Caltrans to Pay $2 Million in Ortega Crash

Caltrans has agreed to pay $2 million to a motorist whose car skidded off the Ortega Highway in Orange County and crashed into a deep ravine, an accident that left him partially paralyzed from the waist down.

The attorney for Paul Meyer of Murrieta argued that his client would have escaped with lesser injuries Oct. 19, 1990, had there been guardrails on the road to prevent his car from falling 200 feet below the rain-slicked road.

The settlement reached earlier this week is the second major award in recent years involving an accident on Ortega Highway, a tortuous South County road that has been notorious for its high number of accidents and fatalities.

“The reason it’s (Caltrans’) fault is they failed to have guardrails after notices that dangerous conditions existed,” Howard Lubin, Meyer’s lawyer, said in announcing the settlement Friday. “We didn’t really sue the state for causing the accident, but for causing the injury.”

Meyer’s lawsuit was set for trial Monday, but the state agreed to settle the case without admitting liability on Wednesday, said Anthony Ruffolo, deputy chief counsel for Caltrans. He said the agency wanted to avoid the possibility of an Orange County Superior Court jury deciding on an even larger sum of general damages.

Although the agency does not admit fault in Meyer’s case, Caltrans is planning to install metal guardrails along dangerous parts of the Ortega Highway, said Pam Gorniak, a spokeswoman for the agency’s Orange County district.

“They claimed there was slippery stuff on the road, but that would have been hard to prove,” Ruffolo said. “It’s obvious the guy was driving too fast for road conditions.”

Lubin said his client was driving 35 miles per hour in a 30-mile-per-hour zone. “He was not going at an unsafe speed,” the Irvine-based attorney said.

Meyer was on his way to work that fall morning as an engineer with Arinc Research Corp. in Fountain Valley. He was westbound on Ortega Highway when his 1985 Honda CRX skidded and plunged over the embankment, according to the California Highway Patrol.

Jerry Brookshire of Laguna Hills, a teacher who was eastbound on the highway to his job at Wildomar Elementary School in Lake Elsinore, saw the accident and signaled other motorists to alert police.

Carrying a first-aid kit, Brookshire hiked down the hillside and searched for Meyer, who was trapped upside down in his car, still wearing a seat belt, CHP officers said. Rescuers took nearly an hour to cut the Murrieta man from his Honda.

Meyer, now 58, moved last year to Arizona with his wife, his lawyer said. He can move around with the aid of a walker, but “for all purposes, (he) is a paraplegic,” Lubin said.

Meyer is not the only one to have crashed into the hillside off of Ortega Highway.

The accident site, about 14 miles east of Interstate 5, is known among CHP officers as “Ricochet Alley.” It is the narrowest and curviest stretch of the 32-mile highway, with a sheer canyon wall on one side and a 200-foot-deep ravine on the other.

The highway has a long history of serious traffic accidents, the latest one reported was Feb. 10. Early that morning, a man who fell asleep while driving to work was injured when his pickup truck went over the embankment.

Paul Pinkerton Jr. of Murrieta was found trapped and had to be cut out of his vehicle. He also was wearing a seat belt,

Last year, 87 accidents were reported on that stretch of Ortega Highway in Orange County, CHP Officer Bruce Lian said. Two were fatal. In 1991, there were 85 accidents, three of which were fatal.

Of all the traffic accidents that have occurred on the Ortega Highway, Ruffolo said relatively few have resulted in lawsuits against the state. He said each lawsuit is treated differently, depending on the injuries involved and on an assessment of how a jury might decide that case.

In 1985, an Orange County Superior Court jury ruled that California must pay more than $2 million to Philip Jones of Lake Elsinore. The area where Jones crashed, eight miles east of San Juan Capistrano, was substandard and dangerous, he claimed in his lawsuit against the state. Jones’ attorney, Dave Graf, had argued that Caltrans was aware of the hazards based on its own traffic studies but had not corrected them.