Loading your audio article
SAN JOSE — Santa Clara County is preparing to pay $5 million to settle a lawsuit from a man whose two adult children were killed four years ago by a driver fleeing from a sheriff’s deputy, who was accused of engaging in an illegal pursuit based on questionable grounds, according to the plaintiff attorney and court records.
The Board of Supervisors greenlit the settlement in closed session Monday, said Richard Alexander, an attorney representing plaintiff Al Nievas. Court records show that the terms of the settlement — which awaits final approval by the board — were reached following negotiations that concluded earlier this month. The settlement negates a civil trial that was scheduled to start in late April.
Nievas, whose children Precious, 25, and Philip, 21, died in the April 26, 2021 crash, sued the county that year and blamed Deputy Ryan Vesey’s decision to pursue motorist Roberto Garcia that night. According to court documents and depositions for the litigation, Vesey originally said he initiated a traffic stop because of Garcia’s failure to use a turn signal, a claim he did not repeat in an official police report.
Garcia was driving his Honda Accord at over 90 mph when he crashed into the Nievas siblings’ Toyota Camry as they were making a legal turn from Lawrence Expressway onto Mitty Way, just blocks away from the home they shared with their father after the family immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in 2016.
Alexander told this news organization that a trial would have revealed that the sheriff’s office — which has changed administrations since the crash — was negligent in allowing Vesey to change his story, and for not imposing discipline on him. He called for a civil grand jury investigation into how the case was handled by authorities.
“A coverup always makes matters worse,” Alexander said. “A coverup of a coverup by the sheriff’s department would be throwing gasoline on a fire.”
The sheriff’s office directed a request for comment to the County Counsel’s office. In a statement to this news organization, County Counsel Tony LoPresti emphasized that the settlement is not yet final.
“Negotiations are ongoing. The Board’s closed session discussion on March 24 is confidential,” LoPresti said in the statement. “If a final settlement is reached, the agreement will be a public document.”
LoPresti is referring to typical procedure following a closed session vote, in which a settlement agreement is placed on the board’s public agenda for an upcoming meeting and subject to a formal roll call vote by the supervisors. But it is unlikely that the terms of the settlement, as confirmed by Alexander, will vary drastically from what the board has already approved in closed session.
In 2023, Garcia pleaded to charges of vehicular manslaughter, carrying a concealed firearm, and several vehicle code violations, and was sentenced to 12 years in state prison. He has stated that he did not stop for the deputy because of an unregistered gun he had in his car.
As the lawsuit progressed through the Santa Clara County Superior Court, court declarations filed by Alexander and his co-counsel, Florida-based attorney Todd Falzone, highlighted excerpts of statements from Vesey recorded on body-camera footage from the time of the crash and in a deposition for the lawsuit.
Vesey, according to the declarations, told a San Jose police investigator on the night of the crash that he “wanted to get something that night,” and had looked up Garcia’s license plate prior to conducting a traffic stop. His initial rationale that Garcia did not use a turn signal while making a U-turn on Lawrence Expressway — a claim he eventually recanted — was contradicted by video surveillance.
The lawsuit also alleged that Vesey’s failure to activate his patrol vehicle’s siren meant the Nievas siblings, who had limited visibility because of road installations and the nighttime hour, did not get sufficient warning a pursuit was headed their way.
A police report in the wake of the crash contended that Vesey did not have time to turn on the siren, and the sheriff’s office asserted early on that no pursuit had actually been initiated. The latter claim was countered by a coroner’s death-certificate statement that the victims died after being “struck by another automobile that was involved in a pursuit by law enforcement,” and in the litigation the county has acknowledged a pursuit took place.
In the leadup to the settlement, Judge Frederick Chung denied the county’s motion to dismiss the case at the summary judgment phase that determines whether a lawsuit proceeds to trial. In his Feb. 25 ruling, Chung found that the county was not entitled to the legal immunity it sought under the state vehicle code in part because the sheriff’s office’s pursuit policy at the time — which has since been revised — was not compliant, due to the “failure of the policy to define ‘pursuit’ ” and “the failure of the policy to provide adequate procedures for post-pursuit analysis, review, feedback, and follow-up.”
The $5 million settlement for Nievas is the latest in a series of multi-million-dollar payouts the county has issued in the past decade to settle litigation alleging serious misconduct by the sheriff’s office. Since 2015, at least $26 million in settlements have been paid, with the biggest cases alleging gross neglect and abuse in county jail custody, including the notorious 2015 fatal beating of mentally ill inmate Michael Tyree by three jail deputies who were later incarcerated.
