City paying $2M to Pearl City pedestrian injured in 2014

The Honolulu City Council last month voted 9-0 to approve a mediated $2 million settlement payment to a woman who sustained severe injuries to her head and body as she crossed a Pearl City street and was struck by a car nearly four years ago.

Mariah Tinay’s attorneys allege the area where the incident occurred, in the Newtown section of Pearl City in front of Waiau Elementary School, was poorly maintained by the city, and that the resulting conditions were the major factor contributing to the accident.

The taxpayers’ $2 million share does not include $5.5 million paid to Tinay from Genesis Insurance Co., the city’s insurance company.

Tinay was 17 when the incident occurred at 7:33 p.m. Dec. 19, 2014, said Michael Cruise, one of her attorneys. She had caught TheBus from work and was crossing Hookanike Street, toward her home when she was struck by a Nissan Altima driven by Jefalyn Fiesta.

The original lawsuit said the city was at fault “because at the time of crash, the street lighting that could and should have been illuminated by the sidewalk was obscured by trees and vegetation owned and/or should have been maintained and cut back by defendant City and County of Honolulu.”

Cruise said the city acknowledged it had not followed the rules in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices as spelled out by the Federal Transit Administration, which the city had agreed to follow.

Signs alerting drivers to the crosswalk had not been put in, the lighting was not up to the city’s own standards, trees blocked the lighting, “and the real frustrating thing about it was that they had redesigned this crosswalk three times, I believe, in the 14 years before she got hit and each time broke their own rules about what they’re supposed to do to mark the crosswalk,” Cruise said.

“So it was a pretty egregious violation of safe crosswalk design over a long period of time and multiple times,” he said. “This wasn’t like some one-off … but they’ve since fixed it. They’ve drastically improved the safety of the sidewalk since this happened, for sure.”

City Corporation Counsel Donna Leong, in an email, said the Tinay case was settled after mediation.

“Ms. Tinay alleged the city’s design and construction of the crosswalk was flawed and was a major cause of the accident,” Leong said. “As a result of the accident, Ms. Tinay was in a coma for approximately two weeks and suffered traumatic brain injury.”

While the city denied liability, the settlement amount is less than what Tinay estimated in damages and the city agreed to the amount as a compromise to resolve the case, Leong said.

Of the amount of the settlement, Cruise said that Tinay “has a brain injury that she will live with the rest of her life and this settlement was acceptable because it will take care of her needs.”

Her medical bills thus far have exceeded $300,000, he said.

Tinay, now 21, is working for her family’s business and is attending community college, Cruise said.

Fiesta, the driver, settled with her $20,000 car insurance policy, Cruise said.

Fiesta, who was 20, was driving to a church function and was neither speeding nor under the influence of alcohol or drugs, court documents said.

“She shouldn’t have hit (Tinay), obviously, but it wasn’t a situation where she was really doing anything dangerous,” Cruise said “She should have been able to see someone up ahead. That’s the city’s responsibility in that situation.”