Christopher Peak Photo
John Riley and Keith Manson, at left, sought damages from a New Haven cop for a 2013 car accident. But witness Mario Notareno, at right, undercut their case.
A jury saw no merit in a lawsuit claiming that a cop caused a head-on collision with a dirt-bike five years ago.
The police officer, Daniel Conklin, was let off the hook on Wednesday evening, after six jurors in State Superior Court at 235 Church St. sided with him in a civil lawsuit. Keith Manson, a 39-year-old from Quinnipiac Meadows, was seeking damages from Conklin, arguing that the cop had acted negligently in April 2013.
That spring morning, when Conklin turned onto a hilly section of Fitch Street, he swung wide to avoid a dad and his son on the corner and ended up in the wrong lane. Manson, coming up the hill on a dirt bike, slammed right into Conklin’s cruiser and flipped onto the police car’s hood.
A bystander testified on Tuesday that Manson had plenty of room to slow down or maneuver around the cop car. Conklin, the witness said, shouldn’t be blamed for the crash.
After deliberating for 67 minutes in the state courthouse on Church Street, the jurors unanimously agreed: Conklin had not broken the law. They said Manson’s lawyers hadn’t proven a single allegation of negligence, including that Conklin should have known the risk of an accident from being on the wrong side of the road.
The jurors didn’t need to consider the city’s other special defenses, like that Conklin was just doing his job or that Manson might have been driving recklessly himself, before signing off on the verdict.
Even though the trial testimony ended in just a few hours and jurors didn’t need much time to make up their minds, the panel didn’t get a chance to start deliberating until late Wednesday afternoon.
That’s because city lawyers defending Conklin failed to send in their proposed jury instructions on Tuesday night, as the judge had requested, and then showed up late on Wednesday morning — “the combination of which leaves the court in a very difficult position,” Judge Denise D.Markle told the lawyers.
When the city’s lawyer finally did hand in a printed copy of the proposed jury charges, the document was “in a format the court was unable to follow,” Markle said. “I’ll be honest, I still can’t decipher it.”
The parties spent all morning working it out; Markle let the jurors outside to enjoy the sunshine for a few hours, hopefully unspoiled by the daredevils who’d recently reappeared on the city’s roads.
After the verdict, Conklin and city attorneys declined to comment.
Manson’s attorney, John Riley, said he was “obviously disappointed” and would look at his client’s options for filing an appeal. “I think it had a lot more to do with the fact he was on a so-called ‘dirt bike’ rather than the merits of the case,” he said.
I hope this man pays the city's legal fees, otherwise as a Taxpayer I am forced to pay for his lawsuit. Sad he needs to put a loud piece of steel between his legs - must be compensating for something lacking. I for one would put out a social media meme that as a smart city, with a lot of psychologists, most of the men who seek this attention tend to be compensating for not getting it for other things. Maybe then we can shame these boys into not riding and endangering folks, if we can not chase them!