Sterling Heights settles for $2.95 million after police officer crashes into woman’s car
The victim sustained traumatic brain injury and permanent damage to her spine in the 2019 crash
Audio By Carbonatix
[
{
"name": "GPT - Leaderboard - Inline - Content",
"component": "35519556",
"insertPoint": "5th",
"startingPoint": "3",
"requiredCountToDisplay": "3",
"maxInsertions": 100,
"adList": [
{
"adPreset": "LeaderboardInline"
}
]
}
]
The city of Sterling Heights has agreed to pay $2.95 million to a 48-year-old woman who was seriously injured when a police officer crashed into her vehicle near a high school drop-off zone.
Maisaa Kada, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and permanent damage to her spine in the 2019 crash, was preparing to face the city in court Wednesday when a last-minute settlement was reached. A jury was about to be brought into the courtroom when attorneys announced the deal.
The crash occurred near Stevenson High School, where Kada was driving out of a parking lot around 7 a.m. when a Sterling Heights police officer, who was speeding without lights or sirens in the middle turn lane, slammed into her car. The impact flipped her vehicle and trapped her inside until rescuers freed her using the Jaws of Life.
Kada has undergone years of treatment, including 394 medical appointments, and will require back surgery every decade.
“The injuries are horrible,” Kada’s attorney Ven Johnson tells Metro Times. “She’s going to have surgeries for the rest of her life, as well as a traumatic brain injury.”
The officer involved, Richard Clark Jr., was found to have been driving negligently while on duty. But he was never disciplined or charged, Johnson says.
“He did not even get a ticket,” Johnson says.
Police tried to blame the crash on Kadda.
“They had an in-dash camera. They saw that he was speeding and was using the center turn lane as a passing lane without sirens or lights on,” Johnson says. “Three or four days after the crash, [Clark’s] supervisor wrote a memo to the police chief saying this is not his fault at all.”
The city spent five years fighting the case, repeatedly arguing that it was protected under governmental immunity. Sterling Heights appealed three times to the Michigan Court of Appeals before finally relenting and settling the case.
Courts repeatedly rejected the city’s governmental immunity defense, citing the motor vehicle exception to immunity laws, which says “governmental entities shall be liable for bodily injury and property damage resulting from the negligent operation by any officer, agent, or employee of the governmental agency, of a motor vehicle of which the governmental agency is owner.”
Johnson, an outspoken critic of governmental immunity, says the officer had to know his driving was dangerous.
“The school zone is not even two blocks from the police station,” Johnson says. “They know how the traffic backs up. This was 7:13 a.m. He did this knowing full well there are a lot of accidents in this area, as there are in a lot of school zones. He knew that and still drove like a bat out of hell. He was flooring it.”
Johnson has represented residents in some of the biggest cases against public officials. He represented children and their parents in a lawsuit against Oxford schools following the 2021 mass shooting. He also filed lawsuits on behalf of hundreds of residents in the Midland dam failure and Flint water crisis. And he sued the city of Grand Rapids after one of its cops fatally shot an unarmed Patrick Lyoya.
In all of those cases, he was confronted with a similar challenge — governmental immunity, which gives public employees broad protections against lawsuits.
“They’re just trying to make it impossible for people to hold the government accountable,” Johnson says. “The government ain’t looking to change that because it protects them.”
Metro Times couldn’t immediately reach Sterling Heights for comment.
