Detached DDOT Tire Strikes Detroit Pedestrian: $10.2 Million Judgment Against the City

In July 2015, Bruce Wood was on foot, crossing an intersection near Rosa Parks Boulevard and West Grand Boulevard in Detroit. A tire worked loose from a city van run by the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT). Wood heard a sound and turned toward it. He later said the tire was about a foot away when he saw it. It hit him in the head.

The injuries were catastrophic. Wood, a 59-year-old military veteran, suffered a severe traumatic brain injury and, by his medical team's account, lost close to a third of his brain. He also sustained facial fractures, a fractured clavicle, and ruptured eardrums. Before the incident he lived on his own. Afterward he needed help with the basics of daily life.

Marko Law sued the City of Detroit on Wood's behalf, arguing that the city had failed to inspect and maintain its DDOT fleet and that a properly serviced van does not throw a wheel into the path of a pedestrian. The city fought hard to get the case dismissed on governmental immunity. That fight reached the Michigan Court of Appeals more than once. In 2018, the appellate court (Wood v. City of Detroit, 323 Mich. App. 416) held that a jury could find the tire's condition was part of the van's operation, which fit the motor-vehicle exception to immunity and kept the lawsuit alive. A second appeal, decided in 2021 and 2022, again rejected the city's bid to end the case before trial.

By the time a jury heard the evidence, roughly eight years had passed and the city had filed three interlocutory appeals. The trial in Wayne County Circuit Court ran close to two weeks. Jonathan Marko presented proof that the city had skipped its own maintenance and safety steps on the vehicle, and tied that failure to the wheel that came off and struck Wood.

The jury found the City of Detroit negligent and awarded $8.3 million. With statutory interest built up over the years of litigation, plus costs, the judgment came to about $10.2 million, one of the larger personal-injury judgments against the city in recent memory. The award was not reduced or remitted. The appeals in this case were the city's failed attempts to stop it before trial, not challenges that cut the number after the verdict.