Amount raised in trooper’s accident

CARSON CITY -- The state is adding $1.2 million to a $1.3 million settlement already approved for family members of four Mexican citizens killed in a 2006 accident involving a speeding state trooper.

Members of the state Board of Examiners had no choice Tuesday but to approve a total $2.5 million settlement to the families, because U.S. District Judge Robert C. Jones would not approve the proposed $1.3 million settlement made in March.

The revised settlement is the largest ever made by the state to settle a lawsuit over a negligent action by an employee.

Deputy Attorney General Jim Spencer said there is "no guarantee" that Jones will accept the higher settlement. He said Jones refused to approve the earlier settlement because he did not consider it in the best interest of minor children of some of the victims.

Gov. Jim Gibbons and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who sit on the board, approved the revised settlement. Board member and Secretary of State Ross Miller, whose wife just had a baby, did not attend the meeting.

The families sued the state over the Feb. 19, 2006, accident, in which Nevada Highway Patrol trooper Joshua Corcran rear-ended a 1988 Cadillac carrying five passengers on Interstate 15 near Sloan.

He was driving his patrol car at 113 mph and had told police dispatchers that he had to hurry home to eat dinner and take an online test.

Corcran, 30, was not driving with his emergency lights flashing or with a siren on.

Those killed in the accident were 21-year-old Victor De La Cruz-De Leon, 21-year-old Reymunda Lopez-Vazquez, 42-year-old Jose Sanchez Lopez and 19-year-old Jose Roberto Mejia Lang.

Cecilia Lopez Cruz, the pregnant 16-year-old wife of De La Cruz-De Leon, was the sole survivor.

All the victims were illegal immigrants from Mexico.

The trooper later apologized to the families and pleaded guilty in August 2006 to five counts of reckless driving causing death or bodily damage.

He received a one- to six-year prison sentence for each of the counts. Corcran is serving his sentence at an undisclosed prison in another state.

Ben Kieckhefer, Gibbons' press secretary, said funds for the settlement will come out of a state tort claim fund. He said the governor was disappointed at the higher settlement because lawyers for the families and the state had agreed to the lower amount in March.

"The court rejected that settlement, and the parties reopened negotiations and came back with this amount," Kieckhefer said.

Lawyers said the state's $75,000 statutory limit on damages might not apply in federal court, and the 14 family members and estates of the victims involved in the litigation could win $4 million to $5 million in a jury trial.

The previous largest state settlement was in 2001 when the Board of Examiners awarded $2.4 million to people injured and relatives of two people killed in a May 25, 2000, accident in Arizona after a police chase that began in Nevada.

Officers from the Highway Patrol, Mesquite police and the Mohave County Sheriff's Department chased Utah resident Clark Ford after he went the wrong way on I-15 in Arizona.

Ford and Justin Harbottle, who was traveling to serve as the best man at a friend's wedding, were killed and four others were injured in crashes that occurred in the Virgin River Gorge. Mesquite also paid a $2.4 million settlement.

Contact Capital Bureau Chief Ed Vogel at evogel@reviewjournal.com or 775-687-3901.