Gilmore v. State of Washington / 2020

On September 5, 2015, at approximately 3:00 p.m., Defendant Bradley Brower drove eastbound on Thorpe Road, intending to travel across US 195. Kayden and Jewel Gilmore, Alaina Lawson, and Maquaila Stacy were passengers in the Brower vehicle. 

Once his vehicle reached the stop sign on Thorpe Road, Mr. Brower stopped, looked both ways, waited for traffic to pass, and then undertook to cross US 195. As Mr. Brower was crossing US 195, Defendant Pamela Raab drove northbound on US 195, approaching the intersection with Thorpe Road. Mr. Brower crossed through the median between the southbound and northbound lanes. As was the case in many prior “at angle” crashes here, he then attempted to cross the northbound lanes. At that point, Ms. Raab’s pickup entered the intersection and crashed into the passenger side of the Brower vehicle. 

The Brower PT Cruiser rotated violently clockwise and had a secondary impact with the Dodge truck. The left rear corner of the PT Cruiser struck the right side of the Dodge. The PT Cruiser continued rotating clockwise as it left the road onto the right shoulder and struck a power pole on the northeast corner of the US 195 and Thorpe Road intersection. After the second collision with the PT Cruiser, the Dodge left the road to the right and traveled onto the northeast corner of US 195 and Thorpe Road. As it left the road, the Dodge struck a DOT light pole, a metal transformer box and a wood power pole. 

For well over a century, our courts have consistently held that governmental entities have a duty to exercise ordinary care in the design, construction, maintenance and repair of our public roads to keep them in a reasonably safe condition for ordinary travel. 

There is no question that this intersection was hazardous and unsafe for ordinary travel. Beginning in 1999, WSDOT repeatedly identified the Thorpe Road intersection as a “Hazardous Accident Location”. Despite a history of an extraordinary series of severe collisions, this intersection remained unchanged and continued to be inherently dangerous through the time of the subject September 5, 2015 collision.