Island County, like all counties, is responsible for making sure that its roads are safe for ordinary travel. It utterly failed to do so with one road that had long been a source of collisions and deaths, and ignored the please of local residents who had been pestering the county for years to put in guardrails and deal with the chronic ice conditions on the road resulting from the way the county built the road, permitting water to drain across the road and freeze when it got cold. Despite this, the county did nothing to correct the problem with water seeping across the road, and simply blamed the drivers for being at fault when something happened, taking no responsibility. It would not even spend the $75 to put up an ice warning sign.

Sunrise Blvd is a windy road that has tall fir trees on both sides of it, shading it from the sun. It is a road coming from the south that is initially straight, but when it reached a hill going downwards, it then became very curvy. On cold winter days, black ice would form, causing motorists to slide all over the hilly and curvy section. On the east side of the road, there was a steep drop off of roughly 20 feet with no guard rails. It was a death trap waiting for another victim.

On December 16, 2016, Tanya Canell was on her way to work at 7:30 in the morning. In the back seat were her two young girls that she was going to drop off at day care before going to work. As she approached the curves on Sunrise Blvd, the water that creeped across the road had once again frozen. She was driving the speed limit and hit the black ice that formed on that section of the road. Predictably, her car slid on the black ice and flew off the road, became air born, hit a tree and then caught on fire. Two good Samaritans stopped and ran to the car and were able to pull Tanya out. Tragically, despite heroic efforts by one of the good Samaritans, the two children did not make it out. One of the good Samaritan’s burned his hands trying to save the kids.

BILS was then retained by the father of the two children to represent the estates of the two kids and himself. BILS also represented the good Samaritan for his injuries. The mother was represented by another law firm for her catastrophic injuries. After 18 months of investigation of all of the prior incidents on this road giving rise to injuries, and how the county knew of them but did nothing, the county eventually agreed to resolve the case brought by the father, the estates of the two children and the good Samaritan. A total of $9.5 million was paid to the father and the estates of the two kids, and the good Samaritan also received a settlement as well for his efforts. It also finally built the needed guardrail and changed the surface of the road to mitigate the ice problem. It is sad that it took the lives of two small children and inestimable grief of a mother and father to make this happen.