$17.6 Million Default Judgment After 911 Dispatcher Failed to Dispatch Water Rescue in Fatal Pond Emergency

On the morning of January 14, 2013, Jinglei Yi was driving her five-year-old son to preschool in western Little Rock when her SUV hit a patch of black ice near Capitol Hill Boulevard, crossed a curb, and plunged into a pond. Yi called 911 from inside the sinking vehicle.

The call reached Candace Middleton, a City of Little Rock 911 dispatcher. Middleton told Yi that help was on the way, but she did not enter the call into the computer-aided dispatch system that would have automatically alerted police and the fire department's water rescue unit. A MEMS ambulance arrived, but there were no officers or firefighters with boats. Only after the MEMS crew radioed back to ask where everyone was did fire and police water rescue finally receive a dispatch. The fire department's water rescue team did not reach the submerged SUV until roughly 45 minutes after Yi's first 911 call.

Emergency crews pulled mother and son from the submerged vehicle. Yi died that afternoon. Her son survived the immediate rescue but had been deprived of oxygen for too long. He spent the following two years in medical care and died on January 19, 2015, at age seven, from the brain damage he sustained in the pond.

Dayong Yang, Yi's husband, retained McMath Woods. Attorneys James McMath, Charles Harrison, and Carter Stein built the case on a direct failure: Middleton received a drowning-in-progress call and did not dispatch the water rescue resources the city had specifically trained and equipped for that purpose. The fire department's water rescue units were available and in range. The call simply never reached them.

Middleton did not appear in the litigation. On October 19, 2017, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Timothy Fox entered a default judgment of $17.6 million against her. The award allocated $4 million for the boy's pain and suffering, $5.031 million for his loss of life, $1.3 million for his medical expenses, $1 million for his physical injuries, and $6.2 million for the mental anguish sustained by Dayong Yang from the death of his son.

Because Middleton had no assets to satisfy the judgment, the family also pursued a separate claim against the state agency that oversaw Arkansas's 911 network. The Arkansas General Assembly later approved a $100,000 appropriation to the family.