Trial To Begin In Carwash Negligence Lawsuit
The videotape has no sound, but the images are clear.Brenda Lee Brown, 43, pushes her son’s stroller across a carwash parking lot. A black Isuzu Rodeo rolls, then speeds in her direction. She thrusts the stroller out of harm’s way before the vehicle crashes into her.
The sport utility vehicle ends up in the street, cars swerving to avoid it. Brown lays crumpled on the ground, unmoving.
Two days later, Mother’s Day 2005, she dies of her injuries.
This week, a jury will decide whether the tragedy was a freak accident or the result of negligence by Town ‘N Country Car Wash.
Steve Yerrid, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the carwash’s corporate owner on behalf of Brown’s widower and young son, said the case is about more than a grieving family.
“Corporate homicide,” he said. “This lady lost her life because this corporation acted so badly.”
The attorney representing Two Brothers of Spring Hill, the carwash’s owners, did not return a call for comment Friday. In court documents, the company has denied any wrongdoing.
Authorities did not criminally charge Densil Blake, the 50-year-old carwash employee sitting in the Rodeo’s driver seat. In their official report, they said he was wiping down the vehicle’s interior when he accidentally shifted it into drive. As the SUV rolled forward, he mistakenly hit the gas pedal instead of the brake. Blake later said he panicked.
At that moment, Brown was pushing her 18-month-old son’s stroller across the parking lot to her newly cleaned Nissan Pathfinder Armada. Just before she reached her car, the Rodeo shot forward.
“Mrs. Brown was catapulted into the air, onto the hood of the sports utility vehicle and ultimately thrown to the ground,” the lawsuit stated.
Yerrid will show jurors the tragic scene. Authorities didn’t have the security video during their initial investigation, he said last week. The man who runs the business, a former officer with the Philadelphia Police Department, failed to reveal to investigators that such a tape existed, court documents show.
Yerrid, who last year won a $216.8-million medical malpractice jury award, said he learned of the tape during his firm’s investigation into the incident. He argued in court pleadings that the carwash’s failure to disclose it provides a basis for punitive damages.
Brown’s husband, McNeil “Mac” Brown, and their adopted son Darnell, now 3, claim in the suit that the carwash negligently employed “incompetent drivers” and operated with a defective design that required customers to walk in front of cars as they exited the wash line.
The suit takes particular issue with Blake. During his deposition, he admitted that he had never had a driver’s license. He rode a bike to work. A ninth-grade dropout and a construction worker in Jamaica until he moved to Tampa in 2003, he said he learned the trade of detailing from his brother who worked at the carwash.
Blake said he never moved cars at the business and did not know how to operate them.
“I didn’t try to steer the car” away from Brenda Brown, he said, “because I cannot steer the car.”
But a former carwash manager described Blake as a responsible employee who on rare occasions drove cars around the parking lot. “Only 10, 20 feet at the most,” Robert Ledoux Jr. said during his deposition.
Last year, the carwash offered McNeil and Darnell Brown $1-million to settle their claim. But Yerrid’s firm contends, and a judge has agreed, that the business has a $2-million insurance policy limit.
Yerrid said the carwash industry needs stricter standards and regulations for hiring and training.
Jury selection for the trial is expected to begin Monday.
“No mother should go to a carwash and lose her life,” he said.