PROVIDENCE, Rhode Island -- The state's taxpayers could be on the hook for the death of Colin B. Foote, the 27-year old Rhode Island motorcyclist who was struck and killed by Laura A. Reale, a drug-addicted habitual driving offender, in May.
Richard "Robin" Foote, the father of Colin Foote and the administrator of his estate, has filed a civil lawsuit against Reale; Reale's father, who is the owner of the Rhode Island Volkswagen Jetta she was driving when she slammed into Foote on Route 1 in Charlestown May 16; the state of Rhode Island and Sara R. Strachan, administrator of the Division of Motor Vehicles.
The lawsuit was filed in Providence County Superior Court Dec. 23, just six days after Laura Reale was sentenced to serve 8 years of a 10-year sentence in the Adult Correctional Institutions for driving to endanger, resulting in the death of Colin Foote.
While Reale pleaded guilty to causing Foote's death, the victim's father's lawsuit also blames the Rhode Island DMV for the fatality. It claims that if the DMV had done its job and had notified the attorney general's office in the fall of 2008 that Laura Reale was a habitual driving offender, her license would have been revoked and it is unlikely that she would have been driving on the date that she killed Foote.
The lawsuit says that the DMV could also have taken action on its own to suspend Reale's license in September -- after she'd been convicted for speeding for the sixth time within three years -- but failed to do so even though it had sufficient evidence that "she posed an imminent safety risk to the general public..." The suit alleges that Strachan and other employees of the Division of Motor Vehicles breached their duty to exercise reasonable care in performing their jobs.
Foote's father is requesting a jury trial and an unspecific amount of compensatory damages. He is also asking that a jury order Laura Reale to pay punitive damages because she was a habitual driving offender whose conduct "evidenced such willfulness, recklessness or wickedness...as to be akin to criminality."
Max Wistow, one of the Rhode Island lawyers who filed the lawsuit for Robin Foote, said Wednesday: "To him this is a genuine crusade. He's not doing it for the money. He is just profoundly motivated about this."
In recent months, the Foote family has spent more than $10,000 of its own money to put up billboards around the state to get repeat offenders off the roads. It also lobbied legislators to enact a new law, known as The Colin B. Foote Act, aimed at getting habitual offenders off the highways, established a nonprofit organization and set up a website, www.colinslaw.org, to draw attention to the problem.
But the pain of the tragedy has also taken a public toll on Robin Foote, who pleaded guilty earlier this month to drunken driving. He was arrested on Dec. 2 after he followed a 16-year-old girl to the Charlestown police station to "turn her in" because he believed she'd run the same red light where his son was killed by Reale The girl told the police that Foote chased her car and attempted to box her in on the highway. She said his actions terrified her and drove to the police station for help.
In the 8 ½ years before Reale killed Foote, the 27-year-old Rhode Island Westerly woman had racked up tickets and warnings for 28 incidents of speeding, ignoring traffic devices and violating other rules of the road. The crash that killed Foote was her fourth crash on record. Superior Court Judge Edwin J. Gale said in sentencing Reale that he believed the Reale was high on marijuana when she took Foote's life. Prosecutor Cindy Soccio said at the sentencing that Reale had also been addicted to Vicodin, Percocet and OxyContin.
Reale was never charged with driving while under the influence of drugs; the police did not draw her blood after the fatal accident, saying she did not seem impaired when questioned right after the crash.
In a statement issued after Reale's sentencing, Atty. Gen. Patrick C. Lynch said of Reale: "Repeatedly violating the rules of the road, this habitual offender was a train wreck waiting to happen. And the worst did happen" when she struck and killed Colin Foote.
The newly filed lawsuit says that Laura Reale's license should have been suspended or revoked after she was convicted on Sept. 9, 2008, of driving 61 mph in a 50 mph zone on Post Road in Westerly --her sixth conviction for speeding within the prior three years, making her a "habitual offender" under state law.
The Division of Motor Vehicles was notified of the conviction and should have certified transcripts or abstracts of her driving and conviction record to the state attorney general's office so that it would initiate proceedings to have Reale's license revoked, but Strachan failed to do so, the lawsuit says.
As a result, "Laura Reale was not directed to not operate a motor vehicle on the highways of the State of Rhode Island and to surrender" her license...Had defendant Strachan complied with her obligation," the lawsuit says, "it is more likely than not that defendant Laura Reale's license would have been surrendered and she would not have been authorized to operate a motor vehicle...and therefore would not have done so and would not have" killed Colin Foote.
The lawsuit asks that the defendants be forced to pay Foote's attorney's fees and court costs as well as monetary damages.
