Jury Weighs Carwash’s Liability

TAMPA, Fla. -- Brenda Lee Brown died on Mother’s Day 2005, after saving her son but not herself when an unlicensed carwash employee barreled into her in the Town ’N Country Car Wash parking lot.

Her husband filed a wrongful death suit against the carwash owners. For the next one and a half years, the owners denied that they or their employees had done anything wrong. Until it came time to face a jury.

On the eve of this week’s trial and during opening statements Tuesday, attorneys representing the carwash acknowledged it bore some fault in 43-year-old Brown’s death.

“My client has accepted responsibility for this accident,” defense attorney Joseph Metzger said Tuesday morning.

Just how much, though, is up to jurors to decide. Jurors this week must tackle two issues: how much Brown’s husband is owed for the loss of his wife and whether the carwash should pay extra to punish its negligence.
They heard and saw evidence Tuesday aimed to pull at their heartstrings.
Brenda Brown buried a failed marriage and broken dreams when she fell in love with McNeil “Mac” Brown, said the widower’s attorney, Steve Yerrid. They had “a model marriage,” said Mac Brown’s best friend, Benjamin Skyles.

When they couldn’t have a child of their own, the couple turned to adoption, Yerrid said. Brenda Brown quit her job as a manager at Progressive Insurance to become a full-time mother to their adopted son, Darnell.

She fed 18-month-old Darnell chips under the carwash gazebo May 6, 2005, while waiting for her sport utility vehicle. Jurors did not react as they watched a soundless, black and white video of Brown pushing her son’s stroller across the parking lot toward the cleaned vehicle. But just before mother and son reached it, an Isuzu Rodeo with a carwash employee in the driver’s seat sped at them out of the carwash tunnel.

Either the force of the impact or a mother’s instinct pushed the stroller out of harm’s way, the investigating detective said. But Brown was catapulted into the air and died two days later.

“She did not give birth to that baby,” Yerrid said during his opening statement. “But at 18 months of age, she gave that baby life because she gave her own life for his.”

Yerrid asked jurors to consider punishing the carwash owners for allowing untrained, unlicensed individuals to move cars on the business property. He said owners failed to provide the surveillance tape during authorities’ initial investigation.

Metzger reminded jurors to be reasonable and fair in assessing financial damages. To impose punitive damages, he said, they must find that the carwash exhibited intentional malicious conduct.

Perhaps the most lasting image of the day came at the outset. Mac Brown led Darnell and his stuffed dog into the courtroom before official proceedings got under way.

Yerrid wanted jurors to meet the little boy who had lost his mother.
Darnell, now 3, wore khaki pants, a collared shirt and a powder-blue vest. He said “good morning” to the jury and got to meet the judge. Then, his tiny voice cut the room’s formality. “Daddy, can we go to my home now? Are we done?”

Source: St. Petersburg Times

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