Defense rests after calling four witnesses in water-intoxication case

A one, Oct 07, 2009 (The Sacramento Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- ETM | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- day defense that featured four witnesses brought testimony to a close Tuesday in the "Hold Your Wee for a Wii" radio contest wrongful death trial.

Entercom Communications Corp. attorney Donald W. Carlson questioned a coroner's pathologist, a radio engineer and two other contestants in the fatal KDND "The End" 107.9 water drinking contest and then told Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd A. Phillips that the defense rested.

Due to a gag order that he sought and obtained, Carlson could not explain to reporters his defense strategy in the lawsuit filed by Jennifer Lea Strange's survivors over her death on Jan. 12, 2007.

"Perhaps the corporation believes they've got enough distance from the contest and that the jury might conclude they don't have any responsibility, but that seems a high--risk strategy to me," said former UC Davis School of Law Dean Rex R. Perschbacher. "Maybe there's nothing more for them to say."

Earlier on Tuesday, plaintiffs' lawyer Roger A. Dreyer concluded his case by calling Strange's two young children as witnesses. Ryland Strange, 6, and his little sister, Jorie, 3, talked about school and friends and the like.

"I like to play outside," Jorie Strange told the jury.

Dreyer asked nothing about the mother the two children no longer have, leaving their appearance alone as evidence for the jury to consider in deciding whether the children's lifetime of lost love, support and companionship ought to be compensated.

Dreyer and Carlson will each get a chance to address the issue of the radio company's liability as well as damages when they argue their cases to the jury next Tuesday.

The plaintiffs charge that Entercom and its subsidiary Sacramento Entercom LLC are responsible for Strange's death by failing to train and keep closer tabs on KDND's "Morning Rave" disc jockeys and station officials. The DJs and station officials put on the contest that asked participants to drink as much water as they could without going to the bathroom.

Entercom's lawyers said Strange's death was not foreseeable. The contest that killed her, they have argued in court papers, fell outside the company's policies and procedures. Several top company officials testified to that effect in depositions presented to the jury by the plaintiffs.

Perschbacher said it is "a wonderfully creative strategy" for defendants to put their case on through witnesses called by the plaintiffs.

"It looks like you have a tremendous confidence in the facts and that you did all you could and you don't have anything to answer for," the retired dean said. "That's a fascinating message. It also could be that there's no other particular defense for them."

The defense took its shot Tuesday with Sacramento County coroner's forensic pathologist Dr. Stephany Fiore, who conducted the autopsy on Strange's body. Fiore testified that she had conducted 2,300 previous autopsies but had never come across a case of acute water intoxication leading to hyponatremia, a condition caused by a water--salt imbalance that leads to potentially fatal brain swelling.

Fiore said she conducted a search of the medical literature and found only 18 such deaths over the previous 30 years, most due to schizophrenics who drank themselves to death with water. Marathon runners and military recruits accounted for the other fatalities, Fiore said.

Contestant Ron Mendoza testified that he knew of the previous case in which a Chico State student had died of water intoxication. But he said "I didn't draw any similarities" between the college hazing incident and the KDND contest he'd entered, because one was "against his will, versus a voluntary participation."

Another contestant, Aram Dermenjian, was the first to drop out. He said he assumed the other participants "would know their own limits."

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Call The Bee's Andy Furillo, (916) 321--1141.

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