Sacramento County to pay $27 million settlement after 2017 crash involving sheriff SUV
Sacramento County has settled the largest civil lawsuit in its history, agreeing to pay more than $25 million following a July 2017 crash involving a sheriff’s patrol SUV that left a 10-year-old girl with permanent brain damage.
The family of now-12-year-old Julian Awad will receive a settlement in the total amount of approximately $27 million, including legal fees, set to be paid by the county and its insurers starting Thursday, the Awads’ attorneys told The Sacramento Bee.
Sacramento-based attorneys Robert Buccola and Jason Sigel disclosed details and provided photos, a California Highway Patrol collision report and Sacramento County sheriff’s dash cam video from the incident, a two-vehicle crash around 12:20 a.m. July 14, 2017, at the intersection of Pope and Fulton avenues in the Arden Arcade area.
A Honda CRV traveling south on Fulton Avenue, driven by Julian’s father, Raed Awad, and carrying Julian, her mother, Nevin Awad, and two other siblings as passengers, was stopped in a two-way turn lane waiting to make a left turn onto eastbound Pope Avenue, according to the CHP collision report.
The Honda started to make a left turn at the three-way intersection when it was struck by a marked sheriff’s patrol SUV heading north on Fulton Avenue, causing a violent collision, dash cam video showed. Neither direction of Fulton Avenue at that intersection is controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal.
The sheriff’s deputy had been responding as a backup unit to a call of a “fight in progress,” according to CHP incident report, and the SUV did not have its emergency lights or siren activated. The call “came out just before the collision occurred,” according to the crash report.
The Honda sustained major damage and came to rest on the grass near the sidewalk at Fulton and Pope, and all five of the vehicle’s occupants were injured. The deputy, the only occupant of the marked sheriff’s vehicle, was also hurt.
Julian Awad, who was in the Honda’s back seat, suffered a massive closed-head injury in the crash, causing a brain injury that will likely require 24/7 living care for the rest of her life, according to Sigel. But Julian has shown more progress than doctors initially predicted, Sigel added.
“For the first year and a half ... you could call her name or play her favorite songs on the iPad and she wouldn’t respond,” Sigel said. “But now she’s beginning to turn to that stimulus. She’s beginning to reach out to things. By all accounts, it’s pretty miraculous recovery.”
In a civil personal injury lawsuit filed December 2017, the Awads claimed the sheriff’s deputy “negligently travel(ed) at a high speed well in excess of the posted speed limit, while responding to an alleged crime in progress,” causing the crash.
Sigel said the sheriff’s SUV was traveling 84 mph in the moments before the crash, with “no (emergency) lights, no sirens, just the headlights” turned on. According to the CHP report, the deputy estimated his speed at 60 mph. The marked speed limit on the involved stretch of Fulton Avenue is 35 mph.
The CHP collision report confirms the sheriff’s SUV caused the collision by speeding, noting that Section 20156 of the state Vehicle Code “does not relieve the driver of (an emergency) vehicle from the duty to drive with due regard for the safety of all persons.”
In a response filed February 2018 in court, attorneys on behalf of the county and Sheriff’s Office denied the complaint’s allegations, including in one affirmative defense that plaintiff Raed Awad, the Honda driver, was “himself guilty of comparative negligence or fault.”
The response also cited section 17004 of California’s vehicle code, which limits civil liability for public employees, such as law enforcement officers, for personal injuries, death or property damage caused while responding to an emergency call or police pursuit.
Buccola said the Sheriff’s Office has a protocol policy requiring deputies use Code 3 — responding with their vehicles’ emergency lights and sirens on — when traveling above the speed limit to respond to an emergency.
“There would have been likely immunity, completely, if he had gone Code 3 with his overhead light bar on and siren,” Buccola said Thursday.
Buccola noted that it’s common for law enforcement officers in any department, regardless of policies, to begin responding to a scene without going Code 3.
“Particularly in a call like this, it’s not uncommon to hit the pedal to the metal and then (activate lights and sirens) as you’re going.”
Another of the Awad children suffered a broken leg that Sigel said is about “80 to 90 percent” healed more than two years later. The third Awad child sustained minor injuries. The deputy had cuts to his face, as The Bee reported at the time.
“All he saw was black,” a summary of Raed Awad’s statement to the CHP reads. “When asked to clarify what ‘black’ was, (Nevin Awad) stated that all he saw was black roadway. He didn’t see anything other than roadway when he was checking for oncoming traffic.
“Suddenly a police car was coming at him very fast and he saw headlights just before the police car hit the side of his vehicle. His kids in the back seat screamed just prior to the collision. ... He didn’t see any red or blue lights illuminated at the time of the collision, nor did he hear a siren.”
The adult plaintiffs, Raed and Nevin Awad, sought a civil jury trial before settlement proceedings were initiated in June, culminating this week with the settlement agreement, Sacramento Superior Court records show.
Along with Sacramento County and the Sheriff’s Office, Sean Steen is identified in public court documents as a defendant in the case and is named in the CHP collision report as the driver. It is not known whether Steen is still employed by the department.
Buccola and Sigel did not use the deputy’s name when discussing the case, saying that while they believe the actions were negligent and the collision could have been avoided, the family considers him an officer of “the highest moral character” who was very emotionally affected by the incident.
“He did everything he could to help the family after the accident and they harbor absolutely no ill will toward him,” Buccola wrote in an emailed statement to The Bee.
The Awad family, via their attorneys, declined direct media interviews. Buccola said the monetary agreement will go into a trust for Julian Awad and will be used to enhance her medical coverage. The family plans to install an in-home hyperbaric chamber to aid treatment, he said.
Kim Nava, spokeswoman for Sacramento County, in an emailed response to The Bee confirmed “a settlement agreement has been signed as in place in in the case of Nevin Awad vs. County of Sacramento,” but did not provide additional details.
Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones issued a statement Thursday, saying: “This settlement reached between the county and the plaintiffs can not undo that moment in time of the horrific accident that changed their lives forever. Although no amount of money can truly compensate them for what they’ve been through, I sincerely hope that in some way it helps them in their recovery and moving forward.”
Buccola said he was told by county counsel that the $27 million figure represents the largest amount ever paid by Sacramento County.
The Sheriff’s Office earlier this year settled a $7 million wrongful death lawsuit initiated by the family of Chad Irwin, a man shot and killed in Citrus Heights in August 2016. Irwin had expressed suicidal thoughts earlier in the day and was under the influence of alcohol and pain medication when he approached a deputy carrying a knife, and the family’s lawsuit argued that the deputy’s actions were negligent and reckless because authorities knew of Irwin’s mental state in advance.
This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 4:37 PM.
