Action: Wrongful death
Injuries alleged: Death
Case name: Michael Edward Kelley, Administrator of the Estate of Brooke Lyn Maynard v. City of Durham
Court/case no.: Durham County Superior Court / 20 CVS 2646
Mediator: Jeffrey Carpenter
Demand: $7.5 million
Amount: $2.25 million
Date: Aug. 25, 2023
Most helpful expert: William David Mundy of Blueline Advantage and retired major of the State Highway Patrol
Attorneys: Donald R. Strickland of The Law Office of Donald R. Strickland, Durham, and Donald H. Beskind of Donald H. Beskind P.A., Durham (for the plaintiff); John Roseboro of the Durham City Attorney’s Office and Henry Sappenfield of Kennon Craver, Durham (for the defendant)
By Rasmus S. Jorgensen
[email protected]
In a rare settlement over a police chase costing the life of an innocent bystander, the city of Durham agreed to pay $2.25 million to the estate of the young mother who was killed.
The victim, Brooke Maynard, 24, was a Durham County detention officer who was off duty when a carjacker fleeing at high speed from the Durham Police Department crashed into her car at an intersection.
Maynard’s estate sued the city, but not the involved officers, for wrongful death, claiming gross negligence.
The suit faced an uphill battle, as North Carolina’s appellate courts have never held that officers were grossly negligent in a police chase, according to attorneys for both parties.
Senior Assistant City Attorney John Roseboro, who represented the city of Durham, noted the lack of precedent and argued the officers should not be considered grossly negligent when they did what they were supposed to do; officers began chasing the suspect after he stole a car at gunpoint, providing a compelling reason for the police to stop a potentially significant danger to the public.
"Our police officers did their job that day. They pursued a law violator; they kept their cars under proper control. No police car struck any person or any object,” Roseboro said. “It was the law violator whose car struck the decedent's car after running a red light.”
But at some point, the risk to the public of not catching an armed carjacker is outweighed by the risk of continuing a high-speed chase through the city, said Durham personal injury attorney Donald Strickland, who represented Maynard’s estate along with Duke University law professor Donald Beskind. This carjacker ran 14 red lights and numerous stop signs, crossed the center line and drove 77 mph through downtown Durham, according to Strickland, who said the police should have stopped the chase.
The city made no settlement offer during mandatory mediation and instead moved for summary judgment. Roseboro claimed the city had governmental immunity, arguing that providing police protection is a governmental function.
But the estate’s attorneys pointed to Truhan v. Walston, in which the North Carolina Court of Appeals held that governmental immunity does not apply when the police recklessly disregard the rights and safety of the public. Additionally, they said, the city waived governmental immunity when it purchased liability insurance.
Roseboro made an unsuccessful argument that the insurance purchase did not waive sovereign immunity and that those were effectively the same.
Durham County Superior Judge Michael O'Foghludha denied the city’s motion for summary judgment, but the city appealed.
At voluntary Court of Appeals mediation, Strickland and Beskind acknowledged that North Carolina appellate courts have always held that police officers involved in a police chase were not grossly negligent as a matter of law. But they argued that the facts of none of the prior cases were as egregious as this one, in part due to the facts of the chase itself, but especially thanks to the recordings of conversations between the officers. During the chase, one of the chasing officers, a trainee, told her supervisor that she wished the carjacker would “hit a (expletive) tree.”
“If she is hoping for a crash, you realize that she knows that's the likely outcome,” Beskind said. “At that speed and running red lights, it means that she is aware of the risk. And yet, she continues to chase, and all of the other officers endorsed that by not stopping it. And that is our reckless disregard that got us over the hurdle that we needed to find police officer liability.”
Beskind and Strickland also argued that the city should not have allowed two trainees, who would not have been allowed to drive the vehicles if their supervisors weren’t present, to be the drivers in the chase.
The parties made significant progress during the voluntary mediation, and a few days later, they settled for $2.25 million. That number was well below the $7.5 million Maynard’s estate initially sought, but it was a good recovery, Strickland said, considering that it would significantly help Maynard’s young daughter, the beneficiary, and that it was unclear what the North Carolina Supreme Court might decide if the case reached that level.
The city did not admit liability.
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