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ST. LOUIS RECORD

Friday, March 29, 2024

Off-duty police officer could be held liable for fatal car accident, attorney says

Lawsuits
Car accident 05

KANSAS CITY — A family is seeking damages alleging that the death of their 17-year-old child was partially the fault of the Kansas City Police Department.

The family's lawsuit said the victim had been operating a vehicle on I-435 on Oct. 21, 2017, when Terrell Watkins, an off-duty police officer, failed to decelerate in enough time, striking the victim's vehicle and shoving it into another vehicle before pushing it into a guardrail. 

Peter Vujin, a Miami-based attorney, said there was evidence pointing to the police department having some liability.

"Since Missouri is a comparative negligence state, the job of the jury will be to determine who is more responsible in this matter," Vujin told the St. Louis Record. "Surely, most negligence belongs to the officer [of] the Kansas City Police Department [who] violated the law by [allegedly] driving too fast."

Vujin said that the family could easily sue on the grounds of negligent training and negligent supervision.

"Negligent training is a subset of actions-at-law in negligence," Vujin said. "It basically means: 'You had a duty to train your employee not to hurt me. You performed that duty negligently by not training the officer to drive within the speed limit, and your negligent training contributed to my death or injuries.'"

The fact that the police officer was off-duty, Vujin said, made no difference as to whether the police department was liable. 

"The KCPD had a duty to train and supervise their employee on and off duty, and, therefore, under the theories explained above, any self-respecting court of law will, as a matter of law, find KCPD at the very least proportionately comparatively negligent—perhaps 5 percent only, or perhaps 85 percent—we'll see what the jury rules," Vujin said.

Vujin noted that police departments always have an insurance policy to cover negligence on- or off-duty, though the department is unlikely to want to activate the insurance policy because rates would be likely to increase dramatically.

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