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The state has agreed to a settlement payout of $15 million in the death of a California hiker at Kauai’s Opaekaa Falls in 2006, the largest payment for a death in a court case in Hawaii, according to the lawyer for the victim’s family.
The family of the hiker’s cousin, who also fell and died in the incident, would receive $425,000 under the settlement.
The agreement cancels a Kauai trial that was scheduled to start Monday to determine the amount the state had to pay relatives of the two victims. The terms are subject to approval by the state Legislature.
Elizabeth Ann Brem, 35, and Paula Andrea Gonzalez Ramirez, 29, of Colombia, were in Hawaii visiting when they fell from a trail at the state park on Dec. 19, 2006.
Attorney Mark Davis represented Brem’s relatives and said she was a highly successful Yale Law School graduate who became the first Hispanic partner with Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, one of the largest law firms in the country.
Her projected earnings were in the tens of millions of dollars, Davis said.
"She was a superstar," he said.
Davis said he was seeking at least $30 million.
"She had an extremely bright career ahead of her, but the family decided they would settle the case for this negotiated amount to give them closure to the tragedy and move on," Davis said.
He said the payment amount is the highest here for a judgment or settlement over a death. Davis said the state’s insurance company will pay about two-thirds of the settlement. "This settlement is reasonable for both sides," he said.
Kauai lawyer Teresa Tico, who represented Ramirez’s family, said Ramirez was a businesswoman in Colombia, but not earning as much as Brem.
Tico said the economic loss of Ramirez’s death was $850,000.
Tico said Ramirez’s mother is relieved she doesn’t have to "relive the tragedy of her daughter’s death, which is every parent’s worst nightmare."
The attorney said the settlement is in "everyone’s best interest."
For the two families, the important point is that the state was held accountable for the deaths, Tico said.
She said the state has closed off the area of the trail where the two women fell.
Joshua Wisch, spokesman for the Attorney General’s office, did not comment about the case Monday, but said a hearing on a request for money to cover out-of-court settlements is scheduled to be heard today by the House Judiciary Committee.
A key decision in the case came last year when Kauai Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Watanabe ruled the state was liable for the deaths.
In her 44-page ruling, she said the state failed to warn the two visitors about the "extreme and hidden dangers" that the state knew existed near the waterfalls.
She said a danger sign posted at a trail off to the left made it appear that a trail off to the right was safe. "Danger keep out hazardous conditions," the sign said.
But the trail to the right, which appeared to lead to the waterfall, also was dangerous, the judge said. The women fell from a cliff several hundred feet to the floor of the canyon.
The sign "created the impression" that the trail to the right was the safe path to the lagoon at the base of the falls, the judge said.
IF THE state had inspected the area, it would have recognized that its actions "actually made the area more dangerous and had effectively created a trap in which park visitors were likely to be misled into following the right-hand trail into the treacherous area," Watanabe said.
The judge noted that Joshua Linares, who was 16 at time, survived a 200-foot fall from the right trail less than six months before the deaths of the two women.
Linares said the right trail appeared on June 29, 2006, to be "very open, very inviting." He was not aware of a sharp drop next to the trail because it was covered by dense vegetation.
"He had no sense of danger," the judge said.
Linares slipped and fell over the edge, according to Watanabe’s ruling.
The lawyers notified Watanabe of the settlement last week.
In 2003 the state reached a $8.56 million settlement with some of the survivors and the families of four people who died in a rockslide at Sacred Falls. Thirty-two people sued the state after the Mother’s Day rockslide in 1999, which killed eight people and injured 50.
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