Palm Beach trial against Yamaha

**jeffbare** · 05-09-2011 11:41 AM

WEST PALM BEACH—
One of the last photos snapped of the two young friends shows them smiling, wearing ridiculously tall bunny ears on their heads in March 2005.

Having celebrated Easter Sunday, collecting colored eggs on Dr. Eugene Holly's waterfront lawn on North Flagler Drive, the two were ready for some teenage excitement. After falsely assuring Holly they knew how to operate his WaveRunner, they took off.

Five minutes later, 14-year-old Jaysell Perez was dead and 15-year-old Samantha Archer was gravely injured when the WaveRunner collided with a boat. The so-called go-fast boat first crushed the Cooper City teens and then sliced them up in the instant following impact.

Attorneys, who on Thursday described the events leading up to the horrific crash, will spend the next month trying to convince a Palm Beach County jury that the 2005 accident was avoidable. Yamaha, the WaveRunner's manufacturer, set the stage for it by ignoring years of warnings about flaws in the steering system, attorney Robert Baker said.

Millions are at stake. During Thursday's opening arguments, an attorney representing Archer, who sustained brain damage and suffers a multitude of physical problems, said he will seek nearly $7 million for her past and future medical bills. That doesn't include the millions he and attorneys representing Perez's parents will seek for pain and suffering.

Further, they will ask the jury to find that the company showed a "reckless indifference to human life," which would allow them to recover millions more in punitive damages.

An attorney representing Yamaha acknowledged the stakes.

"They will ask for millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars," Rick Mueller said.

Attorneys for Archer and the Perezes said the request is justified.

"The girls turned right in front of a boat. You know why?" said David Kleinberg, who represents Archer. "They couldn't steer."

Archer, who was driving, did exactly what any beginner would do when she decided to head back to Holly's house, he said. She took her hand off the throttle to slow for the turn. What she didn't know was that once she released the throttle, she couldn't steer the water scooter, Kleinberg said.

"She did exactly what is intuitive and exactly what Yamaha said they were going to do," he said. Instead of turning, the WaveRunner went straight, colliding with the boat.

Baker said 1986-2000 owner's manuals warned that beginners were likely to release the throttle when headed toward an obstacle. "Don't forget to accelerate," it advised. In 2001, he said, the warning was inexplicably removed even though the danger still existed.

Yamaha was one of the last water scooter manufacturers to correct the steering problem. It did so in 2003. The girls were on a 2001 model.

"Unfortunately, it did not happen in time to help the Perez family or Samantha Archer, who suffered catastrophic injuries," Baker said. "It was too little too late."

Mueller, who gave an abbreviated version of his opening statement that he will resume Monday, agreed that the accident was avoidable.

If the girls hadn't told Holly that they knew how to operate a water scooter, he wouldn't have let them take it out on the Intracoastal Waterway, crowded with holiday boat traffic. Further, Mueller said, Archer was not 16, the legal age to drive water scooters in Florida.

"Sadly and regrettably, an underage, unlicensed, untrained and inexperienced young girl was out in an environment, a very congested waterway. That's why the accident happened," he said.