$9.5 Million Wrongful-Death Settlement After a Fleeing Driver Ran a Stop Sign

On December 30, 2022, a driver speeding away from law enforcement ran a stop sign and caused a collision that killed an 84-year-old woman. She died at the scene. The man behind the wheel was not supposed to be driving at all. His license had been suspended over multiple DWI charges, and he had no business operating a vehicle on a public road.

The woman who died was a mother and grandmother. She left behind three adult children and several grandchildren. Out of respect for her family, her name is not used here.

Thomas Schiro and Meredith Hinton of Ricci Law Firm took the case for her estate, working alongside David Stradley and Ann Ochsner of White & Stradley. They filed a wrongful-death claim and named two defendants: the driver and the person who owned the car he was driving. That second defendant mattered. A driver with a suspended license and a record of impaired driving rarely has the assets to answer for a death, so the real question became whether the owner should be held responsible for putting him on the road.

The claim against the owner rested on negligent entrustment. In North Carolina, a vehicle owner can be liable when he hands the keys to someone he knew, or should have known, was likely to drive dangerously. The owner argued that he did not know the driver's license was suspended. One of the central disputes was whether the driver was even holding a valid license at the moment the owner gave him the car. The plaintiffs' lawyers built their case on the driver's suspended license and record of DWI charges, and on what a reasonable owner should have understood about the man he trusted with a two-ton vehicle.

The parties reached a settlement before the case went to a jury. The driver and the owner together agreed to pay $9.5 million to resolve the claims, and the agreement was finalized on December 3, 2025. Because the case settled, there was no verdict to appeal and no reduction or remittitur. The full $9.5 million is the amount the family recovered.