State wants award cut in suit against Highway Patrol

Thursday, Oct. 21, 2004 | 9:38 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The Nevada Supreme Court was told Tuesday that a man who was struck and killed by a Nevada Highway Patrol vehicle in 1997 in Clark County was partly to blame for his death.

Senior Deputy Attorney General Thom Gover asked the court to return the case to District Court. Government officials are seeking to overturn the $325,000 judgment awarded to the family of Dale Dodson.

Luis Rojas, attorney for the family of Dodson, said there was overwhelming evidence to justify District Judge Lee Gates' decision to award the damages to Dodson's survivors on Nov. 2, 2002.

The state's highest court took the arguments under submission and will rule later.

On the night after Christmas seven years ago, Dodson and his family were headed out of Las Vegas toward St. George, Utah. Near the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Interstate 15, a bike attached to the top of Dodson's Jeep Cherokee fell onto the highway.

Dodson pulled into the median between north and south traffic about one-half mile from the bike, and he walked back to try to retrieve it.

Nevada Highway Patrol Trooper Daniel Bennett testified that he saw the Dodson car and wondered if it was in trouble. He then saw the bike and pulled the Dodge Ram patrol truck around to avoid it. It was then that Dodson was hit and killed.

Dodson should share some of the responsibility for the accident because of his "inept attempt" to tie the bike down and his misjudgment in trying to retrieve the bike, Gover argued. He also argued a test of the Dodson's body found drugs, including methamphetamine, in his system.

Rojas countered that there was no evidence of impairment on the part of Dodson, and Gates had agreed in his ruling.

Gover told the court that Dodson had failed to properly secure the bicycle to the top of his vehicle and he put himself in a "zone of danger" when he tried to get the bike off the highway. He said Bennett was driving 65-70 mph, the speed limit, when the accident occurred.