The Cochran Firm Legal Blog

In February 2008, one Ashley McIntosh, a kindergarten teacher assistant aged 33, was driving out of a shopping plaza. She got a green light and began turning on to the road. Amanda Perry, a police officer aged 22, was driving north on the road that McIntosh was entering. She had her police emergency lights flashing but did not have the siren on.

She drove through the red light where McIntosh was turning with her green light and hit McIntosh’s car on the passenger side in an intersectional collision accident. McIntosh was thrown from her car and died the following day.

This incident occurred in Fairfax County in Virginia. County prosecutors charged Perry with reckless driving, but she was found not guilty in October 2008. McIntosh’s family then sued her for wrongful death.

An Emergency or Not?

In August 2009, a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge ruled that Perry could not claim “sovereign immunity” as a public official performing her job because she had been grossly negligent. In a pre-trial hearing, she had admitted that she had not used her emergency lights for several miles as she drove to what she thought was an emergency. (However, she did have the lights on when she struck McIntosh’s car.)

She believed she was driving to “a fight in progress”. However, according to evidence at the pre-trial hearing, the fight was actually the capture of a shoplifter. The dispatchers had sent text messages to Perry, as evidenced by tape from her in-car camera, but Perry stated that she had not seen them and therefore did not know about any shoplifter. Because an ice storm was making the airwaves busy, the dispatchers had not sent her any radio message.

The Circuit Court judge ruled that a shoplifter being captured at a grocery store miles away did not constitute an emergency for Officer Perry. For McIntosh’s parents as the plaintiffs, that meant they would just have to establish simple negligence on Perry’s part.

Fair Compensation For the Family

In the wrongful death case, Fairfax County has agreed to pay $1.5 million to the McIntosh family for the loss of their daughter. Perry herself is not personally liable, since the county pays all legal bills for its police officers.

The police department put her on administrative duties for a year but took no disciplinary action until she was found to have falsified her time cards. She was forced to resign in March 2009.

One can never get the full story from news reports. It would seem that since McIntosh was thrown from her car, she must not have been wearing a seatbelt. If that is contributory negligence, it would perhaps mitigate the policewoman’s liability. Further, if the police car’s lights were flashing, it would have been very visible to McIntosh. On the other hand, an ice storm was in progress which possibly reduced visibility. We must trust that the County and the Plaintiffs have arrived at the best settlement of the case.

If you have been injured by another driver’s negligence, you may have a valid legal claim. Please call or email our office today to schedule a free case review with one of our experienced personal injury attorneys.

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