A Vancouver woman struck by a Washington State Patrol trooper’s vehicle, who was unable to collect the roughly $529,000 she was awarded for her injuries, will get a new trial, the Washington Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday.
In September 2013, Deborah R. Peralta, then 25, was awarded the money by a Clark County jury after it determined that Trooper Ryan W. Tanner was partially negligent in the Aug. 22, 2009, vehicle-pedestrian crash in Hazel Dell. The jury had assigned 42 percent of the blame to Turner and 58 percent to Peralta, based in part on an emergency room blood test that showed Peralta had a blood alcohol level of 0.167 percent when she was struck.
However, state law — a product of tort reform in 1986 — prevents a person from collecting damages if they were injured as a result of being intoxicated and if they were found to be more than 50 percent at fault. Therefore, Peralta has been unable to collect any of the money she was awarded.
On the night of the crash, Peralta had been drinking alcohol at a party. She left the party on foot and called her brother to pick her up and give her a ride home. Her brother had trouble finding her and called her cellphone to find out more details about her location.
During the conversation, Peralta told her brother she saw his car and stepped into the road so he could see her. The vehicle she thought belonged to her brother was actually Tanner’s patrol car. Tanner didn’t see her in time and struck her with his vehicle in the westbound lane of 78th Street near the intersection of Northwest Anderson Avenue.
WSP requested that Peralta admit she had consumed alcohol on the night of the crash, and she complied.
During the trial, Superior Court Judge David Gregerson ruled, based in part on Peralta’s admission, that she was legally intoxicated — having a blood alcohol level of 0.08 percent or more — that night.
On appeal, the higher court found that Gregerson ruled in error and that Peralta’s admission of intoxication doesn’t satisfy the definition of legal intoxication. As a result, the trial court incorrectly instructed the jury.
Peralta’s attorneys, Don Jacobs of Vancouver and Mike Bloom of Portland, say a toxicology expert they hired also had determined there was an error in Peralta’s blood test. They said during the trial that she would have made the decision to step into the road to flag down her brother if she were sober.
The appeals court also found a number of evidentiary problems with the trial.
“We’re glad the case was overturned on appeal and will get a chance to have a jury hear the case on its merits,” Jacobs said Wednesday.
