(Photo credit- AP)
The TOI correspondent from Washington: A $29 million award to the family of Jaahnavi Kandula, a 23-year old student from India who was killed in a road accident in Seattle on a cold night in January 2023, will not bring her back to life. But in a gracious gesture and empathetic language that accompanied the record settlement, the American justice system this week upheld dignity and value of a foreign student, implicitly rebuking the dehumanization of immigrants in an increasingly MAGA-fevered country where they are seen as “economic threats” and “cultural outsiders,”Kandula, the only daughter of a police constable and a school teacher in Andhra Pradesh, was crossing a street in Seattle, where she was a master’s candidate at Northeastern University, when she was hit by a police cruiser driving at 74 mph in a 25-mph zone. Police Officer Kevin Dave was responding to a “priority one” overdose call, only “chirping” his siren at intersections instead of running it continuously. The impact threw her nearly 100 feet and she died shortly thereafter.
However, the tragedy shifted from a “negligent accident” to a global scandal when body-camera footage emerged of Officer Daniel Auderer, a police union leader, laughing about the death on a phone call. He suggested Jaahnavi had “limited value” and that the city should just “write a check for $11,000.” The callous remark was viewed as a derisive reference to an “unproductive” foreign student.The family’s attorneys, Susan Mindenbergs and Gabe Galanda, built a case that went beyond the accident, focussing on the profound loss to her parents in India, and framing Jaahnavi not as a “foreign student” but as a cherished daughter whose future was priceless. They also sought an extra $ 11,000 on top of the settlement as a non-negotiable demand from her mother, who largely brought her up as a single parent, to challenge the suggestion that her life was worth such a pittance.The City of Seattle eventually agreed to a $29,011,000 settlement, the second largest single-victim police negligence award in US history, primarily to avoid a “nuclear verdict.” Had the case gone to a jury, the Auderer video would have likely led to even greater punitive damages to punish the city. By agreeing to $29 million, Seattle, seen as a socialist haven by MAGA hardliners, acknowledged that a trial would be a reputational disaster. Roughly $20 million of the award will be paid by insurance, with $9 million coming from city funds. “This settlement isn’t just about money,” her lawyers said after the verdict. “It’s about a city admitting that a life cannot be quantified by a callous joke.” The city also acknowledged that “Jaahnavi Kandula’s life mattered” and hoped the settlement “ brings some sense of closure to the Kandula family.”Under a standard U.S. contingency arrangement, lawyers in complex civil rights cases receive 33%–40% of a settlement. While this may seem astronomical, contingency law in the U.S covers attorneys’ front costs, risking hundreds of thousands of dollars of their own money for expert witnesses, accident reconstruction, investigators, and international travel. They receive nothing if they lose. After fees and expenses, Jaahnavi’s family is expected to receive approximately $18.5 million (about Rs 155 crore). The 35% fee is the “access fee” to a justice system that, in this case, finally worked.Contrast Jaahnavi settlement with road fatality cases in India, which exceed 150,000 deaths annually – a slow-moving public health catastrophe that some activists call a “silent genocide.” Compensation for a road fatality in India often lingers in the Rs 10 lakh to Rs 50 lakh range ($12,000 to $60,000), even for high-earning professionals. Justice is often delayed by decades in the Motor Accident Claims Tribunals (MACT) and criminal accountability is rare, with compensation minimal or never paid. Not that the windfall will matter much to Jaahnavi’s mother Vijaya Lakshmi. Her husband Srikanth Kandula died two days before the settlement was announced, leaving her to carry forward the establishment of the Jaahnavi Kandula Memorial Foundation aiming to support international student safety, scholarships for Indian STEM students, and single-parent families funding higher education.The settlement comes at a fraught time for immigrants and Indian students in the US, amid rising nationalist rhetoric and cultural tension. Yet this case demonstrates that American civil courts — at their best — can deliver accountability and dignity. Northeastern University also awarded Jaahnavi her Master’s degree in Information Systems posthumously and dedicated a memorial space near the site of the crash.
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