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Driver on cell faulted in crash
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 22, 2007
WEST PALM BEACH — When her mother was killed in a car accident, 17-month-old Olivia Beers stopped talking for three months. Her 3-year-old brother, Zachary, began worrying obsessively that his father would also soon disappear, forcing him and his sister to search for a new family.
Acknowledging that there was nothing they could do to bring the youngsters' mother back, attorneys representing them and their father, Stephen, told a Palm Beach County jury Thursday that there was much they could do to alleviate the family's pain.
Jurors agreed. After less than two hours of deliberation, the four women and two men awarded the Parkland family $21.6 million, finding that one-time Boca Raton resident Sheila Hulick caused the horrific 2004 crash on the Sawgrass Expressway that killed 32-year-old Lesley Beers and sent her family into a tailspin.
Further, the family may not have to share the money with their attorneys. Because Hulick and the company that owned the car she was driving turned down a roughly $12 million settlement offer, Florida law allows the Beerses to recover the estimated millions that was spent in attorney fees and court costs preparing for the trial.
Attorney Jack Scarola, who represented the Beerses, said attorneys' fees and court costs would be in the "high seven figures."
Stephen Beers, who recently launched a home-based T-shirt company, said he was overwhelmed by the jury's verdict.
The emotional devastation caused by the loss of his wife, combined with the stress of raising his two traumatized children and preparing for the trial, have taken their toll, he said.
"I'm probably going to sleep a lot tonight," he said.
Hulick, who lived in Boca and was working for Dolphins football great Dan Marino at the time of the crash, declined to comment on the verdict. She also has a Jupiter address. Her attorney, however, didn't appear surprised by the jury's decision.
"We asked the jury to do what they thought was right," said attorney Peter Molinelli of Tampa. "Obviously it was a tragic loss no matter how you look at this case."
He was hired by Reynolds and Reynolds Co., an Ohio-based firm that employed Hulick's husband and owned the car she was driving.
Jurors said they didn't want to explain their decision or whether they believed the Beerses' attorneys' assertions that the fatal chain of events began with a simple cellphone call.
Throughout the trial, Scarola insisted Hulick was talking on her cellphone and didn't notice that morning rush-hour traffic had slowed in front of her. She plowed into the back of Beers' Honda Accord, sending it flying across the median and into northbound traffic, where it was struck head-on by an SUV.
In his closing arguments, Scarola acknowledged that Hulick disputed his version of events despite cellphone records that indicated she was on the phone at 8:05 a.m., the moment of the crash. But, he said, it really didn't matter what distracted Hulick.
"It doesn't matter if she was checking her makeup in the mirror or trying to find her favorite radio station, fumbling in her purse for a piece of paper or dialing her cellphone and trying to reach her husband," he said. "Her failure to pay attention sent Lesley Beers to her death and sent Stephen and Zachary and Olivia to live every day for the rest of their lives with a gaping hole in their hearts that only Lesley Beers could fill and never will fill again."
Scarola and his partner Chris Searcy, trying their first case together in 30 years of practice, criticized Hulick for not accepting responsibility for the crash. While she was in court nearly every day during the two-week long trial, she never took the witness stand.
The only time the jury heard from her was when Scarola played a short videotape of her deposition testimony.
Molinelli said Hulick, too, was upset by the trial. "The jury got to hear her and see her," he said of the videotape. "There was nothing further to be gained by having her testify."
During the trial, he suggested Lesley Beers ended up in the northbound lanes because she mistakenly hit the accelerator instead of the brake. Further, he argued the driver of the SUV should have seen Beers' car careening across the median and stopped in time to avoid the fatal crash.
Scarola countered that it was cruel to blame Beers for causing her own death or to shift the blame to someone who had no time to react. Hulick, he emphasized, started the lethal chain reaction.
Both he and Searcy said Hulick should have owned up to her mistake.
"I don't think they should have denied responsibility," Searcy said, after the trial. "If she had just said, 'I'm sorry. It was my fault, and I'll take responsibility."
