Reporter: Frank Stone


The city of San Diego has agreed to pay $1.5 million, believed to be the largest personal-injury settlement in its history, to a young Poway woman seriously hurt in an accident involving a fire engine.

The City Council yesterday approved the out-of-court settlement for Monica Michele Ginger, 19, who suffered brain damage and other injuries Oct. 19, 1980, in a collision between a San Diego fire truck and a pickup truck at La Jolla Village Drive and Genesee Avenue. Ten people were injured in the accident.

“So far as I can recall, this is the largest personal-injury case settlement the city of San Diego has had,” City Attorney John Witt said today. “But there have been bigger judgments against the city – we had one for $5 million a few years ago.”

David S. Casey Jr., attorney for Lydia Ginger, who filed the suit on behalf of her daughter, said the pickup truck carrying Monica Ginger and her companions had a green light at the intersection and was struck by the fire engine, which went through a red light.

Over the last several years, the city has been installing a device called “opticom” on its fire engines and at intersections in the city. The device allows the fire rig approaching a signalized intersection to change a red light rapidly to green.

At the time of the accident, according to evidence developed in the case, neither the fire truck involved in the accident nor the La Jolla Village Drive-Genesee Avenue intersection had the responding opticom equipment, Casey said. The equipment has been installed at the intersection since then, he added.

Casey said that according to information supplied by the fire department, only six fire engines were equipped with opticom at the time of the accident. All 44 fire engines as well as battalion chiefs’ cars now have the opticom equipment.

The city has 812 intersections with traffic signals and 319 have the special equipment, Fire Capt. Joseph Duffy said. The city has been installing opticom at intersections in a year-by-year phased program.

At the time of the accident, the intersection where the accident occurred was scheduled to have the equipment installed within a few months, he said.

“It’s absolutely tragic that this accident occurred before we had the equipment there," Duffy said.

The original lawsuit filed on Ginger’s behalf in Superior Court sought $5 million. Trial in that suit was to begin soon before Superior Court Judge Gilbert Harelson.