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Friday, Oct. 30, 2009

Family of woman who died in on-air contest awarded

SACRAMENTO -- A Sacramento Superior Court jury Thursday awarded the survivors of Jennifer Lea Strange $16,577,118 as a result of her death nearly three years ago in a water-drinking contest conducted by a local radio station.

In making the award, the seven-man, five-woman panel found that Entercom Sacramento LLC, the local subsidiary of Entercom Communications Corp. of Philadelphia was negligent in putting on the contest that ultimately resulted in Strange's death.

Plaintiffs' lawyers had asked the jury for an award for economic and non-economic damages in a range of $34 million to $44.3 million.

Strange, 28, died Jan. 12, 2007, after participating in what KDND promoted as its "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" contest that promised the popular Nintendo video game to whomever could drink the most water without urinating or vomiting. The Sacramento County Coroner's Office determined that she died of acute water intoxication. The Sacramento County Sheriff's Department investigated the case to see if it was a homicide, but no criminal charges were filed.

Plaintiffs' attorneys filed the wrongful death lawsuit on behalf of her husband, William Strange, individually and as guardian of their two young children, Ryland, 6, and Jorie, 3; and Ronald Sims, the father and guardian of the woman's oldest son, Keegan, 13. The plaintiffs charged that the defendants were negligent in holding the contest.

Defense attorneys countered that Strange's death was unforeseeable and that if there was any liability on the part of the Entercom defendants, it had to be offset by the woman's own "contributory negligence." Forty-one witnesses testified and lawyers entered 192 exhibits into evidence in the trial that began on Sept. 8 with jury selection.

To prove their case, plaintiffs' attorneys Roger A. Dreyer and Harvey R. Levine needed to demonstrate that KDND's "Morning Rave" on-air talent and the station's managers acted negligently within the course and scope of their employment at Entercom Sacramento in putting on the contest and that it caused harm to Jennifer Strange.

The plaintiffs' lawyers played tapes of the "Morning Rave" show the day of the contest, where the disc jockeys made fun about contestants throwing up and about the possibility of somebody dying from drinking too much water. The jokes continued even after the DJs received several calls -- including some they played on the air -- from listeners who expressed concerns that drinking too much water could be dangerous, plaintiffs argued.

Station manager Steve Weed and Entercom's top official in Sacramento, John Geary, both had received complaints ahead of time about the behavior and antics of the "Morning Rave" crew from KDND promotions director Robin Pechota, the plaintiffs argued. But management failed to rein in the DJs, the lawyers said.

Although the antics of the DJs held the potential to expose Entercom Sacramento to liability, Judge Lloyd A. Phillips instructed the jury that Entercom Communications Corp. could not be found negligent for the actions of its subsidiary employees "merely by reason of ownership or control." The lawyers for Strange's survivors asked jurors to establish the connection of liability to the parent corporation through what the plaintiffs viewed as a lack of training the subsidiary's managers received from Entercom Communication Corp.'s legal team in Boston. The plaintiffs' lawyers argued that the corporate lawyers never educated or clearly communicated to the Sacramento managers the company's policies barring contests that were dangerous, in bad taste, or that reflected poorly on the morals and ethics of the company, and that the word in turn then never filtered down to the on-air talent.

Steve Maney, one of the DJs on KDND's morning show, testified that neither Geary, Weed nor Pechota ever talked to any of the "Morning Rave" crew about contest guidelines.

"We were never told what the rules were," said Maney, who described himself to the jury as the morning crew's in-house "jackass."