The state has agreed to pay $26 million to settle a lawsuit filed by a man who received permanent debilitating injuries in 2019 after a tow truck with faulty brakes mangled the man’s subcompact car because the truck was blocked by barricades from taking a runaway truck ramp on Likelike Highway.
The state knew of the damage to the runaway truck ramp two months earlier. The June 12, 2019, crash occurred just 10 days before a scheduled repair.
The blue Ford Fiesta Jim Braddock was driving became a ball of twisted metal after a runaway Pinky Tows truck with a refrigerator truck in tow crashed into it and nine other vehicles.
But Braddock, then 31, who had to be extricated from the car, managed to survive. But he sustained severe, permanent and debilitating head, brain and bodily injuries, requiring treatment and rehabilitation and daily attendant care for life.
(Among those in the nine other cars, two women were in serious condition but later upgraded to good condition. A third woman was hospitalized in serious condition.
No one else was injured.)
Braddock, who had worked for Sunrun, and his wife, Christine Braddock, sued the state, tow truck owner Pinky Tows Hawaii and driver Misty Mitchell.
Police said Mitchell, then 52, reported that the 2002 Kenworth truck’s brakes started to fail while heading Kahuku-bound on the Kahekili onramp from Likelike Highway, and struck 10 vehicles on both Kahuku-bound lanes of the Kahekili onramp.
The complaint alleged Pinky Tows’ negligence by not ensuring the tow truck was of sufficient towing capacity and properly maintained and repaired to tow the commercial refrigeration vehicle owned by Pint Size.
It also alleged Mitchell was careless and negligent by not sufficiently inspecting the tow truck to make sure it was properly maintained and had the capacity to tow the refrigerator truck.
Both Pinky Tows Hawaii and Mitchell settled the case for $300,000 each, the insurance policy limits, according to a court document filed March 10.
A trial was set for April 24.
The complaint alleged the state was careless and negligent by failing to properly maintain the emergency ramp just before
the crash site on the right shoulder of the Likelike Highway, northbound, just before the Kahekili Highway offramp.
The April 3 testimony by the state Attorney General’s Office to the House Committee on Finance on the 2023 settlement funding bill provided the following details:
>> A vehicle had used the truck ramp April 27, 2019, damaging some cable
restraints.
>> The Department of Transportation’s Oahu District requested its contractor place traffic barricades at the entrance to the ramp for the weekend.
>> The district office requested its in-house crew replace the barricades with an array of sand barrels on
the inside of the ramp, and requested its other contractor order replacement cables. But it did not intend for the ramp to be closed.
>> On the day of the accident, barricades were set up at the entrance to the truck ramp, but no sand barrels were inside or near it.
>> The truck driver said she began to experience sponginess in the brakes but thought the ramp was not available for use because of the barricades.
“The range of full damages exposure was estimated to be well in excess of $30 million,” the Attorney General’s Office testimony said.
“Because of concerns that the State would be held jointly and severally liable with the tow truck company and its driver … settlement was reached in the amount of $26 million.”
Of that amount, $9 million will be funded by the state’s excess-insurance carriers, and $17 million by the state.
Pinky Tows and the driver made cross-claims against the state, and vice versa.
But all claims have been settled.
