Law Humor

Drunk Motorcyclist Who Hit Wild Boars Awarded $8.6 Million

By Kevin Underhill

I can't remember how many times I have tried to warn people that bad things were going to happen if we didn't tame our state's boars and train them to be alert for drunk drivers when crossing the street.  Why don't people listen?

Tame the boars, people!

Last Friday, a jury in Monterey, California, ruled that the state would have to pay Adam Rogers $8.6 million for injuries that he suffered in a 2003 traffic accident.  Rogers, who had indeed been drinking, was riding his motorcycle on state Highway 1 just south of Carmel when he hit six wild boars that were crossing the road.  (He probably didn't hit all six, but that's what the article says.)  Rogers suffered very serious injuries in the crash.

He then sued the state Department of Transportation, arguing that it was responsible for the accident because officials allegedly knew the pigs were regularly crossing the road, not just to get to the other side but to feed on vegetation that the state was tortiously encouraging to grow as part of an environmental restoration project.  Yet the state did nothing to deal with this, said Rogers' attorney, Larry Biegel.  "This was a situation that they, the state, created," he said, "and then once they created it and saw what was happening they did nothing to stop it."  (He meant the pigs-crossing-the-road situation, not the giving-my-client-a-driver's-license-and-allowing-him-to-buy-beer situation.)

How would one deal with such a situation, were one inclined to do so?  (Short of the mass pig taming I have been calling for, that is.)  Biegel pointed to the fact that, after the accident, the state put up a "Pig Crossing" sign and used hunters to keep the pig population down.  I'd think those would have been inadmissible "subsequent remedial measures," and in fact it's not clear from the report whether this evidence was admitted or not.  And it's even less clear to me how either of those measures would have prevented this accident.  Pigs don't read, and drunk drivers don't read very well; and unless you kill every pig in the state, which would probably be almost as hard as taming them all, there is still a chance that one of them is going to dart out and throw himself under a motorcyclist.  But the jury apparently disagreed with this analysis.

It also seems to have discounted the fact that Rogers was legally drunk at the time of the accident, with a blood-alcohol level of at least .10.  According to the report, the jury concluded that alcohol "wasn't a major factor in the crash."  Maybe it was a major factor in the verdict, although sympathy probably explains that equally well.

Link: AP via SFGate.com

Full post as published by Lowering the Bar on April 01, 2009 (boomark / email).