City to appeal crash payoff

Costa Mesa officials plan to appeal a recent verdict that awarded $8.7 million to a Costa Mesa man who was paralyzed in a car crash at the Adams Avenue overpass.

The city’s share of the judgment for former OCC tennis coach Glenn Morton is about $5.7 million. The jury also ordered Prashanti Patel, a driver who was involved in the 2005 collision, to pay $3.04 million.

The April 25 crash left Morton, 51, permanently brain damaged. Morton was driving his Volkswagen bus across the bridge over the Santa Ana River when a car sideswiped by Patel — who had lost control of her vehicle — was pushed into an opposing lane of traffic, hitting Morton head-on, according to Warren Dean Jr., Morton’s attorney.

The city could’ve prevented the accident with some basic safety measures, like a raised median or a slower speed limit on the down-slope of the overpass. The speed limit is 50 mph.

“The real danger and tragedy is, for all practical purposes, that this should’ve been a fender bender,” Dean said. “The crossover head-on collision is the single most dangerous collision you can have — there is a real danger in exposing opposing lanes of 50 mph traffic to one another.”

The city has a responsibility to take reasonable precautions against this danger, he said, adding that Huntington Beach officials have increased traffic safety on their side of Adams.

“On the Huntington side of the bridge, there is a matching 10-inch median that tapers down to eight inches that has been there since 1986,” he said. “In Costa Mesa, there’s nothing raised — it’s just flat.”

Harold Potter, who represented Costa Mesa in the lawsuit, disagreed, characterizing the claim that the city should be held responsible as “simply preposterous.”

“Here’s the deal — in a 10-year period of time, 144 million cars have gone over that bridge without a single cross-accident occurring,” he said. “If we go back to the time the bridge was built in 1977, 350 million vehicles have gone over that bridge without such an accident. So, really, you have a better chance of winning the Mega-State Lottery than having a cross-over accident in this location.”

Potter added that he believed the jury was improperly influenced by sympathy for Morton.

Potter expects to file a motion next week asking the judge to overturn the verdict. If that fails, the city plans to take its case to an appellate court, Potter said.

After waking from a monthlong coma, Morton has been under around-the-clock care at his home with his family in Costa Mesa, Dean said.

CHRIS CAESAR may be reached at (714) 966-4626 or at chris.caesar@latimes.com.