THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 2, 1996 TAG: 9611020269
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: STAFF AND WIRE REPORT
LENGTH: 84 lines
The State Supreme Court decided Friday that a good Samaritan, killed in 1991 while helping the victim of a car accident, was not entitled to death benefits from Virginia Beach.
The high court overruled a lower court that had said the woman became an ``ad hoc'' city employee, deserving of benefits, when she obeyed an auxiliary police officer's request to assist the crash victim on the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway.
The ruling means that Joye Compton-Waldrop's 6-year-old daughter is not eligible to receive either $50,500 or $225,500 in death benefits under Workers' Compensation.
L. Steven Emmert, Virginia Beach senior attorney, said Friday night that city officials felt bad for Compton-Waldrop's family, but didn't believe taxpayers deserved any blame for the accident.
``This is not a decision over which we're celebrating, because this family has suffered a real loss. But it clearly was the right thing to do,'' Emmert said. ``I still and will always feel a sense of loss for that family. My father died in an automobile accident, too.''
The accident that killed Compton-Waldrop and another good Samaritan took place near the old toll plaza of the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway on Aug. 31, 1991.
Two cars collided on the highway at 4:30 a.m. An off-duty auxiliary police officer, George W. Starr, 25, pulled over and tried to rescue the victims.
At the same time, Compton-Waldrop, a 29-year-old pizza-store manager, was returning home from work with her fiance. They, too, pulled over to help.
The auxiliary officer asked the fiance to point his car lights onto the accident scene and use a flashlight and reflective vest to alert oncoming drivers.
He asked Compton-Waldrop to help him with an injured man lying in the roadway. ``Ma'am, come here,'' Starr said. ``I need some help with this man.''
As Compton-Waldrop walked onto the highway, a car traveling about 85 mph crashed into her and Starr, killing both. The driver, 19-year-old Sean Armao, had been drinking. Later, he was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
After the crash, Compton-Waldrop's family - her parents in South Carolina acting for her then 1-year-old daughter - filed a claim for death benefits with the Workers' Compensation Commission. They claimed Compton-Waldrop was an ``emergency employee'' who had been ``deputized'' to help at the scene.
The city denied the claim, as did a compensation commissioner in Norfolk and the full commission in Richmond.
But on Nov. 14, 1995, a three-judge appeals panel, relying on a rarely used doctrine that dates to 13th century England, ruled that the family was right all along.
Judge Sam W. Coleman III wrote that under the doctrine of posse comitatus, Compton-Waldrop could not have refused the auxiliary officer's demand for help. If she had, she would have been guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.
In Virginia Beach, the City Council has designated auxiliary police officers as city employees for purposes of Workers' Compensation.
Therefore, the court ruled: ``We hold that when Officer Starr required Compton-Waldrop to assist him with the emergency rescue, thereby placing her in harm's way, she became an ad hoc member of the Virginia Beach Auxiliary Police Department.''
The court ordered her family's claim back to the compensation commission ``for entry of an award.''
The city appealed, saying the appeals court's reading of the law was not right and would set a terrible precedent for Virginia Beach and all other cities in the commonwealth.
Under the court's logic, anyone injured by a driver pulling over to let an ambulance pass could sue the city, said Emmert, the Beach attorney. People do not become city employees, he said, simply because they are directed by a city employee to do something.
``The ruling from Appeals was that a police officer carried with his badge the authority to hire an unlimited number of city employees, and that's simply not true,'' he said. Only the City Manager and the City Council can hire city employees.
Compton-Waldrop's family also sued the Navy because Armao, a 19-year-old Navy sailor, had been drinking at a bar at Oceana Naval Air Station before the crash. The family won an undisclosed cash settlement. MEMO: Staff writers Karen Weintraub and Steve Stone, and the Associated
Press, contributed to this story.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT TRAFFIC VIRGINIA STATE SUPREME COURT
RULING DEATH BENEFITS WORKERS COMPENSATION by CNB