DAVIS -- A month-long wrongful death trial in Davis not only ended last week with a $24.2 million judgment awarded to the family of a woman who died at a city park, but it also exposed the need for a change in protocol maintaining the trees in those parks.
Jennifer Comey and daughter Margaret, now 7 years old SOURCE: Pitts familyJennifer Comey, 44, died after a decaying tree limb fell on her at Slide Hill Park in February 2021 while she watched her 3-year-old child play in the playground's sandbox.
Comey later died from her injuries at UC Davis Medical Center, leaving behind her loving husband, Ted Pitts, and daughter, Margaret.
In the verdict passed down Friday after three days of deliberation, a Yolo County jury found the city of Davis to be fully liable.
"It's the worst example of people not doing their job," said Roger Dreyer, the attorney representing Comey's surviving family.
Dreyer continues to call out the city of Davis, saying that even though it accepted responsibility for Comey's death, that only came at trial four years later. In addition, Dreyer said the city's counsel tried to shift the blame to another party. "Accepting responsibility means accepting responsibility. They said it but didn't do it. They blamed DRG," Dreyer said. Davey Resource Group (DRG) is a private tree company that was hired by the city to take inventory of its trees three years before Comey died. They were not paid to do a full risk assessment of the park's trees, Dreyer argued in court. The jury found that the company shared no responsibility for her death. "That park was built in the 1970s. This tree was planted at that time. There is no evidence that anybody from Urban Forestry for the City of Davis ever went out to that park, looked at any of the trees, in terms of maintenance or inspection or even pruning," Dreyer said. In addition, Dreyer said he presented evidence in court that revealed that even after Comey's 2021 death, a city-contracted arborist found further issues at Slide Hill Park, but the city still lagged in its response."They went out, looked at all trees in the park, found 13 that needed to be removed, gave the report to the city of Davis and they didn't do anything," Dreyer said.In response to these allegations, the City of Davis provided this statement in full to CBS13 on Wednesday:
"On behalf of the City Council, we were deeply saddened by Jennifer Comey's untimely and tragic death.
The City attempted to reach a settlement with the parties to the case (Ted Pitts and Davey Resources Group) prior to trial but that was not successful. At the trial, the City chose to accept responsibility for the failure of the tree that resulted in Jennifer Comey's death and we did not argue that the City was not at fault. At the trial [the city] solely asked the jury to assign reasonable damages in the case. The City was represented in the trial by attorneys assigned to handle the case by the City's municipal risk pool, which pools the resources of multiple public agencies to handle claims.
Since 2021, when Jennifer Comey died, the City has taken a number of actions to address tree safety in the City of Davis and continues to improve its practices around City owned trees. The City currently owns 30,000 trees. We have adopted a proactive inspection and maintenance program for about 6,500 trees which are in high occupancy public areas like parks, play fields, and downtown plazas."
In a press release published immediately after Friday's verdict the city addressed what steps it has taken to reduce risk, including that the city council expanded the Urban Forestry Division and allocated additional staff and funding. "They should have been doing that decades ago," Dreyer argued.
Jennifer Comey and daughter Margaret Pitts SOURCE: Pitts familyDreyer added that while the evidence presented at trial showed years of ignored warnings and failed inspections, counsel for the city attempted to engage in "misleading" legal tactics.
This included, Dreyer noted, counsel's multiple attempts to allude to the large amount of money as "generational wealth" to fund trips and potentially frivolous spending for Comey's surviving family and attempts to insinuate there could be a new romantic relationship eventually in her husband's life. Both insinuations were shut down by the judge.
"The judge told the jury right in the middle of closing arguments 'You are to disregard what [the attorney] said. You are to disregard these comments he made. They are inappropriate and overt,' " Dreyer said.
At a massive $24.2 million in damages going to Comey's surviving husband and child, this is the largest wrongful death judgment handed down in Yolo County history. "Do you feel like this serves as an eye-opener to other city and local governments to not let something like this happen?" I asked.
Dreyer responded, "100%. The significance of the number hopefully reminds not only Davis but all municipalities [to] do your job." The money to cover that judgment will come from the city's municipal risk pool, which is essentially an insurance fund in case of a lawsuit like this.
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