The widow of a UC Davis professor who died in a collision with a garbage truck in West Sacramento last year has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the company and driver that operated the vehicle.
Filed Tuesday in Yolo Superior Court, the suit alleges that Waste Management Inc. allowed the truck’s continued operation despite multiple mechanical problems, resulting in the driver’s failure to realize he had struck Kentaro Inoue as he biked to work on the morning of Aug. 31, 2016.
“Unfortunately, Waste Management was grossly negligent in the maintenance of its truck, and it cost Kentaro his life,” Bruce Brusavich, the Torrance attorney representing Inoue’s wife Amy E. Brown, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Brusavich alleges that the truck’s driver, Craig Michael Tivey, had written up the truck’s engine problems two days before the fatal crash, “and had they been promptly fixed, Kentaro might be alive today.”
Waste Management Inc. did not respond to a request for comment from The Davis Enterprise.
Tivey, 40, has been charged with misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter in connection with the incident and is scheduled to go to trial in late September. He also is named as a defendant in the civil action.
According to the lawsuit, Tivey had made a right turn from Poplar Avenue onto West Capitol Avenue just prior to the collision, with Inoue cycling in the bike lane to his right.
“Just after passing Professor Inoue, Tivey made an abrupt and illegal right turn … driving his huge trash truck directly in front of Professor Inoue, violating his right of way,” the suit says. A janitor at a nearby mobile home park reported hearing Inoue scream and then an impact, and began yelling for Tivey to stop the truck.
Tivey, meanwhile, felt the impact “but erroneously believed that he was once again experiencing mechanical problems from an engine problem” for which he had written up a service order on Aug. 29, the suit says.
The document also claims the garbage truck was equipped with two rear-facing cameras, but Tivey failed to turn on a camera monitor inside his cab to determine whether it was safe to make a right turn after passing Inoue.
Inoue, a 47-year-old plant sciences professor at UCD, sustained fatal injuries from being dragged 47 feet under the garbage truck’s right rear wheels, the document says. He died at the scene.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-745-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene
Read more:
Manslaughter charged in fatal West Sac collision
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/crime-fire-courts/driver-in-fatal-…ith-manslaughter/
Bicycling UCD professor killed in collision
http://www.davisenterprise.com/local-news/crime-fire-courts/bicycling-uc-dav…led-in-collision/