Seattle Times, October 8, 2001
Beth Kaiman, Seattle Times | October 8, 2001
Seattle will pay more than $7 million this month to a Bellevue woman seriously injured in a traffic accident near the South Seattle Costco, a spot city officials knew to be troublesome for years but did not fix.
The jury award is thought to be the largest the city has had to pay for an individual injury.
It came after a five-week trial in King County Superior Court during which the city argued the van driver who hit Samia Ashraf was most at fault. But jurors saw the city as primarily negligent after being shown a paper trail of letters and documents that detailed years of complaints about the flow of traffic out of the Costco lot at 4401 Fourth Ave. S.
“This was a tragic case,” said City Councilwoman Jan Drago, head of the council’s budget committee. “It also sends a signal throughout the city that we have to pay timely attention to safety issues within the city.”
The city will dig into an emergency fund to make the payment. The City Council is expected to approve the money transfer at its meeting today.
Ashraf was trying to make a left turn as she pulled out of Costco on May 22, 1998. The same driveway was used as an exit and entrance, so as Ashraf nudged slowly onto Fourth Avenue South to turn north, a line of cars to her left waited in the curb lane to turn into the Costco lot.
Just as Ashraf peered around that stalled line of cars and cleared it, a van — going perhaps 65 mph or more and braking to about 50 mph — slammed into the driver’s side of Ashraf’s Acura. The speed limit was 35 mph.
Ashraf’s injuries were devastating. Her attorney, Todd Gardner, said paramedics who happened to be nearby did not get a pulse at first.
She had injuries to her head, aorta, pelvis, and the connection between her skull and first vertebra, Gardner said. Six ribs were broken. A lung was damaged, as was a facial nerve. She was in a coma for three days.
Recovery included six surgeries, 30 days in the hospital, and 60 more in rehabilitation centers.
Now 40, the married mother of a 6-year-old girl, a woman who used to earn six figures in the computer field, according to Gardner, no longer works. She walks with a cane, requires 13 hours of sleep, has little dexterity in her left hand, and has pain and a lingering pins-and-needles sensation on her left side.
Ashraf sued the city, Costco, the van driver, Mark Zumwalt of Seattle, and his company, Iris Window Coverings NW, because Zumwalt was on the job at the time of the crash.
Costco and the insurance company for Zumwalt and Iris Window Coverings settled out of court with Ashraf. The terms are confidential.
Zumwalt was charged with vehicular assault, pleaded to the lesser charge of reckless driving, and served almost a year in jail.
A settlement was not reached with the city. City Attorney Mark Sidran would not confirm Gardner’s claim that Ashraf would have accepted $4.5 million from the city to drop the case.
“I won’t comment on what we offered,” Sidran said. “They never came down to what we even remotely thought was a reasonable amount for the city to pay” for what he added was “a terrible injury.”
Sidran’s office consulted the City Council on the case, as is the practice with potential settlements of at least $500,000.
Sidran said his office understood there was a case to be made against the city’s transportation department because staff knew of problems on Fourth Avenue as early as 1993. Costco also expressed concerns about accidents at the site, at one point offering to pay for fixes.
But the City Attorney’s Office proceeded to trial, Sidran said, believing a jury would see the speeding driver as primarily responsible.
The jury returned a total award of $13.2 million. Juries in Washington are asked to parcel out responsibility, and when the verdict was read in July, Gardner said, the jurors found the city 53 percent responsible — more than $7 million — and Costco 7 percent responsible. The other 40 percent of the responsibility, jurors said, lay with Zumwalt — not his company.
Because Costco and Zumwalt had settled out of court — a fact the jury did not know — only the city must pay its share of the award.
City officials did not appeal, in part because the appeal process forces the city to pay 12 percent interest annually on the jury award.
Access to and from the Costco lot was redesigned two years ago. One driveway is used for an exit, another for an entrance, helping drivers pull out to get a better view of traffic.
Gardner said Ashraf doesn’t want to speak publicly about the case.
“She was not in this out of spite,” Gardner said. “She couldn’t believe they hadn’t corrected this problem, but she wasn’t angry.”
Kitsap Sun, October 9, 2001
Kitsap Sun | October 9, 2001
SEATTLE (AP) – The city has agreed to pay more than $7 million a jury awarded to a woman seriously injured in a 1998 crash at a troublesome south Seattle traffic spot.
During a five-week trial in King County Superior Court, the city had argued the driver of the van that hit the woman should be held primarily responsible because he was speeding.
But the jury decided in July that the city was 53 percent responsible – and should pay more than $7 million. Jurors were shown a host of documents detailing years of complaints about traffic near the Costco store in south Seattle.
On Monday, the City Council approved a plan to pay the award with money from an emergency fund.
“This was a tragic case,” said City Councilwoman Jan Drago, head of the council’s budget committee. “It also sends a signal throughout the city that we have to pay timely attention to safety issues within the city.”
City Attorney Mark Sidran said the city’s transportation department knew about the problems with traffic flow out of the Costco lot on Fourth Avenue South as early as 1993.
Costco had also expressed concerns about accidents at the site, at one point offering to pay for improvements to the roadway.
Still, Sidran said his office proceeded to trial, believing a jury would see the driver as primarily responsible.
Samia Ashraf of Bellevue, now 40, suffered major internal injuries and was in a coma for three days after the accident on May 22, 1998, her attorney Todd Gardner said.
Ashraf sued the city, Costco, the van driver – Mark Zumwalt of Seattle – and his company, Iris Window Coverings NW.
Costco and the insurance company for Zumwalt and Iris Window Coverings settled out of court with Ashraf. The terms were confidential.
Zumwalt was charged with vehicular assault, pleaded to the lesser charge of reckless driving, and served almost a year in jail.
Jurors found Zumwalt 40 percent responsible and Costco 7 percent responsible, not realizing those parties had already settled.