Esphorst v. Hicks et al.

CASE NAME: Esphorst v. Hicks et al.

TYPE OF CASE: Wrongful death

COURT: Los Angeles County Superior Court

JUDGE(S): Judge Ronald F. Frank

PLAINTIFF LAWYERS: Taylor & Ring LLP, Robert R. Clayton; Mardirossian Akargian, Lawrence Marks

DEFENSE LAWYERS: Case Harvey Fedor, Anthony T. Case; Law Office of Cullins & Grandy, Allison L. Grandy

As plaintiffs' attorneys during voir dire described how a beloved high school baseball and football star died in a high-speed collision, some of the potential jurors cried.

"It was a very emotional trial," said Robert Clayton, who represented the young man's mother.

"There were a lot of jurors who were crying," said Larry Marks, who represented the father. "Many of them were crying during testimony from [the mother]."

The son died and the father was seriously injured when two young drivers engaged in a high-speed chase up Crenshaw Boulevard crashed into their van. The first car just clipped the van and spun it 360 degrees. The second hit it head-on at 80 to 85 miles per hour.

After about two weeks of trial and two hours of deliberations, the jury came back with what Clayton said may be the biggest verdict ever awarded in the Inglewood courthouse. It gave the parents a total of $43.8 million for their son's death, plus $16 million for the father's injuries and a little over $2 million in punitive damages. Esphorst v. Hicks, BC700634 (L.A. Super. Ct., filed April 3, 2018)

Clayton said the verdict shows that juries have no patience with road rage. It also demonstrates that noneconomic, loss-of-relationship damages for wrongful death can be much higher than many defense attorneys assume, especially since the pandemic, he said.

LAWRENCE MARKS

The two speeding drivers, Darryl Hicks and Ting Ming, were each convicted of vehicular manslaughter. Hicks is in prison, but Ming, the son of a wealthy Chinese businessman, vanished.

The tragedy arose from road rage. When Hicks' car apparently tapped Ming's, Ming chased Hicks for nearly three miles, running redlights and hitting speeds of up to 120 miles per hour.

"We actually got to put on the evidence about Mr. Ming and his road rage," Clayton said. The plaintiffs' attorneys played a recording of a police interview of him just hours after the accident. "He talked how angry he was and what he was trying to do," Clayton said. The jurors "were very persuaded by that."

But the most persuasive evidence was the depictions of the 16-year-old son, Jesse Esphorst, who was his high school's starting quarterback and the starting shortstop on its baseball team. The night of the accident, he won a game with a bottom-of-the-ninth home run, Marks said.

"He was actually on the radar of some professional baseball teams," Clayton said. "But I think what really motivated the jury to bring back the verdict that did was who he was as a human being.

"He was just one of these special people that when he entered the room, it just lit up. ... He just showed love and caring to everybody he came in contact with."

The parents also "were down-to-earth, jeans-and-T-shirt people, and they connected with the jury," Marks added.

One highly unusual aspect of the trial was that Ming never appeared. Eventually, the judge declared Ming's aspect of the trial uncontested. But since his attorneys couldn't put on evidence,

they did not attend most of the trial. "They just didn't show up ... which was mind boggling to me," Marks said.

Neither defendant's attorneys responded to a request to comment on the case.

-- Don DeBenedictis