The city of Santa Monica and other defendants will pay $21 million to settle dozens of civil lawsuits arising from the July 2003 crash at the downtown Farmers' Market that left 10 people dead and 63 injured.
The amount includes a $6-million resolution, announced Wednesday, in the final two cases in the long-running legal controversy. It also includes $15.3 million for plaintiffs in 40 other cases that was agreed upon earlier this year.
The settlement, which the Santa Monica City Council approved at its meeting Tuesday night, closes the books on the most tragic episode in recent Santa Monica history.
In addition to the cost in lives and money, the accident raised questions about Santa Monica's traffic safety system for the market, which operates Wednesdays and Saturdays on Arizona Avenue between 2nd and 4th streets. A 2000 e-mail that surfaced during legal proceedings indicated that a Santa Monica police sergeant had expressed concerns. It referred to the traffic arrangement at one alley off 2nd Street as "a potential disaster waiting to happen."
George Russell Weller was 86 on July 16, 2003, when he crashed his 1992 Buick LeSabre through a wooden-and-plastic barricade and plowed through pedestrians at the popular open-air market.
Prosecutors in the criminal case against Weller suggested that he had been trying to flee a minor accident. Though lasting less than 20 seconds, the mayhem claimed, among others, an infant, a 3-year-old, a married couple, a homeless man and an octogenarian.
Weller was convicted last year of 10 counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence for one of the worst pedestrian tragedies in U.S. history. The jury decided he acted criminally after seeing images of carnage, including a body draped over the hood of Weller's car and another beneath the wheels. Weller, now 91, was sentenced to five years' probation. He is confined to his home and receives 24-hour nursing care.
Under the latest settlement, Santa Monica's insurers and Bayside District Corp., a public-private company that oversees the city's downtown, will pay $1 million to the family of Movsha Hoffman, a 78-year-old woman who was killed by Weller's car, and $5 million to a family that lost a 62-year-old grandmother and a 7-month-old child. The two families will also split $152,000 remaining from Weller's $500,000 insurance policy.
