The surviving family of an elderly Trabuco Canyon woman run over and killed by a U.S. Postal truck in October 2013 has filed a $60 million wrongful death lawsuit inside Orange County's Ronald Reagan Federal Courthouse.
Mary Honda, 85, had been placing mail in her mailbox at her Teaberry Lane residence when postman Adam Stewart Rojas ran over her “several times” and caused serious trauma, according to the lawsuit.
The wounds included injuries to Honda's head, neck, shoulder, right forearm and ribs. She also suffered a laceration to her heart and hemorrhaging in her kidneys. She arrived at Mission Hospital alive but died several hours later. Orange County Sheriff's Department records show that Rojas called for aid after the accident.
]
Scott E. Schutzman, the Santa Ana-based attorney for Honda's daughter and grandchildren, said both the U.S. Postal Service and Rojas were negligent in the death and must pay damages to be determined at a future trial.
According to Schutzman, he confronted the postal service with the claims in July 2014, but did not receive an answer.
U.S. District Court Judge Andrew J. Guilford will preside.
The parties have been ordered to enter into pre-trial mediation negotiations, a standard procedure in federal court.
Follow OC Weekly on Twitter @ocweekly or on Facebook!
Email: rs**********@oc******.com. Twitter: @RScottMoxley.
CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.