically secure despite this incident.”

In the claim filed in September, 1990, Hallen alleged that, during the previous October, the city had been negligent in the way it serviced the sewer line in the 3600 block of Cherokee Street in City Heights.

Before city crews attempted to repair a blocked sewage pipe, the suit alleged, they “failed to warn residents of risk of harm.” Then, after causing “a sudden and projectile infusion of toxic sewage” into the Boltons’ home, the crews failed to evacuate residents.

When 33-year-old Carol Bolton, whose daughters were then 3 and 5 years old, came home and began cleaning up the mess she discovered there, she “was overcome and died as a direct result of exposure to the toxic sewer contaminants discharged into her residence,” the suit alleged.

“It was either an allergic reaction or a poisoning by hydrogen sulfide gas,” Hallen said Friday. “There is even a possibility she died as a result of stress brought on by the attack. Her respiratory system was arrested. It was something in the sewage.”

In an asthma attack, which is often triggered by an allergic response, the bronchial passages constrict and block the flow of air to the lungs. Without treatment, an asthma sufferer can suffocate.

In legal papers filed last year, attorneys for the city sought to have the wrongful-death suit dismissed. They said Carol Bolton and her family were themselves careless and negligent, and that their behavior “contributed to the happening of the accident.”

“The danger, if any, which existed . . . would have been reasonably apparent to . . . a person exercising due care,” the city argued.

But Hallen said Friday that he unearthed several facts that may have caused the city to reconsider. To begin with, he says, he found that the number of sewage spills on the Boltons’ street was 69 times greater than the city average. Each year, he said, there were 12.5 spills per mile.

In addition, Hallen said, there was “fairly strong evidence” that in their attempts to unclog the pipes, city sewage crews had made the situation worse.

“Rather than remove the blockage, they sent it downstream where it blocked up three more times,” he said. “A lot of the sewage spills that happen, happen just because the lines are decrepit or because of the condition of the system. But, when the city sewer crews are the ones that cause the backup rather than fix it, that’s a real problem. And that’s what happened here.”

Hallen said that, although the settlement agreement has been accepted by all parties to the lawsuit, it needs to be finally approved by the trial judge as a compromise involving minors. He said that will probably occur next week.

The $1-million settlement was significantly less than the Boltons’ lawsuit had sought in damages. To make up for the deprivation of love and companionship, and the loss of Carol Bolton’s lifetime earnings, Hallen had asked for $10 million for each of the Bolton daughters, as well as $10 million plus $11,471.80 for funeral costs to Bolton’s husband, Curtis.