City says $30.5 million Seattle CHOP verdict ‘excessive,’ asks for new trial

The city of Seattle has asked for a new trial and said it plans to appeal the $30.5 million verdict that found the city negligent in the fatal shooting of a teenager at the Capitol Hill Organized Protest in 2020.

A King County jury ruled in January that the city was negligent in its emergency response to the early-morning shooting of Antonio Mays Jr. in the protest zone and that the city’s failures were a cause of Mays’ death. The jury awarded Mays’ father and his estate $30.5 million.

RELATED: Seattle CHOP verdict: City must pay $30.5 million to family of slain teen

The city, in asking for a new trial, argues that there was at least a 90% chance that Mays was going to die from his wounds regardless of any delay in medical care. The city also argues that the jury should have been instructed to divvy up the blame between the city and Mays’ actual shooter, who remains unknown. And, the city says, Mays’ father’s attorney should not have been allowed to urge the jury to consider “deterrence,” preventing something like this from happening again, as it considered damages.

“The trial contained multiple errors affecting the substantial rights of the City,” Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans’ office wrote in asking for a new trial. “These errors led to an award of excessive damages.”

The trial concerned only the city’s emergency response to the shooting, not the creation of CHOP.

The city’s request for a new trial goes to the same King County Superior Court judge, Sean O’Donnell, who oversaw the monthlong trial. Should O’Donnell deny a new trial, the city has also filed a notice that it plans to appeal to the state Court of Appeals.

The bar for awarding a new trial is very high. O’Donnell must view the evidence in the most favorable way possible to Mays, the party that’s not asking for a new trial. Then the judge would award a new trial only if “there is no substantial evidence or reasonable inferences to sustain the verdict.”

Mays’ killing remains unsolved nearly six years later, despite dozens of people — and several livestreamers — being on the streets around the shooting in the early morning hours of June 29, 2020. There have been no arrests and no named suspects. Seattle police have repeatedly declined to give updates on the case but say the investigation remains open and active.

The civil trial was the first public airing of facts around the shooting at CHOP, the protest zone that took over eight square blocks of Capitol Hill after police abandoned their East Precinct.

Mays and another teenager, who survived, were in a stolen Jeep when they were shot. Witnesses in the immediate aftermath of the shooting claimed that armed protesters known as “CHOP security” killed Mays, who was 16 when he died.

RELATED: Surviving teen shot at Seattle CHOP refiles lawsuit

The city also accuses Mays’ father’s lawyer of misrepresenting the status of Robert West, the surviving teenager who was in the vehicle with Mays when both were shot.

Evan Oshan, Mays’ attorney, represents both Mays’ father and West. West had filed his own lawsuit against the city but dropped it last year. He was listed as a witness in Mays’ civil trial. But on the day he was set to testify, the city says, Oshan told the court he was “unreachable” and doctors had advised him not to testify. Instead, parts of West’s deposition were played for the jury; the city argues it never got a chance to question West. After the jury delivered its verdict, Oshan refiled West’s lawsuit, saying he “wants to go forward.”

Oshan and his co-counsel, in a court filing, called the city’s request a “Hail Mary” and urged the court to deny the “scattershot” requests.

“The City hopes to evade responsibility by attacking this Court’s legal determinations, plaintiff’s counsel, and the jury’s decision,” Oshan and co-counsel Phillip Talmadge wrote. “This Court and the jury got it right.”

Jurors, after deliberating for 12 days, ruled that the city was negligent in its emergency response and that that negligence was a cause of Mays’ death. Eleven of 12 jurors voted that the negligence was a cause of Mays’ death; civil trials in Washington require only 10 of 12 jurors to agree.

Jurors said in interviews after the trial that they were convinced the city failed to follow its own protocols for an emergency at CHOP. Some cited a recording of a 911 call placed by one protester at the scene, saying dispatchers and emergency responders did not instruct her on where volunteers should transport a wounded Mays.

The city argues that O’Donnell’s instructions to the jury were faulty. The jury should have been asked, the city says, whether the city’s actions increased the risk of harm to Mays after he was shot.

“Mays lost, at most, a 5-10% chance of survival, which is mathematically incompatible with a finding that the City more probably than not caused Mays’ death,” the city wrote.

The city says the jury should have been asked to assign a percentage of blame to the city and a percentage of blame to the (still unknown) shooter or shooters. Doing so, the city said, would have resulted in a much smaller penalty.

David Gutman: 206-464-2926 or dgutman@seattletimes.com: David Gutman covers local politics and King County government at The Seattle Times, reporting on how leaders and institutions impact the lives of everyday people.

Sydney Brownstone: 206-464-3225 or sbrownstone@seattletimes.com: Sydney Brownstone is an investigative reporter at The Seattle Times.

Will James: wjames@kuow.org: Will James is a reporter and producer for KUOW Public Radio.