Drunk driver not taken off road by police kills two and injures two others in head-on crash

$873,000 Jury Verdict – Northampton Superior Court

As a brand new lawyer in 1978, Attorney Goodman took on city hall and eventually won after battling for eight long years. He represented Debbie Irwin and sued the Town of Ware for negligent police protection after its police stopped a drunk driver and let him go. The drunk driver then hit Debbie’s car head on and killed her 19 year old husband and infant daughter, Misty and severely injured herself and her son Stephen. The trial ended in a landmark $873,000 jury verdict and the case on appeal to the Supreme Judicial Court made new law (Irwin v. Town of Ware, 392 Mass. 745, 1984) that has been followed throughout the country and hailed by Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) as a lynchpin in their goal to cut down on drunk driving deaths. Since then, police say they no longer have to be the nice guy and let a person they know or another officer go when they are driving drunk. The trial judge, Judge Raymond R. Cross, wrote in his memoirs that it was one of the most important civil cases of the latter half of the twentieth century. Attorney Goodman appeared on CBS 60 Minutes, ABC 20-20, Good Morning America, NBC Evening News; the case was written up in a full page story in the NY Times Sunday edition (Drunken Driving Case Divides Town, NY TIMES March 13, 1983 Sec. 1 p. 26) as well as the Providence Journal. The case was optioned twice for a Hollywood Movie which still may come. It is the subject of many scholarly law reviews throughout the academic legal world.