A woman injured in a December 2020 fatal crash in Tacoma and her parents claim that the driver and others, including two local governments, were negligent in the fiery, high-speed incident, court records show.
Olivia Ross, then 17, was a passenger in a Volkswagen that lost control navigating a curve at a high rate of speed, crashed into a utility pole, flipped and caught fire on Marine View Drive, also known as State Route 509.
Ross, who lives in King County, and another passenger injured in the crash were hospitalized for multiple days, The News Tribune previously reported.
A lawsuit filed Dec. 19 in Pierce County Superior Court by Ross and her parents alleged that multiple parties “contributed proximately to the injuries” that she sustained.
The suit named several defendants it accused of negligence in the crash: driver Benjamin Crider, then 18; his father; the city of Tacoma; Pierce County; the Washington State Department of Transportation; and a smoke-shop franchise.
Crider, who drove the vehicle purchased for him by his father and admitted to smoking marijuana on the day of the crash, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and two counts of DUI vehicular assault and was sentenced in June 2022 to more than nine years in prison.
The lawsuit alleged that the local governments and state transportation agency were also legally liable for the crash for purportedly failing to address hazardous conditions on the road, including “the proximity of the utility pole to the public road, the lack of adequate speed regulation, and the long straightaways on the road that permit excessive speed and loss of control.”
The filing noted that there had been multiple injury crashes in the vicinity prior to the fatal incident in question.
It also accused War Pony, a smoke-shop franchise, of selling marijuana products to Crider, who was under legal age, prior to the crash — a claim that the franchise’s owner previously vehemently denied, saying that the stores sell only tobacco and they card customers.
The filing comes after a wrongful death lawsuit was brought in November by the family and estate of Hannah Lindemeier, a 16-year-old girl from Kent who was killed in the crash. That suit named the same defendants and raised identical claims.
Attorneys for the defendants previously declined to comment on the litigation filed on behalf of Lindemeier. Attorneys for WSDOT, the city, the county and Crider’s father have denied allegations in court filings in that case, which is ongoing.
An attorney representing Ross and her parents didn’t immediately return an email inquiry Wednesday. The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages to be determined at trial.
Shea Johnson joined The Information Tribune in 2022. He beforehand coated metropolis and county governments in Las Vegas and Southern California. His work has been acknowledged by the Nationwide Headliner Awards and a number of instances by the California Information Publishers Affiliation, together with as a finalist for investigative reporting. He earned his bachelor’s diploma from Cal State San Bernardino.
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