O.C. Jury Faults DMV for Blind Man’s Accident

The state Department of Motor Vehicles was negligent when it gave a driver’s license to a legally blind Brea man who later plowed his sports car into three people walking to church, an Orange County jury decided Thursday.

Jurors took only four hours to determine that DMV officials knew that George Edgar Lizarralde, 31, could not drive safely when they gave him a license in 1985--and then renewed it five years later.

Lizarralde was denied a license three times, but the DMV granted his request when he applied for a fourth time, even though he failed the vision test.

“I’m very happy,” said Deborah Ann Mohr, one of the injured pedestrians, when the jury’s verdict was announced.

Mohr, a 32-year-old former waitress from Whittier, her former fiance and his 4-year-old son sued the DMV and Lizarralde. She said the accident left her with brain damage and a limp, and it ruined her marriage plans.

Some legal experts described Thursday’s verdict as unusual because state agencies often are able to claim immunity when they are blamed for an individual’s actions. A state appellate court, however, previously held the DMV liable for an accident involving a 87-year-old driver who was unfit to drive.

A second phase of the civil trial continues in Orange County Superior Court today to determine how much compensation the state should pay to the three pedestrians.

Evan Nossoff, a DMV spokesman in Sacramento, declined to discuss the case but said the agency was “constantly re-evaluating and attempting to weigh public safety as a major factor in issuing licenses to those with physical impairments.”

“We handle 20 million licenses a year, and we do the best we can to protect the community,” Nossoff said.

Lizarralde, who receives federal disability payments for a debilitating eye disease, did not want to talk about the case, his father said Thursday.

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The accident occurred Aug. 4, 1990, when Lizarralde drove his Mazda sports coupe through a marked pedestrian crosswalk in Norwalk, striking Mohr, her former fiance, Brian Barber, and his son Dane. The father and son also suffered multiple injuries, and both walk with limps as a result of the accident, according to court papers filed by their attorney.

After the accident, Lizarralde told Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that he had reached to pick up a cassette player that had fallen from a seat. He said he looked up moments later, but he was unable to avoid hitting the pedestrians.

Christopher J. Day, a lawyer for the pedestrians, said he later discovered that Lizarralde had received disability payments since 1979 because of his eye disease.

During the weeklong trial, Lizarralde’s attorney, Roberta Coughlin, successfully petitioned Superior Court Judge Logan Moore to drop her client as a defendant in the case.

Coughlin and Day blamed the DMV for the accident, contending that Lizarralde never should have been allowed on the road. Lizarralde has told attorneys in the case that his vision is so poor that if he sat across a table from someone, he could see only the person’s nose clearly and not the entire face.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Barbara Annette Noble, who represents the DMV, argued during the trial that the state agency could not be held liable for the injuries because Lizarralde struck the pedestrians as a result of taking his eyes off the road to pick up the cassette player and not because of his poor vision.

Noble declined to say whether the DMV would appeal.

Three legal experts said state agencies often are able to claim broad immunity from liability in cases in which government employees failed to make a determination that someone with a disability would threaten the safety of himself or others.

“This was a difficult case to prove because it raised the question of the state’s liability to people who have been injured as a result of licenses the DMV gave to someone else,” said John Hill, a law professor at Western State University College of Law in Irvine. “The jury apparently believes that in this case the state is liable, so the hard part has been won.”

State courts have already determined that the DMV can be held liable when officials had prior knowledge that a person’s physical disability has rendered him or her unfit to drive.

In one such case, two people sued the DMV, alleging that officials issued a driver’s license to an 87-year-old Northern California man, even though they knew he was unable to operate a motor vehicle safely.

In that case, Trewin vs. State of California, there was evidence that the DMV drive test examiner observed that the elderly man had “general debilities” but still gave him a license, according to court records.

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A state appeals court ruled that the DMV has “a mandatory duty to refuse to issue or renew a license if it has determined beforehand that the person is unable to safely operate a motor vehicle.”

Unlike the Trewin case, the attorney general’s office argued in court papers the state had no prior knowledge that it was unsafe for Lizarralde to drive.

But the Orange County jury disagreed.

On Thursday, jurors voted 11 to 1 that the DMV determined that Lizarralde was unable to safely drive a car when it gave him the original driver’s license.

Dana Clark, also a law professor at Western State, said he believes the case would probably cause the DMV “to become more stringent, and they would have to tighten the reins on the testing of individuals with disabilities.”

Lizarralde’s attorney said her client has not driven since the 1990 accident. A check of DMV records Thursday showed that his license is still valid.