Trial Attorney Blog
After years of litigation, the City of Hampton paid $1 million to the family of Grashaunda Banks to settle a wrongful death claim brought as a result of a high speed police chase that resulted in a deadly collision. The crash occurred on Hwy. 19/41 near midnight on July 23, 2000, near the Atlanta Motor Speedway.
The Plaintiff, Olivia Banks, alleged that her 22-year old daughter was killed as a result of a reckless disregard of police policy and procedure when City of Hampton Police Officer Jeremy Pirtle engaged in a high speed pursuit of Dwight Allen Dixon (at speeds in excess of 100 mph), allegedly because Dixon had committed a traffic violation. Dixon crashed head-on into the vehicle being driven by Grashaunda Banks as Dixon was fleeing from the officer. While there was some evidence that Dixon might also have been impaired, this evidence was disputed because the blood sample taken from Mr. Dixon (who was also killed in the collision) was lost for eight days and allegedly became contaminated before it was tested.
The Banks family alleged that it was a violation of established procedure for a police officer to dangerously pursue at high speeds a suspect who allegedly was guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense. The Plaintiff alleged that the risk of danger to the motoring public, including her innocent daughter, was too great to justify the deadly high speed pursuit of Dixon for a mere traffic violation.
While police chase cases have always been the subject of considerable public debate, apparently the City felt that it should settle the case rather than take its chances with a Clayton County jury. The sum of $1 million paid to settle the Banks wrongful death suit is believed to be one of the higher settlements in the state in a case involving a high speed police pursuit.
The settlement ended over five (5) years of litigation between the parties. Suit was initially filed in the Superior Court of Fulton County because Dixon’s Death Certificate incorrectly stated that he lived in Fulton County. Two years later, it became known that Dixon had moved to Clayton County, approximately thirty (30) days before his death. The Banks family was forced to re-institute the lawsuit in Clayton County, only to have the City of Hampton transfer the case to Henry County.
The Banks family won an appeal in the Georgia Court of Appeals in the summer of 2006, which upheld their constitutional right to bring the case in Clayton County.
The jury trial was scheduled to begin on April 16, 2007 with Superior Court Judge Albert Collier presiding. Less than a week before the trial, the parties entered into the settlement.
The Plaintiff was represented by attorneys Richard W. Hendrix and Steven R. Wisebram of the Atlanta law firm of Finch McCranie, LLP. According to these attorneys, this is not the only case that involves Clayton County where innocent third parties have been killed or injured by high speed police pursuits. The attorneys plan to file separate lawsuits against Clayton County for another high speed pursuit in September, 2005, which resulted in brain damage to one innocent passenger and the death of another. In that case, Clayton County police officers allegedly chased a female juvenile also because of a traffic violation. Also, on February 26, 2007, in a separate incident, two juveniles were killed and four others were seriously injured when a juvenile driver in possession of a stolen vehicle allegedly lost control of the vehicle while fleeing from a Clayton County off duty officer during an eight minute chase.
According to statistics maintained by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (“NHTSA”), approximately 400 people each year are killed in high speed police pursuit cases. The federal database does not capture all cases of death from police chases throughout the United States because reports of deaths are submitted on a voluntary basis by police departments and agencies, and therefore are under-reported. In addition to hundreds of deaths, there are several thousand serious injuries across the country every year in these cases. While the fleeing suspect may be killed or injured, in such chases innocent third parties who have no involvement in the event often are hit either by the police or by the fleeing suspect. An increasing number of serious injuries and deaths to innocent members of the motoring public has resulted.
According to NHTSA statistics, forty percent (40%) of all high speed police chase cases end in a collision and twenty percent (20%) of those cases end in serious injury or death. Once every eleven weeks a police officer is killed in such a collision. The U.S. Justice Department has also published research statistics documenting that 83% of all high speed chases involve non-violent offenses. These statistics fuel the debate calling for a ban on pursuits in all cases other than those involving suspected violent felonies.
While public outcries over the dangers of these chases to the public have periodically occurred in the past, the Georgia Legislature has yet to forbid police chases or restrict them in any meaningful way. Accordingly, individual police departments throughout the State have their own policies and procedures that govern the circumstances under which their officers are allowed to chase.
In a small number of jurisdictions, officers are only allowed to chase for suspected violent felonies as opposed to traffic offenses. (In these jurisdictions, it is noteworthy that crime has not gone up, nor has the number of suspects who flee.) In most jurisdictions in Georgia, however, the officer is given wide individual discretion to weigh the risk to the public with the need for apprehension of the suspect. Such subjective discretion, however, as alleged by the Plaintiff in the Banks case, oftentimes leads to serious injury or death to innocent members of the public when the risk to the public is greater than the need to apprehend the suspect. Whether the Banks settlement will have any impact on the ongoing public debate remains to be seen.